I have to be honest and say that I really have a tough time believing people who claim to be atheists. The purpose of this blog post is not to try to convince you that God exists but I think that as people we all have a pretty decent sense that he does. The claim that we are given to believe is that a really great and powerful God sits on the throne of the universe. We are told that he is loving, gracious, powerful, all-knowing, generous, wise and personal. There are a lot of other attributes but these are some of the things that we are told to believe about God.
I think that if any of us were to be truly honest with ourselves, we would have to say that this is tough to believe. When we look at all the corruption in the world and all the pain in our own lives, many of us have a difficult time believing that God could actually exist. If this struggle could be vocalized in terms of questions, this is how it might look:
1. If you really cared, why would you allow this person to get sick?
2. If you really love me, why are you allowing me to go through this?
3. If you really exist, why is there so much dysfunction in the world? Why is there so much pain?
4. If you really exist, why do my prayer requests seem to bounce off the ceiling?
The questions could go on and on but certainly you get the point. For some of us these questions are not merely intellectual in nature but rather personal. In fact, you would have to say that you are Angry at God. I will be totally up front with you guys and say that this is something I struggle with. I really do believe from the bottom of my heart that God exists. I believe that he is a good, gracious, powerful, compassionate and loving Father. That being said, I would be lying to you if I told you that I never had doubts. There is a long distance between us and heaven and we don’t have a perfect perspective. There have been plenty of times that I’ve really wondered how he could allow certain things in my life. Can you relate with that? There have been times that I’ve really struggled to believe that he is good and powerful.
There may be a struggle going on in your life. There may be a loved one who is sick. There may be tragedy in your past and deep down inside, perhaps you are angry at God. This isn’t exactly something that most would dare to vocalize in church but I think it needs to be discussed. I believe that God is big enough to handle our questions and our deepest doubts.
The challenge of course that we run into when we allow ourselves to become angry at God is that we have finite minds. God operates from the perspective of perfection and infinity. When we doubt his goodness, we are presuming to know what true goodness looks like. When we doubt his sense of justice or righteousness, we presume to know what true justice and righteousness look like. The reality is that if we presume to know these things, we presume too much. Is it not possible that God is so much greater, so much wiser, so much more loving and so different than we are that even at our finest intellectual moments our comprehension falls infinitely short of his? We would have to admit that this is the case.
So what do you do when you are angry at God? Tell him. I believe that God wants honesty in prayer and I think you should vocalize how you feel to him. I believe that as you do that he will meet you in that place and perhaps reveal more of himself to you. If we really want a picture of the heart of God amidst all of the tradegy and confusion that surrounds many of us, we must look to Jesus and what he did for us. Jesus is God in the flesh and by looking at him, we can see the heart of God. By dying on the cross for the sins of humanity and rising from the dead, God wanted to show the world once and for all that he is loving…that he is good….that he is powerful…that he is worthy of all our worship and devotion. My challenge to you would be to read through the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and study the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was God’s intention to reveal himself to a world that was lost in the darkness. As you look to Jesus and what he did for you, I believe that you will begin to understand that God is far greater than anything we could ask or imagine. When we struggle with being angry at God, we are essentially saying that we could imagine a God who is much better than the one that exists. I believe that as we look to Jesus we will see that God is far greater than anything we could ever dream of.
