When You Are Angry with God

The following meditation was written by Rev. Catherine Cavazos Renken, pastor at Kirkwood Presbyterian Church in Kennesaw, Georgia.

The Lord responded, ‘Is your anger a good thing?’” Jonah 4:4

I am in the middle of preaching a sermon series called “Disputing with God.” I have been studying passages of Scripture where people of faith engage in arguments with and critiques of God. At first, I found their audacity uncomfortable. How much nerve they must have had to talk to God that way! But after a month of exploring their prayers, I have found them more and more relatable.

The most dramatic of these disputants is Jonah. God commands him to go preach repentance to the wicked city of Nineveh. Jonah refuses and flees in the opposite direction. God sends a storm and a great fish, and after three days in the belly of the creature, Jonah arrives at Nineveh and does the bare minimum: one line, not even into the heart of the city. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

The Ninevites repent anyway. The whole city, comically thorough in their sincerity, drapes sackcloth on their livestock. God relents and spares them. And Jonah is furious.

With bitterness dripping from his tongue, Jonah’s prayer in chapter four is unnervingly bold. He doesn’t thank God for the rescue, or praise the Lord for the mission, or express relief that his own life was spared. He complains. He tells God he knew this would happen. He knew God was merciful, and that is precisely why he didn’t want to go. He would rather die than watch his enemies receive grace.

To understand why, we need a little history. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, a brutal imperial power that had terrorized the region. By the time the book of Jonah was written, the Jewish community was suffering the consequences of Assyrian aggression: the Assyrians, spared by God’s mercy in Jonah’s story, would go on to attack Judah and force the people into exile. Jonah’s grief, then, carries the weight of a community that suffered at the hands of the very people God just forgave. His anger at God’s mercy is covenantal grief. It is the cry of a people asking: if you are on our side, Lord, how could you let this happen?

There are seasons of prayer where what rises to the surface is not pretty, and maybe not even appropriate for public worship. I see this in my congregation regularly. People who are furious at what is happening in the world, furious at God for what seems like divine silence or indifference, and they do not know what to do with that anger in a church pew. Some of them quietly stop coming. They assume that their rage disqualifies them from the sanctuary, that God requires a tidier emotional state before they can show up. Others come and sit with their hands folded and their feelings locked down, going through the motions because they don’t believe there is room here for what they are actually carrying.

There is a lot of anger out there right now. Some of it is grief in disguise. Some of it is exhaustion.

What I have learned from Jonah, and from my own seasons of complaint, is that this anger is not the opposite of faith. It is, in a strange way, a form of it. You do not argue with someone whose existence or power you doubt. You argue with someone you believe is capable of doing something about it. Jonah’s rage is directed at God precisely because he knows God is real, present, and capable. His anger is a prayer. An ugly, sulking, petulant prayer, but a prayer nonetheless.

The Lord does not rebuke Jonah for praying this way. God asks him a question: “Is your anger a good thing?” It is a gentle challenge, an effort to bring Jonah into the conversation rather than let his anger fester in the heat alone.

Prayer can hold our disputes, our confusion, and our accusations. The God who endured Jonah’s complaining for four chapters is the same God who can receive yours.

If you find yourself unable to pray anything beautiful today, pray anyway. Bring the anger. Bring the question you are afraid to ask. Bring the indignation that something has gone terribly wrong and you want someone to answer for it. The Lord, it turns out, can handle it.

Joy,