Angry At God

I’ve spent a good part of this year angry at God. I’ve actually come to believe that it takes some faith to do this. Or maybe faith is the wrong word. Anger implies relationship. Apathy to God (my natural inclination) essentially involves letting the relationship wither. So anger implies more of a relationship than apathy. I hesitate to say that anger is good, but it is probably better than apathy.

It’s the same with love and hate. People commonly think love and hate are opposites. But that’s not true. With true opposites, to move from one to the other, you have to pass through a transitional state. Hot becomes lukewarm before it becomes cold. Light becomes dim before it becomes dark. Hate and love aren’t like that. When someone you love betrays you, you immediately hate them. There’s not even a brief transition through anything like apathy. So they’re not really opposites. Hate and love lie closer to one of the spectrum, on the opposite side of apathy. And both require relationship. Along similar lines, I think being angry at God implies more of a relationship than apathy.

In any case, things have not been right, and in light of that, as kind of experiment for my soul, I’ve been trying to choose being angry at God, and honest about it with Him, rather than apathetic. Kind of taking it on faith that He’ll set me right where I need to be, even if it’s painful.

I’ve been angry for several reasons. One, because of how sinful I fundamentally am. Nearly all of the pain in my life is self-inflicted, and I only have myself to blame. Even still, it makes me angry that I am this way, and that it seems like I’ll always be this way. I’m pretty angry at myself, but also angry that I am myself.

But that’s not, I think, the main thing. The biggest frustration I have is that I feel like the promises of God as promised in Scripture don’t happen to me. Primarily, I feel like I never hear from God. Audibly, through circumstance, or in other ways; in my life, I don’t hear anything. The problem might be with me or it might be with God, but either way, the net effect is the same, and it’s incredibly frustrating.

People have told me that God primarily speaks through Scripture, and that should be enough. The thing is, I don’t know how you can read Scripture and not be convicted that God speaks to His people specifically outside of Scripture. For G3 we read through Acts and various epistles, and I came away with the inescapable conclusion that Paul et al both heard from God regularly outside of Scripture, and what’s more, they expected this to be the normal experience for all Christians. It’s expressed as a promise and it seems assumed. If we are to take Scripture seriously, we should expect that. And it doesn’t happen to me, and that’s frustrating. Even angering.

In fact there’s a host of promises in Scripture, primarily revolving around God’s presence, that I feel like I never experience. One thing that really frustrated me was, in a recent sermon, our pastor challenged us that, if we pray in God’s will, He will answer immediately and obviously. I took that to heart. And I won’t be specific, but I started praying for something that I know is in God’s will, in fact, the very topic of that sermon. And God answered either immediately nor obviously. I don’t doubt the sermon, because I think Scripture suggests that conclusion. But it’s just not my experience, and it sucks.

The worst part is that I feel like it happens to everyone around me. Jieun sees/hears things from God. I feel like I hear testimonies from good friends all the time about how they pray for certain things, like opportunities with people, and it immediately happens. It just never happens to me, and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me.

The thing is, objectively, I have very little reason to complain. By any objective measure – physically, materially, emotionally, relationally – I am blessed and should be happy. And I am. But I don’t know. If I were to just be content in those things, I feel like functionally I’d be no different than a non-Christian. I don’t just want His blessings, I want God. And I feel like Scripture encourages us to be greedy for God. As C.S. Lewis says, the problem is not that we want too much, but that we settle for too little. I don’t want to do that, but the fact that I’m not getting the more that seems to be promised is frustrating.

I question what’s wrong with me all the time, but in the end, the longer I don’t hear from God (or even feel Him many times) I just get angrier. And you know what my hope is. You know Job gets angry at God, and at the end of the book God lays the smackdown such that Job is speechless and thoroughly moded. I want that. I’m so thirsty for the voice of God that even if I got it as a harsh rebuke with much pain involved, that would be preferable to me than a blessed but silent life.

Anyway, that’s why I’m angry, and I got angry while writing this, but it’s an experiment of sorts.

One song that really resonates with me is “I Want Everything” by Out Of The Grey. I’ll spare you the lyrics, but I love the chorus, just how it expresses this longing for everything He promised. And I love how it ends: “I want holy, I want lovely, I want grace / I want passion, I want poetry and coffee / Oh, I want everything” Just that holy greediness for everything He promised. I dunno, it’s a great song, and one I’ve been jiving with a lot, although with less positivity.