Acts 12:1-25 | Sometimes It Looks Like God Is Failingਨਮੂਨਾ

It’s fashionable to be angry with God. Not just among non-Christians, but with people who profess to be Christians too. I’ve even encouraged it, especially when people come to me who are struggling to admit it. I’ll tell them God is big enough for their anger. He can handle it.

To be angry with God is actually very biblical. “Why don’t you do something!?”, “Where are you!?”, “Wake up!”, and “Listen!” fill the Psalms—and these were the worship songs of Israel! Reflecting the first word of the book, the Hebrew title for Lamentations is “eykah”— “how could it be?” Add to that the complaints of the prophets and you can almost sense the underlying anger filling these cries for help from places of despair.

As Reed Lessing points out: “These prayers reject a fake and pretentious faith. They affirm that distress and setbacks are real.” Or as Federico Villaneuva will say: “We are most open with the people we are closest with. The more intimate the relationship, the greater the vulnerability and openness. This explains why people in the Bible know how to lament.” Or maybe, why people get angry with God.

Anger with God is human. It is a natural response to the suffering in this world which is so horrible and the unchecked evil in this world which is so wrong. I suspect anger towards God wouldn’t be as prevalent if God’s promises in the Bible weren’t so absolute and big. We read about God’s overwhelming love. The Bible proclaims his overwhelming grace. We’re told about his overwhelming power, and how he knows all things. We read stories of miracles of God’s goodness invading the suffering in this world and overcoming it in the face of overwhelming odds. And the Bible declares that above all people, God hates what sin is doing and the grip of darkness it has us in.

People’s anger can unintentionally be fed by dozens of well-meaning sermons and devotionals built on the back of a certain collection of promise texts, that due to time or space constraints, can’t give the whole picture. We hinge our faith on these passages, but by themselves, it can lead to a distorted picture of what God actually promises, and therefore what we think God is supposed to do, not to mention God’s whole schema for rescuing the world.

Here are some other things God promises:

• The world is a broken mess from God’s original intention and will be filled with all kinds of horror and hardship (Matt 24:4-8; Rom 8:18-25)
• You will be persecuted (Matt 24:9)
• You will be hated (Luke 21:16-17)
• You will suffer (Rev 2:10)
• You will die (Gen 3:17-19; Romans 6:23)

And yet, it’s easy to be angry with God. “Pay attention to the good passages, Lord (and not the bad)!” When something bad happens, how often are we inclined to think it’s God’s fault—that God should have done something?

But why should God do something? Does God owe us? Is he indebted to us? It’s almost as if we think God exists for the purpose of making our lives better and that he’s our servant here to solve whatever we face. We take the grace of God for granted and start to think of it as God’s obligation. If you step back from it, how odd that we should blame God. Perhaps we have a distorted idea of what God promises to do and what he’s supposed to provide.

Romans 3 says, “Let God be true, and every person a liar.” Though I think we’re inclined to believe, “God, I’m in the right and you’re the liar.”

I’ve found in times when we’re angry with God—whether justifiably or unjustifiably—that God makes a better ally than adversary. To trust him rather than doubt him. To turn to him rather than accuse him. To love him rather than hate him.

In those moments of anger, it’s easy to blame God. But maybe it’s better to lean on him. Even if we don’t understand why this is happening.