Thoughts From Mike Mason

Dear Friends,

Have you ever gotten mad at God? Have you ever had people tell you it was wrong to feel that way? Have you ever, therefore, been confused about what to do with them if you did have those moments of harboring angry feelings toward God?

As a pastor I have to be honest and say I have had such moments of anger. And when I've had them, I've gone to God with them. Of course, when I tell people that, some say I did the right thing, while others say I sinned in doing so, because they see it as an act of arrogance and irreverence to do so. So, what is my reasoning for choosing to express that anger to God instead of pretending it's not there?

1st) To pretend it’s not there (when God knows it is) is to insult His omniscience.
2nd) Anger will always come out in some way (avoidance, the cold shoulder, irritability, meanness, etc.), so getting it out of our system is better than repressing it, or letting it fester, grow or get rooted in our spirit.
3rd) To pretend it’s not there when it is, leads to spiritual and relational dishonesty with God, and that's an even more dangerous path to go down.
4th) In light of the sovereignty of God over all that happens (Psalm 135:6-7), all anger is in some way anger at the God who could have prevented our pain.

Today’s selection is by Mike Mason, from his superb devotional commentary on Job, entitled, “The Gospel According to Job.” In it he deals with the issue of Job (and us) expressing our anger toward God. I felt his thoughts were insightful and worth considering! I know it is lengthy, but sometimes well-thought-through explanations cannot fit into a mere 1-2 paragraphs. Enjoy.

The Primal Scream

Eliphaz to Job:
“Why has your heart carried you away,
and why did your eyes flash, so that you
vent your rage against God, and pour
out such words from your mouth?”
Job 15:12-13

’Dialogue’ is a very polite term for what happens in Job. Really it is an argument, and a hot one at that. Not only does Job argue with his friends, but he also argues with God. As for his friends, they too are engaged in a heated dispute with God, but like many people they do not care to admit this, and so their anger is directed against Job.

A man like Eliphaz thinks that if he gets mad at God, God will in turn get mad at him and condemn him. So Eliphaz suppresses his anger and lives in continual subconscious fear of divine wrath. He is like a hermit who prides himself on having no interpersonal hassles to upset his tranquil and ordered lifestyle. But someone who lives in a family, in close fellowship with others, lives with tensions, complaints, and disputes. Different families cope with these stresses in different ways – some quietly and some noisily, some effectively and some pathologically – but no family survives for long without some form of argument, and the family of God is no exception.

Is not the whole human race engaged in one long argument with God that is called, “history”? The difference between believers and unbelievers is that while the former argues on speaking terms with the Lord, the latter do so by turning their backs and giving Him the silent treatment. Those who choose to live outside the family circle end up with no proper forum for expressing their hurts and resentments against their Heavenly Father. But those who gather around the Father’s table know that such problems must be regularly aired, for if they are not, they will poison intimacy.

In our culture anger is generally frowned upon as being disruptive. But there are different ways of being disruptive. A chronically angry, loud, critical person is certainly disruptive. But a polite, well-behaved person may also be disruptive, and in a church such a person may be using their friendly and unassuming ways to obstruct the purposes of God. A cult of niceness is as effective as heresy for destroying the spiritual life of a church. Anger, on the other hand, may be used by God to break up a spirit of complacency. Consider Ezekiel, who when the Lord first called him to a prophetic ministry confessed that he spoke, “in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit” (3:14). In this case the Lord used his anger and bitterness to inflame Ezekiel’s heart with passion for Him. If Ezekiel had insisted on remaining a quiet, mild-mannered priest, he would have thwarted God’s purposes.

Little wonder that the great believers of the Bible have also been great arguers with God – from Jacob, who actually came to blows with the angel of the Lord, to Peter who in Acts 10 answered a divine command three times with the words, “Surely not, Lord!” Clearly, anger at God can be a sign of spiritual growth. It can mean we are outgrowing a concept of God that is no longer adequate for us. It could even be said that our anger is directed not at the living God Himself, but at our own idolatrous concept of Him. While we ourselves may not understand this, nevertheless our anger functions to move us closer to God as He really is.

Religious phonies will go to almost any lengths to hide the fact that their relationship with God is not real or satisfying. But people who truly love the Lord have a consuming hunger for reality. Freedom, truth, peace, joy: such things have a taste and feel all their own, and we know them when we see them. If the people of God are deprived of these fruits of the Lord’s real presence, naturally they grow angry and disconsolate. Is it their fault that they cannot live without God?

There are times when the Lord is actually honored and glorified by our anger at Him, in ways that He may not be by an attitude of unruffled “trust.” Job provides a healthy balance to the traditional picture of the bloodless, gutless, cheerfully suffering saint. At the very least, anger means that we are taking God seriously and treating Him as a real person – real enough to arouse our passions. Angry prayer is not to be recommended as a steady diet, perhaps, but it is certainly preferable to lip-service prayer. After all, doesn’t artificiality in relationships belie a far greater hostility than the honest expression of deep emotion? In the prim and proper prayer lives of many devout folk, a good old temper tantrum might be one of the best things that could happen. In the courts of Heaven, there is a place for the primal scream.”

Job 15:12-13 (the verse Mason quotes initially) is not by any means the only time Job expresses anger toward God during his lengthy bout with suffering. Yet, though he complains and expresses anger frequently, in the end he is not condemned. He is rebuked for going too far (Job 38-41), but ultimately he is blessed and given more than he ever had before.

So, if you have in the past, or do in the present, struggle with underlying anger, I would encourage you to confess it and express it to the God who knows it is there and waits for you to admit it. And as you do, consider that the reason it is there is because you truly believe He is there, and you struggle with extremely difficult things knowing He is sovereign over them all and therefore could have prevented your pain. In other words, one of the reasons the anger is there, is because you earnestly believe that what the Bible says about God is true.

In the Grip of His Grace (even when we struggle with anger in regard to what He permits), Pastor Jeff