Articles
Angry With God
I know of a situation in which a grieving mother openly avows her bitterness toward God. She is grieving because she accidentally ran over and killed her infant son. She posted:
“_________ is never coming back and that’s my fault. I have to live with that every day of my life. It’s [something] no person should EVER endure. I’m not God and I’m weary and tired of God asking me to handle things (even with His help) that no human should EVER have to endure. I’m angry. And I don’t care what anyone thinks of me right now.
“God COULD have prevented this whole mess. I believe that with all my heart … So from my point of view God wants me to hurt. He knew full well this was going to happen and He could have prevented the whole … thing but didn’t. Instead, He wants me to suffer. I must be pretty worthless to God. I would NEVER allow one of my children to go through this kind of pain. Ever.
“I’m sick of God and His horrid ways. So I decided to be done. I cannot fathom why a so called loving God would give parents a gift and then take it back. There is one word that comes to my mind: SELFISH. Not so sure I want to serve a selfish God anymore.”
The pain is obvious and her emotions are stifling the efforts of friends to help her. So my forthcoming responses are not for her but for us, for it is when our minds are calm and capable of sound reason that we need to work through such questions about God’s nature in the face of tragedy. (Our space here is not adequate to examine the matter in detail.)
1) There is a downside to free will. We or others can mishandle it to our harm. In this case, the mother made a tragic mistake. She did something we all do with varying consequences: she was distracted; she failed to see danger; she erred in judgment. Part of our human weakness is the inability to control outcomes, even our own thought process and actions. The alternative to free will is a world where we are robotically programmed to execute precise functions. But this robs us of our personal essence. Though sometimes painful, free will is essential to being human.
2) This world can cause extreme pain and dire distress. Intense pain causes mental distress in which we question the purpose of our own existence, God’s fairness, etc. While we cannot here review Job’s experience, it is my conviction that God allowed his suffering – exponentially beyond our young mother’s experience – to help all of us deal with our own days of darkness. And note that Job didn’t just stoically accept the crumbling of his life without deep questions of God’s justice. But this story cannot help us if we don’t assimilate its message before tragedy strikes. It is imperative that we daily build our worldview on the truth of God’s word so that the pain of tragedy is not soul-destroying.
3) The mother said, “I must be pretty worthless to God.” How did she arrive at that conclusion? By an erroneous interpretation events, not by revelation. We often say, “We must learn to judge circumstances by what we know about God, not judge God by circumstances.” Here is a perfect example of what happens when we get that backward. This woman’s sense of worth wholly depends on her situation. She is not thinking about her intrinsic value as God sees her; she is not thinking about the multitude of blessings already bestowed upon her (she has four other children). She feels worthless because in this single instance God didn’t intervene as she hoped.
4) She further said, “I would NEVER allow one of my children to go through this kind of pain.” But God allowed His Son to enter the world knowing the fate that awaited Him. And it wasn’t death by accident. It was brutal, hateful, deliberate murder at the hands of undeserving sinners. And God did that as an eternal beacon of His love for mankind that we might ever see it and rejoice in its light even if our child dies, our mate abandons us, we develop cancer, etc. This mother cannot say rightfully say of God, “He doesn’t understand the pain and suffering I am going through.” God watched His Son beaten and mocked and denied and publicly executed as a heinous criminal all to provide mankind the blessing of eternal life. These are God’s “horrid” ways: patiently enduring idolatrous rebels for eons so that the penitent among them might return (2 Pet 3:9); blessing the atheist with fruitful seasons so they would not go hungry (Ac 14:17); sharing His thoughts with unworthy men who often wallow in intellectual garbage (1 Cor 2:11-16); allowing us to participate in the joy and wonder of bringing life into the world (Jn 16:21); saving and glorifying us through the blood of His sacrificed Son. It is unbalanced, to say the least, to rail against God because of tragedy that occasionally befalls us. Even Job, in the midst of his pain, said, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (2:10). God is selfish? Only the blindness of pain would say that.
5) Actually, the one being selfish here is this mother. She has other children that need comfort, encouragement and faith in God and His goodness; she has a husband who has suffered a double loss – a young son and a wife who is now self-absorbed and bitter. I realize this sounds harsh, but it no less true. Marriage and parenthood is not for the fainthearted. It is for the emotionally and spiritually mature because things like this occur. When they happen, we can try to face them alone and be destroyed by agony, or we can face them with God and retain our value, purpose, hope and trust in Him. My heart breaks for this young woman, for in her grief she is abandoning God. My prayer is that time will ease anger and allow her to accept the comfort that only a true relationship with a loving God brings.
