Is It Okay To Be Angry With God?
Are you angry with God? Has He allowed things into your life that you believe are unfair, unwarranted, unjust? Has He failed to protect you from harm or taken precious ones from you?
Do you think it’s acceptable for us to be angry with or toward God?
Many of us would not admit that we are or have been. Angry at God, that is. After all, if you go against God you will lose every time, right? He is bigger and stronger, certainly more powerful than you or I. That’s why He’s God and we are not.
But then we have to reconcile this with our pain and sometimes devastating loss. My older sister died from cancer. Why did she have to die? I loved her dearly. God, you could have healed her. I asked you to. A lot. She was the nicest one in my entire family, the one who really loved me, why her, God? She was young, only 57. She never lived to meet her first grandchild, she would have been an amazing grandma.
I think after my sister died I was angry with God.
There are different schools of thought on this:
Some advocate that we can and should vent our rage at God when we don’t like what He’s doing or allowing. They say He’s “man enough” to handle it. And after all, He knows what we’re thinking and feeling anyway. Why not just be honest?
The other end of the spectrum is that others say, in effect, “How dare you talk to God that way? Are you above Him?”
I think we should ask a different question. Instead of asking “Is it ok to be angry with God?” I think we should ask, “What direction are you moving in?” By that I mean are you moving toward God with your pain or running from him? Like an angry toddler who doesn’t get their way, are you kicking and biting God for what He’s ordained in your life? Or are you running to His open arms with your tears and questions?
There’s no point in lying to God: He does know our hearts before we even express them. Honesty is always the best policy. The Psalms are full of David and others pouring out their honest questions, complaints and grief to God.
But He is also so holy and far above us that we should approach Him in reverence and awe. We must understand that he’s operating on a whole different sphere that we cannot understand or imagine. He is King of the universe!
The book of Job is a good example of men trying to figure out just what God is doing. Job and his friends spent much effort speculating on why God had allowed such loss and devastation in Job’s life. At the end of the book God shushes them with rhetorical questions such as, “Were you there when I laid the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4) and my favorite, “Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? (Job 38:35)
He IS God. We are not. And we must remember that.
But we also must remember that He’s not just the Almighty God, but our compassionate Father. He made us and knows that we’re only dust (Psalm 103:14).
He loves and understands us intimately. He knew exactly how brokenhearted I was over my sister’s death. Psalm 56:8 says he kept a record of all my tears. He saw the pool of self-pity I swam in when I believed that nothing would ever be right again with our family.
If I choose to believe truth, that God is my caring and loving Father, I will run to him with my hurts and doubts. I will cry in His arms as He comforts me. I may still ask why? and may still not understand, but that is how beloved children interact with their fathers. We’re told in the Psalms to pour out our hearts to him and that He will be our refuge and comfort.
It’s now been almost eleven years since my sweet sister’s passing, and I never saw any good reason for it. I still miss her and think of her often. But at some point I came to accept that God is always good. His ways are best and He took my sister home for reasons I can’t understand.
I trust Him with my life and the lives of those I love.
Do you? What direction are you moving in?
