Anger Toward God

Sistine Chapel Jeremiah

I should note that I’m not feeling angry at God as I write this---quite the opposite, I’m feeling really happy! But if I don't say that first, someone will think this post is about how I'm currently feeling and thus will miss my point, LOL.

I have felt angry and frustrated at God in the past, as I struggled with confusion and disappointment over some aspect of my life. I know I’ll feel that way again. These are very human feelings as one grows in faith and devotion and seeks to serve God in different ways. Faith in God is also trust in God, but you don’t know why certain things happened and where was God in those circumstances. People will say, “God never lets you down,” but you do feel that way. Not only that, but so do other persons of faith, including people in the BIble.

Last week, I caught up on my devotional reading, and read the June 6th devotion in the Christ in Our Home quarterly (Augsburg Fortress). The writer (Jessica Harris Daum) told of a time when some members of the church youth group had lost a classmate to suicide. The writer said that she led the group with this prayer: “Dear Lord, we’re so mad that Ben has died We can’t believe that something like this would happen to him or any of us. We’re confused, and we don’t know what to do. How can we have faith when the world can seem so hopeless?” She writes that some of the group were uncomfortable with her prayer and worried that we should talk to God a more holy way.

She writes that Elijah didn’t sound very “holy” in the story in 1 Kings 17:17-24, when he called upon the Lord in distress after the son of the widow had died. This passage was a portion of the scripture for this past Sunday:

After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. She then said to Elijah, "What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" But he said to her, "Give me your son." He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. He cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again." The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, "See, your son is alive." So the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." (NRSV)

When I preached on this passage, I considered the power of God to protect our physical lives and to give us eternal life. But afterward, I was still thinking about Elijah’s anger and frustration expressed in verse 20. God has brought Elijah to this woman, and seemingly, the result is calamity upon her life. If Elijah’s question is rhetorical, he is saying, “God, you killed this woman’s son!” But Elijah may also be asking a non-rhetorical, distressed question, “God, why have you allowed this to happen?” This, from a man of God.

Elijah continued to have faith in God and became the conduit for the son’s resuscitation. God did not begrudge Elijah his anger, nor the widow’s.

Leafing through my old Bible, I came across Jeremiah 20:7-18, a text that I first discovered in div school. Here is the NRSV:

O Lord, you have enticed me,
   and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
   and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughing-stock all day long;
   everyone mocks me. 
For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
   I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’
For the word of the Lord has become for me
   a reproach and derision all day long. 
If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
   or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
   shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
   and I cannot. 
For I hear many whispering:
   ‘Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’
   All my close friends
   are watching for me to stumble.
‘Perhaps he can be enticed,
   and we can prevail against him,
   and take our revenge on him.’ 
But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior;
   therefore my persecutors will stumble,
   and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed,
   for they will not succeed.
Their eternal dishonour
   will never be forgotten. 
O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous,
   you see the heart and the mind;
let me see your retribution upon them,
   for to you I have committed my cause. 

Sing to the Lord;
   praise the Lord!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
   from the hands of evildoers. 

Cursed be the day
   on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me,
   let it not be blessed! 
Cursed be the man
   who brought the news to my father, saying,
‘A child is born to you, a son’,
   making him very glad. 
Let that man be like the cities
   that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning
   and an alarm at noon, 
because he did not kill me in the womb;
   so my mother would have been my grave,
   and her womb for ever great. 
Why did I come forth from the womb
   to see toil and sorrow,
   and spend my days in shame? 

Like some of the psalms, this passage mixes despair directed at God, with praise at God’s ability to rescue and prevail. Unfortunately, Jeremiah also feels that God has prevailed over him, in gifting him as a prophet and thus giving him over to a life of misery, rejection, and shame.

Verse 7 is particularly strong language directed at God. Years ago I wrote in my margin that the Hebrew word pata (deceive or entice) also means “seduce,” while the word yakol (prevail) has a strong sexual connotation. The sense is that God seduced and then raped Jeremiah.

When we discussed this passage in div school, our interests were in a feminist reading (1)---the language of sexual violence that we find here and elsewhere in some of the prophets, particularly Ezekiel---and also a pastoral reading---what does it mean to be called to ministry but then feel so utterly deceived by God?

You might think: how can a servant of God become so despairing of God that she or he accuses God in horrible, angry terms? Surely a pastor should have more confidence in God’s calling! A lot of clergy and clergy-writers, I think, believe that God’s calling of us should be that which assuages all doubt and distress.

And yet, I'd guess that many and perhaps most clergy have felt, at one time or another, discouragement or despair that God had not brought about hoped-for grace and help in some parish situation. I think that there is a certain feeling of shame when you've sought to do God's will but bad things happen instead---"no good deed goes unpunished," as the saying goes. Anger at God can also be self-directed anger at yourself---feelings of foolishness that you tried to do the right thing and people treated you badly instead, and God seemed silent and unhelpful.

Just look at verses 14-18. To use a crude expression, Jeremiah declares, in effect, “F my life.” He wishes he’d never been born. Loathing of himself and fury at God are two sides of the same experience. And don't forget---these are words of the Bible, God's word for us!  

Jeremiah expresses anger and despair both at God and toward his own sense of self-worth. And yet he remains true to his calling. Part of his despair is, indeed, that he is committed to this life of faith and will not deviate from it, even though, in his perception, God has treated him in the worst possible way.

These responses---both Jeremiah's and Elijah's---are are very human! They express sorrow that God---who is powerful enough to intervene in times of hardship----did not (apparently) do so in this situation. And here are these very human responses recorded in the Bible, spoken by persons of God and heroes of faith.

All these people “hung on” to trust in God, were “real” to God as it were, and called upon God in their distress. As Rev. Daum writes in her devotion, God listened and responded to Elijah's prayer.

(As I was proofreading this post, I recalled Psalm 44, a painful cry to God from God's people, which has the same spirit as these other passages: we are in trouble and despair and so, God, where are you? Wake up and rise up and come to our help!)

Note:

(1)  I hate to not address the disturbing images of seduction and rape in this Jeremiah passage, considering that date-rape and “rape culture” have been in the news lately. But I did find the discussion helpful in the following blog; the woman blogger and some commenters discuss issues of gender, gendered emotional response, and sexual violence that this passage implies: http://theroundearthsimaginedcorners.blogspot.com/2012/06/god-and-images-of-rape-in-jeremiah.html