This is a tough subject for me. I hesitated to write about it, but for some reason I have felt compelled to go ahead with it. This topic has been on my mind for some time, more so as an attempt to deal with my own personal experiences than anything else. I think that it is a topic that everyone must deal with at some point in their lives, and probably more than once.
I want to start my discussion by giving you the backdrop during which I found myself in the most trying time of my life to date. At the time, my wife and I attended a church whose leaders pushed the idea that a Christian should declare that everything is going well in their life, even when it is not. They often encouraged members to answer the rhetorical greeting of “How are you doing?” with “I’m blessed and highly favored of the Lord!”, no matter to whom one was talking and no matter how many sorrowful tears had to be fought back to say it. I have to be careful to stay on point here because, due to my circumstances at the time this one-liner quickly became a pet peeve of mine. Suffice it to say that the theology behind the teaching had more to do with denial of the realities of life and of God’s ability to make things right when things go wrong than anything else. To be fair, those exact words were never issued verbatim from the pulpit. But they might as well have been since this was a fundamental tenant of the culture cultivated by the leadership and tacitly approved by the congregation. The result, at least for us, was that we were afraid to be real with what was happening in our lives for fear of being ostricized for not having enough “faith”. The problem with this teaching is Jesus never promised us an easy life as a Christian, and in fact he pretty much guaranteed that problems would cross our paths. To expect anything else in your life or in the life of another Christian shows a complete lack of understanding of what Jesus taught.
Now, back to my story. It was during our time of attending this church that my family received the devastating news that my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. The prognosis was not good – it had already spread to his liver. Even worse, the type of cancer he had did not respond well to treatment. Surgery could be performed on the lung but the cancer would probably return at another lung site. The spot on the liver could not be operated upon. I can still remember the doctor saying that “with no treatment you can expect to have about 8 months left – with surgery and chemotherapy, 18 to 24 months”. And there it was – a death sentence with a choice of the execution date.
This was very hard news to take. My family had always been close. We all still lived within an hour of each other. At the time of the diagnosis, my parents had been married for 45 years and by all criteria had a stable and happy marriage. My brother and I grew up in a loving environment free from abuse and both of us were nurtured from birth. My wife even considered my dad to be more of a father figure to her than her own father had been. This event was the first terrible chapter ever written in the lives of our immediate family. None of us saw this coming and frankly, just as I do not have the capacity to write about the love we all felt for this man, I also do not have the capacity to write about the true nature of our grief, confusion, and fright surrounding his illness.
Of course, we all prayed for his healing – and prayed hard. We had everyone who we knew to be a praying Christian to do the same. Even many that we didn’t know were also praying. But in the end, none of our prayers were answered. My father’s health continued to decline until he became a shell of the man he once was. Inevitably, the end came and he passed away. The good news, and I cannot put enough stress on this point, is that he is now in heaven – no question.
Through it all, my wife and I attended the church that as a matter of doctrinal teaching could not offer any help. We had a few close friends who knew and truly cared about our anguish. But by and large we felt like we weren’t allowed to express our true feelings to other church members, mainly because we did not want to deal with the rejection of our feelings that we knew would be coming if we did. Even our relationships with our close friends eventually became strained because they could see what we as Christians were actually going through, but they had a hard time reconciling it with what they were being told to believe. I can really only think of one example when someone outside of our circle of close friends offered a loving approach to our living nightmare. Most only courtesously asked how my father was doing. If I was honest with them they proceded to offer the official doctrinal line of denying the situation so it (or maybe I) would go away.
The entire situation careened down the same one-way street day after miserable day – my father’s illness; my friends’ inability to relate; the church’s lack of understanding and our resulting loneliness; the unanswered prayers; the physical and mental exhaustion. It all mounted one on top of the other until I was a bulging volcano of emotion ready to explode at any moment – only, all the vents were plugged. As time went on I found myself angry at a lot of people, but increasingly all of my frustrations were being directed toward the one person who I knew could fix everything if He only would – God.
One day, as I was driving to who knows where, I was alone and of course everything was weighing heavily on my mind. With tears flowing I finally erupted with absolute rage and the volcano inside of me found an open vent. While going down the road I began banging on the steering wheel and screaming at the top of my lungs at God, literally demanding to know why He wasn’t doing anything. I believe the exact words I used were “If you are really God, then don’t you care? Are you listening? Why aren’t you doing anything? My dad doesn’t deserve this! Do something!!”. I screamed until I became hoarse and my vocal chords literally hurt. I want you to know that I challenged God with all my heart and mind and bared my anger to him in a way that I have never done with anyone else in my life before or since.
But God was up to the challenge – he did do something. He began a healing work – only it wasn’t in my dad, it was in me. It was only at that point, when I was real with God, that he was able to reach into my heart and start repairing the hole that had been ripped wide open. I can’t honestly say that everything was all right from that moment on, but I can say that this was the turning point for me in this ordeal and this was my defining moment in how I, with God’s help, would weave this thread into the fabric of my life.
When I got real with God, He was able to work with me on such a deep level that I wouldn’t allow him to see before. It was only after I became honest and bared my soul to Him that He could then take the broken pieces and fashion a new man out of the old one. After I couldn’t be real with people wrapped up in a form of religion and in turn I couldn’t be real with my friends, I found myself finally being real with the only one who could really understand and help anyway.
Yes, my dad died of his cancer. Leading up to his death and for a time afterward, I blamed myself for so many things that didn’t happen – like giving him grandchildren before he died (he loved kids and they really loved him). For months afterward, I had nightmares that I don’t even want to go into here. The loss throughout all of our lives was deep, pronounced, and tangible. And, yes from time to time I still harbored some measure of anger toward God. But, over time, beginning with when I got real with Him, God helped me accept what had happened in so many ways.
He began to show me that all was not lost. That I shouldn’t blame myself for things that happen outside of my control (and honestly – I still struggle with this one from time to time). That some day, we will all be together again – including the grandchildren that have been born since my father’s death. That none of us have the promise of tomorrow and in fact His word states that it is appointed for all of us to die, and then the judgment. That my father showed me what it meant to die as a Christian. In fact, one of his comments still rings in my mind to this day – “No matter what happens, if I stay here on earth or if I go to heaven, I win either way.”. During his illness, he never lost his faith. Indeed, it was so evident in his life, that one of the nurses at the local hospital that took care of him found her way back to God and began attending church again after witnessing his faith through all of his struggles. But I think the most important thing that God showed me in the aftermath of this trial, was that He still loved me even after the anger I felt toward him.
I have relayed this story (and have gone into much more detail than I had originally planned) to show you that being angry with God is not necessarily a bad thing. Many religious people will staunchly disagree with that statement, but I find comfort in that since Jesus made it a point to constantly disagree with the religious people of His day. You see, in Genesis we learn that we are created in God’s image. This must include our mental characteristics as well as our physical. That means that our emotions are modeled after God’s own emotions. This includes, love, sadness, concern, hatred, joy, and yes, even anger. It is important to note that our emotions are difficult, if not impossible, animals to control when they happen and how they are directed. The fact that emotions happen do not make them good or bad – this comes into play in how we act on those emotions. As such, we must accept anger for what it is – just an emotion. In fact, we see many instances in the Bible where God displays His own anger. It is not the fact that we are angry with anyone that is a sin. It is what we do with the anger – the actions we take as a result of that raw emotion – that determine if we have sinned or not. In Ephesians 4:26, the Bible clearly separates the two concepts of anger and sin:
Be angry and do not sin;…(ESV)
So it is possible to be angry and not to sin. In fact, it’s not only possible, but it is what is expected of us when we are angry. So in my mind, anger can be applied, like any other emotion (with I believe the exception of hatred), toward God and it not be a sin. The religious people who don’t see this are not giving God the credit He deserves for being a loving, caring Father who has an infinite capacity for understanding what His children are going through. Let’s face it, our God is a big God and He can take whatever we dish at Him.
We must be very careful though to make sure that if and when we are angry with God, we do not reject or blame Him at the same time. This implies that we are judging Him and this is where the sin begins. We are not in a position to ever judge God and to think that we are is border-line blasphemous. But if we accept anger for what it is and honestly and completely bring it to God, He can then work wonders in our lives. Consider my story above – had I not allowed Him to do a work in me but instead used my anger to blame Him and push Him away, then I would have never received my own healing and would possibly not be a Christian today. But instead, I launched my anger at Him as my own cry for help. I had no where else to turn and no one else to help – and I knew it. I may not have realized it at the time, but my outburst toward God was a plea for His help because I had reached my breaking point and needed Him to help me the rest of the way. I firmly believe that had I not allowed myself to be real with Him and vent my anger at Him, I would not have received the healing that I so desperately needed. Perhaps even later I would have blamed Him for the circumstances swirling around me at the time – and there would have been my sin.
The bottom line is this – when we are not real with God concerning whatever emotion we are feeling towards Him, who are we really fooling? God is all-knowing. He knows what we are thinking and feeling. He wants us to bring our troubles to Him no matter what ugly package they are wrapped in. Let’s face it – the only people who care about not being real with God are the religious people who are frantically trying to convince everybody else that God is real to them. By the way, my family is now going to a church where we feel like we can be ourselves without condemnation and where we can receive strength and help from our church family no matter what we go through. That is a valuable commodity not easily found in our churches today.
I am not sure why I felt compelled to write this lengthy post, but I encourage anyone who reads this and has hard feelings towards God to please be real with Him and tell Him about it. It doesn’t impress him at all when we put up the false fronts associated with religion as if nothing is going wrong and we don’t need any help. Trust me, he has big shoulders and a listening ear. He can handle hearing anything that we have to say.
© Gregory M. Watson, 2008 (see Copyright Page for details)
