Angry at God

I was fascinated to hear a Christian say, « I don’t know I’m angry at God. ».

I said « Jesus was angry at God » 

« Jesus can’t be angry at God. »

‘What about Eli Eli Lema Sabachtani. ‘My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?

Jesus taught « Do not be afraid »  Love and fear are opposites but anger is fear in ‘fight versus flight’ mode.  That’s the simplest division. The experience of abandonment is grief.

Jesus was angry at the money lenders. But when Jesus was on the cross, if he was suffering, he was ‘doing God’s will’.  Being obedient to God’s will doesn’t mean I’m ‘happy happy happy’. Jonah was angry.  Grief and suffering go hand in hand.

The ‘stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kuala Ross include ‘anger’.  Anger is a natural state.  Things can cause me to be angry but if I hold onto my anger then I can become resentful. The Bible is clear that we shouldn’t hold onto anger but it doesn’t deny anger is human. Holding onto anger or nurturing anger will turn one bitter.

 Jesus was ‘son of man’.  HE was all human. And all God. If he was just a God then he really wouldn’t have ‘suffered.  To be human is to have the full experience of humanity.  The whole issue of the nature of Jesus resulted in the Athanasian Creed and the Hypostatic Union of Jesus, perfectly divine and perfectly human, not a chimera and not a duality, but one.  One person of the trinity.

So I imagine if I’m a man of human nature on the cross doing the will of God but dying slowly in the most horrid pain, I’d feel ‘anger at God’ knowing that God’s perfect love but at that moment of sever pain feeling abandoned . I may know God will not reject me but I am human. Jesus was human even if there are those who would reduce him to an idol.

Today ‘Why have you forsaken me, “while it might remind us of an earlier psalm, might well be said in the vernacular of today, ‘fuck you God.  Indeed there is a movement by this name and a major controversy. People leave the church and no one question if they are angry. People are afraid of anger in themselves and others. 

In psychiatry, in ‘somatic depression’ or the ‘somatic sympton disorder,’ we think of pain as clothed in grelief and fear and anger. Abraham saw depression as ‘anger turned inward’.  Pain is by extension anger turned inward. Somatization and conversion disorder are pain or other physical symptom like fatigue as well, understood to be a mental disorder, not denying the ‘pain’ any more than one would deny the excruciating pain of ‘phantom limb pain’ but recognizing the materialistic error is in the brain, or the biopsycosocial error is in the ‘mind’.  It’s not simply  a ‘brain’ disease perse but a ‘mind disease’as well.

Anxiety is said to be the measure of one’s distance from God as well as a measure of one’s humanity.

It helps one see ‘suicidal thinking’ as ‘anger turned inward””’  more clearly and understand the ‘seriousiuslness of ‘emotional pain’.  Emotional pain can be deadly.

In ‘communication psychiatry’. Everything is sen as ‘communication’. Cancer is seen as ‘that which can be said in on other way ».

The idea therapeutically in psychosomatic medicine is to look for a new and different approach when conventional therapy fails.  If the door handle turned doesn’t open the door , turn the door handle in the other direction.  

Phillips wrote the sweet little classic, « your God is too small ».  

The God of Love is big enough to take all your anger and all your pain.  God doesn’t reject man.  The devil was said to have turned his back on God because he’d rather watch his shadow than look into God’s light.  

Aliénation and isolation are précurseurs for suicide .  Dehumanization and the feeling of being unloved, alone and rejected.  It’s fundamental to survivalhaving purpose as Man’s Search for Meaning showed.  We die most from ‘neglect’

Jesus was foul  mouthed and ill mannered with friends in low and high places. Inhis day and associated with the improper. Today the contemporary ‘cross’ might well be an ‘electrocution chair’, a ‘guillotine’ or a ‘noose.’ We have a Fondness for the symbolism of the museum Christianity and ‘cobweb Christianity’ as seen in the sentiment some view the ‘cross .’ But it can cause us to overlook the ideas of Jesus today.  Christ’s value is not as a ‘myth’ or ‘teaching story’ alone but as a ‘relationship today’.  If I get angry and my friend leaves me , Do I really have a friend in Jesus.  

All adolescents in their relationships with their parents go through this phase.  Today most Christians are unprepared for this adolescent phase of their spiritual relationship which is no surprise when the church seems unwilling to engage at the point of  ‘anger’, especially anger at God.  Rejection of God.  

Ultimately this is tied to suicide and addiction and pain. 

If it’s not the Cross then what is Glad Gethsemane. And why would Kierkegaard say Life is suffering unto death if was he not referring to pain and the burden of life, expulsion from Eden and loss of innoscence.