How to Handle Anger Towards God

The gift of holy lament

Have you ever felt angry with God… and then immediately felt guilty for even thinking that way? Most of us have internalized the idea that anger is bad—and that feeling angry with God is really bad!

But what if the very thing you’re trying to hide is actually an invitation?

In this meaningful episode of our ongoing series, How to Handle Life, John talks about what it means to feel anger toward God and why bringing that anger into the light might be one of the most transformative steps in your spiritual life.

You’ll discover why it’s okay to be angry, the way that anger protests and protects, what anger can teach you about your soul, and how to use lament to communicate your anger to God in a healthy way.

If you’ve ever wrestled with God in the dark, this conversation is for you.

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Highlights from this Episode

You might be surprised that anger with God is not only okay, but it’s key to your growth and intimacy with God. There are times in the Bible where God’s people were brazenly open with God about their anger, and God welcomed it. But we should address two objections you might have at the outset about being angry with God.

1) You think anger is wrong and unfair to God. It feels like being dishonest about God’s characteristics: he always does the right thing, he’s always good, he knows what’s best for you—so if you are angry with him, you are wrong. One of the astonishing things we can learn from the Psalms is this: God invites you to be “real” about your experiences and even misperceptions of him.

God only deals in reality and what he sees, he hears. He invites you to see into your heart—even your foulest thoughts—and bring those to him. The only unforgivable sin is not anger; it’s denying Jesus. Just like kids get angry with their parents, you are going to experience anger with God and he can handle it.

2) You’re afraid that if you are angry with God it will separate you from him. It will ruin your relationship with him, and he will be mad at you. Many of you grew up in a home where anger was not allowed. As an adult, you feel that anger in any form is bad and more importantly, that you are bad for feeling angry. You carry this over into your relationship with God and hide your anger from him.

You need a reframe of how to think about anger and how to handle anger with God. I want to help you see anger as a key part of your growth and that when engaged honestly, it can draw you closer to God.

Getting Curious About Your Anger

In Ephesians 4, it says, “Be angry, but in your anger do not sin.” You are commanded by the Apostle Paul to be angry! It is not your duty to suppress it or sugar-coat it. In Paul’s day, there were two very large schools of thought about anger and neither of them fit into Paul’s prescription for handling anger:

• The Stoics thought that anger was terrible and should be suppressed. Today that might show up as, “I’m not angry, I’m just frustrated, worried, or anxious.”

• The Epicureans said to get away from it and rise above it. A modern version is to use avoidance, denial, and distraction.

You probably do both of these at times, and neither one lines up with God’s design, nor do they allow you to use anger for good. Here is a simple starting point for understanding anger as God has designed it: Anger is put into you by God; it is part of being created in his image and therefore is a precious thing.

In the Bible you see God being angry; it is one of his attributes. In Psalm 7 it says, “God is angry with the wicked every day.” Love and anger are never mutually exclusive in God’s character. He is angry about the destruction that evil brings to his world and the ways it mars the beauty of his creation.

Jesus is angry frequently in the New Testament, and he didn’t sin, so obviously there is a place for anger that is very much like Jesus. When you deeply understand anger, it provides a structure for becoming aware of the inner workings of your heart. This is what God wants to draw out in you in order to bring progressive, incremental healing.

Differences Between Our Anger and God’s Anger

God’s anger always goes in a good direction. It is honed in on destroying the things that ruin his creation. Your anger, on the other hand, can be very easily channeled into self-serving purposes. Anger is motivating and powerful and it must be channeled properly to be effective.

It helps to understand that anger comes about for two reasons:

• A protest: something that should not be; a blocked goal or desire

• A protection: something is threatening goodness, or something you love

Analyze your anger using these two lenses to discover what is going on behind the scenes—what’s motivating your anger? At this point you’re not looking at anger as right or wrong, you’re just trying to get curious and understand it. The process of looking at your anger is called reflection and discernment.

You can ask yourself these two questions:

• Is there something that I’m protesting or defending?

• Is there something that I’m protecting?

Your anger tells you something about what you most deeply care about. Sometimes you care most deeply about the things that you want to control. Sometimes you care most deeply about the things God cares about, but you don’t know it until you explore the root of your anger.

Permission to Lament

Since God is in control of all things, ultimately your anger is against how he has decided to run the world. Perhaps you deeply disagree with what God allows. That’s what Adam and Eve protested. They wanted God to run the world like they wanted, and ever since then humanity has been angry with God.

What does a parent do when their child is angry about a boundary or guideline? A wise, loving parent invites the child to share it. At church, you often hear things like “It doesn’t make sense to get upset,” “God is always good, so let’s trust him”. The assumption is that if you trust God enough you can erase your struggles; that your faith, if you only had enough, would erase your fear and doubt. The problem is that these sayings don’t fit inside Christianity.

Instead, throughout the Scriptures we see lament—an outward expression of anger, confusion, anguish, despair and hopelessness directed towards God. The book of Psalms is filled with lament. Two-thirds of the Psalms are filled with what most of us would dare not speak before God. Yet God invites you to pray this way. Let’s look at an example.

Psalm 77

When I remember God, then I am disturbed;

When I sigh, then my spirit grows faint.

You have held my eyelids open;

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

I have considered the days of old,

The years of long ago.

Will the Lord reject forever?

And will He never be favorable again?

Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?

Has His promise come to an end forever?

Has God forgotten to be gracious,

Or has He in anger withdrawn His compassion?

Then I said, “It is my grief,

That the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

To cry out to God with your doubts like the Psalmist does—to lament—is the context for surrender. But surrender is impossible without a prior, declared war. Christians may assume our conflict with God was finished when we were converted. Until that point, we were enemies of God. But the battle is not over with conversion—though it is the decisive victory that assures the outcome of the war, it is hardly the last and final fight.

There is a difference between lamenting and grumbling. A lament involves the energy to search, seek, and ask, and not shut down the quest for truth. A lament uses the language of pain, anger, and confusion to move toward God. A grumbler is moving away from God and building barriers to deeper faith by not engaging God honestly from the heart.

The language of lament is, oddly, the shadow side of faith. To whom do you vocalize the most intense, irrational, inarticulate anger? Would you do so with someone who could fire you or cast you out of a cherished position or relationship? No. You share your deepest anger with people you trust. Trusting God involves going into places of your heart where you are angry and feel like you are at odds with God.

Becoming a Missionary to Your Own Soul

Are you angry at God? If not right now, you will be at some point, because you have inherited a drive to do what is best for yourself and to tell God what that must be. When God contradicts your reasoning, or does something beyond your ability to comprehend, you will be angry. Deep in the recesses of your soul you are protesting something or trying to protect something.

Sharing your anger with God is like being a missionary to your soul—you are learning the native language of your heart, the deep customs of your heart’s culture, and the regions of your soul that have yet to be convinced that God is good and can be trusted no matter what.

The opposite of love isn’t anger: the opposite of love is apathy. If you are angry with God and open up to him in your anger, it’s because you care and because your relationship with him matters to you. And you’ll find that he will meet you in the depths of your dark heart—an honest place where you can be deeply loved and known by him.