Hello Paul. A question I have: When is it appropriate to express anger to god? Should we even expressing anger to god? James*
Let’s answer the second question first, when is it appropriate to express anger to God?
Question: Is anger always bad, always sinful?
First we should ask, Is anger always bad, always sinful? No. There were times Jesus got angry, like here. However, our anger towards God and people is often mixed with wrong motives and actions. All of us have been hurt by someone, so we get angry with them. Or we’ve been misunderstood, someone claiming we lied or cheated; it makes us mad. Or we got left out while others got invited to something. We didn’t get to go so we’re angry. Or someone gets angry with us, we react with anger. These are common ways anger occurs. They’re often less-than-good responses.
Anger from expectations
Anger comes from expectations that don’t get met – an important truth to understand, James. Sometimes our expectations are reasonable, sometimes times not, sometimes mixed.
An example: you won the lottery. Now I expect you to give me money because you’re my friend, but you don’t. How do I respond? I get angry at you. But that’s not appropriate anger, because my expectation is wrong. Why do I think you must give me money? You don’t have to.
Anger often happens because of these wrong expectations. We need to process anger by asking, should I be angry, or is this just a wrong expectation on my part? It’s not easy to think objectively about ourselves.
We may have wrong expectations toward God too. We want to be rich or healthy or successful or safe or popular or smart, get a girl/boyfriend. We pray, asking God to make it happen. If it doesn’t, we get mad at God. That’s common behavior for us. We should ask, Do I have the right to expect this of God? Is my expectation selfish? These questions aren’t easy to ask or answer either.
Christians aren’t immune from such expectations. They can think, now that I follow Jesus, he has to give me lots of things I didn’t have before. When their wishes didn’t come true, they get mad at God.
People had this attitude with Jesus during his ministry (a story about this here). They got mad when they discovered Jesus had expectations of them. They didn’t like it.
“Expectations” anger is wrong if the expectations aren’t appropriate. This kind of anger against God shows we have a distorted view of reality. Everything revolves around us, we think, like we’re god. We’re not, James. That’s tough to admit, but necessary.
God’s anger against us
In reality it’s God who has the right to be angry with humanity. He made us. This planet belongs to him. He has expectations of us because he made us for a purpose. We’re to bring glory to him, worship, love and serve him. He expects us to live this way but we don’t. We worship and love ourselves instead. We’ve twisted reality to make it all about us. It’s not.
God’s anger is sometimes termed “wrath”, meaning “good anger”. In Psalms it says God is angry with the wicked every day. Why? Because we aren’t doing what he expects when he created us. This anger will hit us full force when we die and stand before God. We’ll answer for what we did with our life, including how we failed God.
Thankfully, Jesus intervened for us. Jesus perfectly fulfilled God’s expectations for a human. He did everything right. God had no reason to be angry, and every reason to be completely pleased with him. Then the amazing part of the story: Jesus substituted himself for us and let God’s wrath against us fall on him. He absorbed all God’s anger by being punished for it, in our place. God’s wrath will no longer will fall on us, if we are in Jesus.
It shows how God’s love is even greater than his anger. When we trust in Jesus, we are trusting that he was our substitute to rescue us from God’s anger.
The anger of rebellion
Another kind of anger against God is wrong, like the anger of bad expectations. It’s the anger from a rebellious spirit, when people react against God. They shake their fist against him and declare they’re his enemy. They hate him because he’s God, they’re not.
This anger is featured here in Psalm 2. The leaders of nations hate God and conspire to fight against him. God just laughs. He knows they can’t win. He’ll crush them if they keep it up.
This kind of anger is self-destructive, James. Many people have this attitude, tragically.
Summary
To summarize, much anger against God is wrong, because our expectations (full of selfishness) are wrong or our attitude (full of rebellion) is evil. God’s not a waiter to bring us whatever we order. He’s not our servant to boss around. God’s not a grandfather to give us money when we ask him us. He’s not a weak enemy who surrenders to our demands. Sadly, many people treat God this way, with sinful anger.
Question: Should we even express anger to God?
Yes, but carefully, not disrespectfully. God is God, we’re not. We should be in awe of him and have high respect for him, even if we’re expressing anger.
When things happen in our life we don’t like or understand, we have permission to express them to God. The writers of psalms sometime express anger to him. Maybe they’re angry at enemies (the #2 subject in Psalms) Maybe they’re angry and disappointed with themselves. Maybe they’re angry at life. Maybe they’re angry at God.
Using Psalms to express anger
God inspired David and others to write psalms to give us permission to talk honestly to him. The psalms are real prayers written by real people, not nice, fake prayers. They don’t understand life and don’t understand God. What do they do? Talk to him about it. This is why I read through Psalms regularly, to process my life with God.
Psalms shows how life can become bewildering. Maybe we’re disappointed with God. Maybe we feel he forgot us. Maybe we think he’s too hard on us. Psalms gives us a way to express our feelings to God.
How will God respond? He might stay quiet and absorb our anger. He may answer, explaining what he’s doing. Maybe he’ll “tune us up”, showing that our anger is wrong. Maybe he’ll love and encourage us. These possibilities are all illustrated in the Bible.
Here are ways people expressed anger to God, using the psalms:
This man feels God went away. He doesn’t know why and expresses his bewilderment (maybe anger) to God.
This man is angry at his enemies and wants God to crush them.
This man feels God is too hard on him. He begs God to go away so he can be happy. (v. 13)
This man is angry with himself, because he sinned so much. He begs God to forgive him.
This writer feels God abandoned his nation. He tells God (v. 23) to wake up, like God is sleeping, ignoring him.
These are expressions of disappointment, misunderstanding and anger with God, James. They’re also respectful. They assume that God cares, he wants to help, desires a relationship with us. They just can’t make sense of what’s happening. They do what God wants them to do, talk it out with him, even emotions like disappointment and anger.
Anger in the book of Job
The book of Job in the Old Testament has anger in it. It’s a series of conversations Job has with his three friends, then with God, because of disasters that happened to him. The disasters were awful, horrific. You can read them here in the first few chapters of the book. Job became bewildered: why did these happen, what was God doing? At some point Job became angry at God, deciding God was in the wrong. He want to “take him to court” and argue against him.
Near the end of the book, here, God confronted Job about his anger. God was blunt: Job was wrong, his expectations were wrong, his understanding of life’s circumstances wrong. He was treating God disrespectfully. Job had to apologize, to admit he has a bad attitude, and repent.
Job is a complicated book, dealing with the issue of pain and suffering (another question you have), but it also has the theme of anger against God in it.
Conclusion
To answer your questions, yes, sometimes we can express anger to God, but we should do so respectfully. As we do, God may show that our anger is wrong. Then we need to repent. That’s hard to do too.
Paul
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