Angry God
By Debbonnaire Kovacs, Aug. 3, 2016
It’s an uncomfortable thing, even a fearful thing, to consider what makes the all-powerful Creator of all that is…angry. Millions of people see God (no matter what name they have for the Deity) as angry, or at least easy to anger. Many go through their lives anxious, trying hard to do everything right—to do the right sacrifices, perform the right rituals, and follow all the rules just right. Some beat, torture, and kill other people because they believe God is angry at the other people’s actions, and wants them to uphold God’s honor by punishing those who they perceive as disobeying God’s law. Even the most peaceful, law-abiding Christians may believe in a Creator who punishes created beings, often forever.
Forever!
That would make me fearful…
It’s worth looking into what makes God angry. Here is a passage that is pretty specific and all-inclusive. It even is directed to Sodom and Gomorrah, so we might have an idea what God is angry about before we even begin reading.
Don’t do that.
Read first, prayerfully.
Isaiah 1:10-20
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation–
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
What, exactly, is God angry about? Is it about doing sacrifices wrong? At first glance, it seems God is angry that they are giving sacrifices at all. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.”
Really?
“…who asked this from your hand?”
Umm…you did, Lord…
Why, then is God angry?
“I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Apparently, worship “Sabbaths, calling of convocations, prayers) is not only not enough, but it becomes an abomination if we do not seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.
In other words, if we are not loving.
But…how, Lord? How can we learn to love instead of hating or being indifferent? The solution is right there in the passage. “Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.”
God will wash us, turn us around, re-create us. He has promised. And then we will be “willing and obedient.”
Willing and obedient how?
Here are two interesting parallel passages to look up. The Sermon on the Mount as found in Matthew 5 through 7 is repeated, for the most part, in Luke 6. Look it up, read it over carefully, and you’ll find the clear definition of godly perfection.
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Matt. 5:48.
“Be merciful just as your Father is merciful,” Luke 6:36.
Matthew 25 repeats the lesson. So do many, many other passages from the Old and New Testaments, plus nearly everything Jesus ever said or did.
God doesn’t get angry when I break a rule. God gets angry when I try to live without love. When I try to break The Law of Life: LOVE.
Period.
Amen.
Free image from pixabay.com.
Debbonnaire Kovacs is a speaker and the author of 25 books and over 600 stories and articles for adults and children. To learn more about her work or ask her to speak at your organization, visit www.debbonnaire.com.
Debbonnaire,
My take on the text is that God is angry with Israel over what they have done with His commands and how they have twisted His instructions according to their views instead of learning His ways, yet He is willing to redeem them if they will only listen and obey Him according to the guidance He has already given them. That is a timely reminder for us today when the church in many places is filled with the apparently spiritual, yet is dying because those people are filled with their views about God instead of the power that God wants to give each of us.
Thank you for this reminder, Debbonnaire. Too often we confuse God’s work with our work. It’s His work to judge; not ours. It’s His work to punish; not ours. The work He did assign us was to “love one another.”
Often i think people attribute to God, mannerisms of man. He could be disappointed in the
hypocritical nature of man, but knowing the end from the beginning, is beyond His positive
Being to express His vehemence to mans waywardness. After all, man is burdened with
original sin.
Proverbs 6:
These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
Thank you, Debbonnaire.
What I get from your article is that God is angry with hypocrisy and/or hypocrites – people who performs rites and ceremonies in the name of God; but whose hearts are far from Him, and whose acts are not Godly, only intended to impress others (or even God Himself). It is also a warning that true godlines does not necessarily consists in attending church regularly, or paying tithes, or working miracles, or offering long prayers. It has more to do with maintaining the right relationship with one’s fellow – especially the poor, the weak and the helpless. Even before Christ, this principle was evident in the teaching of many of the prophets.
We better be careful, because some of tend to exude an air and attitude of “I am holier than that”, in this forum.
It may be purely human to ascribe “anger” to God; but that is the way the prophets could describe the attitude to humans. Perhaps human language cannot find words to accurately describe that attribute of God.
Regrettably, the Old Testament does portray a vidictive, vengeful, even vicious God.
We can all agree that slavery is a most abject, awful, anguishing condition.
So why did God require FOUR HUNDRED years of servile suggestion to the heathen Egyptians?? Would not fourteen, or forty years have been enough??
Similarly, did the Babylonian exile have to be SEVENTY years?
why not seventeen?
Eve a naive, unsophisticated and cloistered women was we are told, being human, was created “lower than the Angels”
Our esteemed SDA leaders would have us believe, that being female, she was also
a “lesser” being.
So God pits this poor woman not only against an Angel, created of a higher order, but a MALE Angel at that. And EGW informs us that Satan was no ordinary Angel– she informs us that he had a “GIANT INTELLECT”
It is like a boxing fight promoter, pitting a female bantam weight fighter against a male heavy weight.
Then God, in his anger, and to promote his own “validation” before the “universe”, punishes billions of Eve’s descendants for the next six millenia and counting!
Not much gracious generosity is evident in my reading of the Old Testament!
I wonder where people get the idea that God gets angry when we don’t keep the rules. God told Moses to stone the man gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Maybe the man was cold? Or God sent the flood to indiscriminately kill adults, children, and animals. And final act of God’s “love” is an act of violence followed by a celebration. And we are asked to accept all this without question. It has become quite evident to me that Christianity is a religion based in fear, not love.
Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
When we accept God’s promise regarding God’s treating of our sin we eat the fruit of the land and if not we are forever fighting to merely eat at someone else’s expense. This fighting to save ourselves is the mark of the beast is it not also?
Isaiah offers that God has no interest in sacrifices as personal accomplishment. Fear, glorify, worship. Accept God’s argument that He will purify us of our indelible sin. Or trudge on under a hail of burning brimstone.
As inevitable as it all is, we do not have to wait to eat the fruit of the land, Isaiah offers, though until then perhaps it is but an appetizer.
Faith, hope, and love are Paul’s response to inevitable inadequacy of spiritual knowledge, spiritual practice, and prophecy.
The peace that passes understanding but not reality.
Hopefully.
When you break one of God’s rules, you’ve proven by your actions that you don’t love God supremely.
Daniel,
Let’s assume your statement is true.
How does this fit in with the rest of your understanding about God and about humanity, God’s supreme creation?
If we accept Jesus” statement, “if you see me you have seen my Father,” (and I do) then the many, many ways the OT shows God as endlessly loving and forgiving (including the passage under discussion) are easy to accept. It’s not to easy to harmonize the depictions of God as angry or vengeful. I do it this way–please understand that what follows is my own personal opinion.
I recognize that there is no human language sufficient to explain God.
I recognize that a lot of people tried, and parts of their writings came to us as the Bible we have today.
I recognize that a common way of seeing God, especially (or so it seems to me) in early ages and in some areas of the earth, is to give God direct credit for every single thing. In other words, if someone does something and then dies, to say that God killed them.
To me, saying that God “required” the 400 years of slavery or the 70 years of Babylonian captivity, and yes, the Bible prophets do sometimes state it this way, is like saying that God “requires” my death if I fall off a cliff.
God’s laws are immutable. Gravity is one. He can tell me about gravity, and warn me of what will happen if I get too close, but he does not kill me.
I believe the same thing about love. It is THE Law of the universe. Breaking it causes endless pain and destruction, and eventually, death. I am ok with disagreeing, even with Bible writers, that God kills those who break it. I think that’s exactly why God is angry at unlove–it kills…