1 Timothy 2:1-7
I’ve shaken my fist in anger and cursed furniture, cars and even some people. If I’m not mad enough there is always someone on the radio of TV eager to make me mad again. I’ve been mad at just about anything you can imagine.
Except unicorns. I’ve never been angry at unicorns.
It’s unlikely you’ve ever been angry at unicorns either. We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist—that we truly believe not to exist—tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.
When Atheists Are Angry at God
Jan 12, 2011
Joe Carter
A new set of studies (in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.
A survey in America revealed that 62 percent of people were sometimes angry at God, but that figure is most likely higher today.
Angry feelings tended to match up with a patient's general level of mental distress. More distress was linked to more anger at God, Exline found. It isn't clear whether the anger caused the distress, the distress caused the anger, or some other factor caused both. What does seem clear is that a passing anger at God is nothing to be alarmed about, regardless of how theologically troubling some people find such emotions.
"We get mad at people every day," Exline said. "Usually it passes, and then it's probably not going to affect your mood or your mental health all that much. But when it turns into a grudge ... that's where anger tends to become more of a problem for people. It's the same sort of thing with anger toward God."
At God We Rage: Anger at the Almighty Found to Be Common
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 04 January 2011 12:18 pm ET
It seems if we are angry enough at God to develop a grudge with Him, then that anger can push us to a disbelief in God. I suspect that a great deal of atheism and agnostics are simply angry with God and use reason to defend their position.
If that is the case, then often a disbelief or lack of faith in God is more of a snub or giving the divine the silent treatment out of a emotional dilemma. Something terrible may have happened to you in the past that makes you angry at God for being so unfair and cruel. Or you may conclude as some do that God is angry with you and fear Him wondering what to do.
As is common amongst people today we think we are unique in the world, but anger towards God and what we perceive as anger from God is an ancient as humanity. The question is what can we do when there is anger between us and heaven?
The Bible has a great many things to say about this, but here a few key points to lowering the distress that such anger brings into our lives.
Go to Jesus when you are angry with God:
"God is not a mortal like me, so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial. If only there were a mediator between us, someone who could put one hand on God's shoulder and the other on mine. The mediator could make God stop beating me, and I would no longer live in terror of his punishment."
Job 9:32-34
In the above lament, Job asks for a Son of Man who is also equal with God. He wants someone like God but someone also like himself. He wants that one person that can stand between two angry people and love them both. Placing a hand on each shoulder he keeps them for attacking and from leaving. He keeps the connected, talking and understanding what has passed between them.
Jesus Christ is the one Job wanted so He could be reconciled to the God because his relationship was one of anger on both sides. At least that is what he thought. Have you ever been so angry at someone you can’t even talk to them? Have you so rehearsed what they will say in your own mind that you have already shot down every possible reply without ever uttering an actual word?
There are many who have that kind of relationship with God. Job was not an atheist or an agnostic. He knew that there was a God and that He could be good and harsh. Although he was angry with God he didn’t hide from God but demanded an answer for his misfortune and distress.
Consider how Jesus Christ is the only one who can put a hand on your shoulder and one on God.
1. Jesus did not come into this world to condemn you but to save you. (John 3:17)
2. Jesus loves us despite our sin and paid the price of sin upon the cross.
3. Jesus is loved by the Father and is pleased with Him.
4. Jesus only wants what the Father wants.
5. Jesus wants us to find life abundantly, to conquer sin and be free.
In the entire world there is only one who can stand between us and God keeping us together but not attacking and that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
He is truly a friend to all atheists, agnostics and believers who are under the distress of anger with God. Go to Jesus when you angry with God.
Go to Jesus when you want to reconcile with God:
1. I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2. for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4. who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6. who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. 7. And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.
1 Timothy 2:1-7
The trouble with trouble is that it spreads. The anger we hold in our hearts was meant to be perishable, like cheese or milk. Anger moves us to act, engage and demand something better when it is fresh. But if we keep it longer than a day it will spoil into remorse, bitterness and a foul grudge. Anger if allowed to spoil will move from a demand for justice to something beyond all reason.
We may be able to tolerate such a foul smell in our lives for a time but a grudge spreads into all relationships until we find that we are not fit for any relationship for the unreasonable demands we make on God we will make on everyone else. When we suspect God the author of all things good, we will suspect all others. We can not live at peace others; cease our shouting and cruel words; and do good for others when we let our grudge with God spoil all things.
Along with the growing grudge our distress grows. We blame the distress of an unfair life for our anger, but it is our spoiled anger towards God that gives us the greatest distress. I know what most of the grudge bearing people of the world would rarely admit. I know they want to be relieved of this burden but believe reconciliation to God is a bitter pill to swallow.
Yet the Bible tells us that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (v.4). You see the only real way to reconcile with God is to come to know the truth about our grudge. Jesus Christ must hold us by the shoulder and God so that we can hear what we have failed to acknowledge.
When we hold a grudge we rehearse in our minds our grievance. The words are unspoken but often rehearsed in our minds. We can even imagine the reply of the one we are angry with and then develop rebuttals we think that will demolish their objections. Almost every true atheist or agnostic I have met have this kind of understanding about how flawed God is and so elevate themselves above the divine declaring it a myth.
This is not a knowledge of truth, but a rehearsed deception. We must come to know the truth about our anger. When we go to Jesus we will discover it was angry and grudged filled people like us that nailed Him to the cross where he bore the full force of our accusations. They yelled crucify Him because He is no Son of God. In the same way when we are angry with God we say to ourselves that God is a myth and His justice a joke. We don’t try to kill him, but we act as if He does not exist.
Here is the truth that our anger drives us to stop talking to God, and to stop listening to God. What declare that God is dead to us and we will not bother with Him hoping He will be hurt by our actions and not bother with us. Yet the Bible tells us that is not an agreement that God can make or one that Jesus Christ will honor.
The great truth that those who are angry with God find hard to believe is this: God stills wants you to be saved from the fowl grudge that has gripped your heart and to be reconciled through the knowledge of truth and the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ. He bore the full brunt of anger and asked for forgiveness. He holds our shoulders still while He holds Gods. All He asks is that we throw out our spoiled anger and accept the truth about our corrupted life.
Those who have accepted this offer have seen their lives change, cleaned, and transformed with a fresh flow of God’s peace, love and acceptance.
Some of us may think it’s too late to be reconciled to God.
Go to Jesus when you blow it:
1. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
1 John 2:1-2
Jesus Christ stands between us and God holding our shoulders and asking us to come and reason with Him. If we will repent in the knowledge of the truth then God will forgive and receive us as His child. We can be angry and not sin if we don’t let our distress spoil into a soul rotting grudge.
This has been made possible so that we would persist in our rebellion with God. All rebellion needs an excuse and nothing justifies it more in our hearts than spoiled anger. All sin is rebellion towards God and now the Lord Jesus has made it possible so that we would not continue to sin by restoring our relationship with God.
Although Father God will not leave nor forsake us there are times when we will fall into hold habits or come into an ordeal where we begin to doubt God as we once did. In a situation like this, what do we do?
Jesus is the advocate and mediator that first reconciled us to God and He is the one we go to when we have fallen back into old ways. We may try to turn from Father God’s face but Christ holds us by the shoulder and will not let go. He remains constant turning our face to God and away from sin. As long as you have a sense of guilt, knowing that you are turning away from God, then Christ still has a hand on your shoulder to turn you back to God.
Even now, as you hear this message, He is with us placing a hand on your shoulder and one on God. He is letting you know that now is the time to turn and face Father God and know the truth about ourselves rather than the lies we have believed. We need to know the truth about Father God rather than the whisperings of an angry heart.
This is our chance to be reconciled to God and leave the distressed pain of a angry heart behind.
If the hand of Christ is on your shoulder today, you have a chance now to be reconciled to Father God. Take it. Take it now.
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When Atheists Are Angry at God
Jan 12, 2011
Joe Carter
A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and the lead author of this recent study, has examined other data on this subject with identical results. Exline explains that her interest was first piqued when an early study of anger toward God revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.
At first glance, this finding seemed to reflect an error. How could people be angry with God if they did not believe in God? Reanalyses of a second dataset revealed similar patterns: Those who endorsed their religious beliefs as “atheist/agnostic” or “none/unsure” reported more anger toward God than those who reported a religious affiliation.
Exline notes that the findings raised questions of whether anger might actually affect belief in God’s existence, an idea consistent with social science’s previous clinical findings on “emotional atheism.”
Studies in traumatic events suggest a possible link between suffering, anger toward God, and doubts about God’s existence. According to Cook and Wimberly (1983), 33% of parents who suffered the death of a child reported doubts about God in the first year of bereavement. In another study, 90% of mothers who had given birth to a profoundly retarded child voiced doubts about the existence of God (Childs, 1985). Our survey research with undergraduates has focused directly on the association between anger at God and self-reported drops in belief (Exline et al., 2004). In the wake of a negative life event, anger toward God predicted decreased belief in God’s existence.
The most striking finding was that when Exline looked only at subjects who reported a drop in religious belief, their faith was least likely to recover if anger toward God was the cause of their loss of belief. In other words, anger toward God may not only lead people to atheism but give them a reason to cling to their disbelief.
I've argued elsewhere that, according to the Christian tradition, atheism is a form of self-imposed intellectual dysfunction, a lack of epistemic virtue, or—to borrow a term from my Catholic friends—a case of vincible ignorance.
Vincible ignorance is intentional suppression of knowledge that is within an individual’s control and for which he is responsible before God. In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists who deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse. They are vincibly ignorant.
Recognizing this fact, however, does not mean that the cause of this self-imposed dysfunction has been understood. While I firmly believe all forms of atheism are instances of both vincible ignorance and an obstinacy of will, I've sometimes mistakenly assumed it to be a purely intellectual failing—a matter of the head, not the heart. Only recently have I begun to appreciate how much the emotional response to pain and suffering can push a person to an atheistic worldview.
Most pastors and priests would find my epiphany to be both obvious and overdue. But I suspect I’m not the only amateur apologist who has been blinded to this truth. As a general rule, those of us engaged in Christian apologists tend to prefer the philosophical to the pastoral, the crisp structure of logical argument to the messiness of human emotion. We often favor the quick-witted response that dismisses the problem of evil rather than patient empathy, which consoles atheists that we too are perplexed by suffering.
Many atheists do, of course, proceed to their denial of God based solely on rational justifications. That is why evidentialist and philosophical approaches to apologetics will always be necessary. But I'm beginning to suspect that emotional atheism is far more common than many realize. We need a new apologetic approach that takes into account that the ordinary pain and sufferings of life leads more people away from God than a library full of anti-theist books. Focusing solely on the irate sputterings of the imperfectly intellectual New Atheists may blind us to the anger and suffering that is adding new nonbelievers to their ranks.
Joe Carter is the web editor of First Things. His previous articles for "On the Square" can be found here.
RESOURCES
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, “Anger at God common, even among atheists
Julie Juola Exline and Alyce Martin, "Anger Toward God: New Frontier in Forgiveness Research
Joe Carter, Do Tummy Aches Disprove God?
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