11.19.2013 demoss 2 ANGRY AT GOD

whatever men expect,
they soon come to think they have a right to;
the sense of disappointment can,
with very little skill on our part,
be turned into a sense of injury.

-screwtape to wormwood
the screwtape letters, c.s. lewis

in the matter of drusky versus God-God has won.
that's how the associated press report, dated march 15.1999, started out.

it went on to explain:
'a pennsylvania man's lawsuit naming god as a defendant has been thrown out by a court in syracuse. (ny)
after a longtime battle with his former employer (then called US steel), donald drusky had blamed God
-officially-
for failing to bring him justice as a result of his firing by the company some 30 years earlier.

'defendant God is the sovereign ruler of the universe, the lawsuit read,
and took no corrective action against the leaders of his church and his nation
for their extremely serious wrongs
which ruined the life of donald s. drusky.

according to the news report,
'US district judge norman mordue threw out the case.
mordue ruled that the suit-which also named
former US presidents ronald reagan and george bush,
the major US television networks,
all 50 states,
every single american,
all federal judges
and the 100th through 105th congresses as defendants
-was frivolous.

as ludicrous as all this sounds to rational people,
in a sense drusky's diatribe is different only in degree
from what i hear a lot of people saying these days.

as i read the letters and e mails people send to our ministry
and listen to people share their stories,
one of the recurring themes is: 'I'm angry'.

'angry at my husband.'
'angry at my children.'
'angry at my parents.'
'angry at my pastor.'

and sometimes, after they get through all those layers,
i hear them express something that is really at the heart of the matter:

'I'm angry at God.'

even godly people like gracia burnham are sometimes tempted to direct their resentment toward God.
you may have picked up on it in the last chapter.
in listing the many causes of her plight while being trapped as a hostage in the philippines,
she singled out the people.
she named names.
she saw faces.
then she pointed to a face she couldn't see, yet someone she felt
must somehow be at least partially responsible for her suffering-

God.

it came out in the excerpt i shared from her testimony:
'i even blamed God, she said,
because...well, He's in control of everything, isn't He?

AFTER ALL, IF HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE ALL POWERFUL,
HE COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS.
IF HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE ALL LOVING,
HE COULD HAVE PROTECTED MY HEART
AND SPARED ME THIS PAIN.
BUT HE DIDN'T.
HE TURNED AWAY AND CHOSE NOT TO.
SO HOW CAN I TRUST A GOD LIKE THAT-
A GOD WHO WOULD LET SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN IN MY LIFE?

have you ever said words similar to these-or at least thought them?
have you gotten to the place where being mad at your offender isn't quite enough for you anymore?
in your search for answers and justification,
have you turned instead to wag your finger toward the heavens and let God have it
for treating you the way He has?
or maybe it's not so blatant-more like a nebulous, simmering resentment.

can such feelings and accusations ever be warranted?
does God condone such backtalk from the people He created:
does our relationship with Him include the privilege of being this hones in our expressions?

do we ever have the right to be angry at God?

BELIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE

bill elliff, who with his wife, holly, has been a longtime friend,
was a grown man before he endured the gut wrenching blow of a parent's betrayal.
up until that time, he would have told you that his childhood years
were almost embarrassingly ideal.
mom and dad were the living portrait of love and commitment.
his dad's service as a pastor and denominational church leader wasn't an act.
their ministry together was one of genuine joy and gratitude
-enough to inspire all three of the boys to become preachers,
and his sister to become a preacher's wife.

in fact, bill was already out of seminary and well into his ministry calling,
musing at times on how gracious God had been in his life,
how little pain and trouble he and his family had been forced to face.

by this time, his dad had stepped away from weekly pulpit duties
and had been providing expertise and oversight to a large group of churches in their denomination.
when he finally approached retirement age,
he had accomplished all his goals and more.
he had lived a full life, with the rewards of his golden years ahead,
ready to be shared with the wife of his youth
-the wife he had been faithful to for more than four decades.

that is, until the rood caved in.

through the harsh intervention of one man,
bill's father was denied a final important ministry assignment THAT HE REALLY DESIRED.
at that point, rather than receiving God's grace to deal  with the disappointment,
he allowed bitterness and unforgiveness to take root in his heart.
in this state, he began to counsel a woman in his office who was struggling in a tough marriage.

then this man, the one man you might easily have said was
the last person on earth you'd ever expect this of,
allowed himself to be lured into an immoral relationship.

bill didn't know this right away, of course.
the evidence of his dad's indiscretion sort of trickled down.
suspicions crystallized into realities that were hard to ignore or escape.
evidence mounted in the face of adamant denials.
finally, when it seemed they simply must know the truth,
his grown siblings went to their parents' home unannounced,
asked the hard, disbelieving question and confirmed the painful truth.

so began a several year roller coaster ride of nauseating dips and turns.
here sat a precious wife and mother, who was dealing 
most personally and painfully with this shameful act of
betrayal and rejection.
yet even in the face of her husband's erratic swings of behavior and perspective,
she remained steadfast in her desire to hand this matter God's way.
she had been wronged, yes.
cruelly, needlessly wronged.
yet she was choosing to let God comfort her heart.
she was choosing to forgive.

for bill, however, everything he had ever known or believed
-about life, about his dad, about his calling, about God
-was being riddled with unanswered questions.
'why would god allow this to happen?
weren't we trying, as a family to serve Him?
why wouldn't God answer our prayers- and answer them NOW?
how could a loving God allow His children to suffer so?
is God always true to His promises? or not?

one day, deep into this seemingly endless ordeal,
bill's mother returned from an everyday errand to find no one at home,
nothing but a carefully placed not on the table.
in the end it had come down to this
-this final, pitiful excuse for a fitting conclusion.
like the last page of a novel you kept hoping would take a turn for the better,
this one single piece of paper gave sad silent expression to everyone's most dreaded thought.

dad was gone.
with the other woman.
and he wasn't coming back.

HOW LONG, O LORD?

...i want to explore this quite natural reaction to pain and distress,
this inclination to become angry and displeased with God when we are harmed or injured by others.

i have come to believe that,
at one level,
all bitterness is ultimately directed toward God.
it may be cloaked in anger toward a particular person or group of people
who have wronged us,
but it actually extends far beyond them, far above them.

we all seem to know intuitively that God's power is great enough to deal with our problems
-if He wanted to.

so when woundedness turns to bitterness-when unforgiven is
given enough room, time and oxygen to take on a life of its own
-the prospect of a powerful God who doesn't seem to care enough about us
to step into our situation is troubling to us.
it goes against everything we've been led to believe about
His goodness and fairness,
everything we've painted in our minds about
 an even handed God who always squares things in the end.

we even seem to be given a measure of permission to feel this way
as we read the impassioned cries and prayers of the psalms.
you don't need a concordance to find them.
the emotional transparency of these verses spills from nearly every turn of the page.

how long, O Lord?
will You forget me forever?
how long will You hide Your face from me?...
how long shall my enemy be exalted over me> psalm 13.1-2

all this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten You,
and we have not been false to Your covenant.
our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from Your way;
yet You have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
awake! why are You sleeping, O Lord?
rouse Yourself! do not reject us forever!
why do You hide your face?
why do you forget our affliction and oppression? psalm 44.17-9;23-4

job, too, was not afraid at times to take the gloves off in
dealing with God's seeming injustice:

i would speak to the Almighty,
and i desire to argue my case with God...
why do You hide Your face
and count me as Your enemy? job 13.3;24

HOW FAR IS TOO FAR?

can we be honest with God? absolutely.

are we not encouraged to have a righteous anger against sin,
including the sins that have been committed against us?
yes, we are.

but there is a point where our honest questions directed toward God
cross the line
and become an expression of a proud heart.
insubordinate.
demanding.

the word cautions us against letting even righteous anger escalate into sin:
be angry and do not sin.  psalm 4.4
instead the psalmist exhorts us to ponder these things
'in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.
offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.  v4-5

God is God. we are not.

his is in many respects the basis for our relationship with Him.
beyond that, He loves you, cherishes YOU-
and is doing something in the midst of this horrendous situation that might be hard to believe
even if He wrote it across the heavens in clouds and smoke.

in His inscrutable wisdom and love,
He is able to use even the most agonizing circumstances that touch your life in this fallen world
to refine and purify you,
to make you fruitful
and to magnify His grace and glory through your life.
i know it's sometimes hard to believe.
i know you may not see how you can possibly continue with this pain
another week, another day, another hour.

but unleashed anger toward God comes, i believe,
from having a faulty view of Him,
from thinking that He is flippantly ignoring you,
that He couldn't care less what you're going through.

the truth is, HE IS GOING THROUGH IT WITH YOU
AND FOR YOU.
i love that verse in isaiah that so tenderly describes God's dealings with the children of israel
(even when they were reaping the consequences of their own sinful choices):
'in all their suffering, He suffered' 63.9
in all your suffering, He suffers.

He is with you right in the midst of it.
helping you.
loving you.
hurting with you.
driving you back to Him.,
drawing you closer in,
making you more dependent upon His grace and power.

as you get to know and trust His heart,
you will be able to face the cross-
the way Christ faced it from the haunting shadows of gethsemane
-and still say, even through your tears,
'not My will, but Yours be done.

WONDER-WHYS AND WHAT-IFS

ruth's mother in law, naomi, is a classic biblical example of his very dilemma.

have you ever watched your mate make a seriously unwise decision,
only to discover over time that YOU  were the one
who would suffer the harshest consequences for it?
have you been the one to pay the most, it seems for someone else's mistake?

you can relate, then, to the fertile ground for bitterness in naomi's life.

during a time of famine in their hometown of bethlehem,
her husband, elimelech, made a shortsighted decision
for their family to go live 'for a while' in moab,
just long enough for the crisis to let up. ruth 1.1
unfortunately 'a while' turned into many years.
and before their plans of going back home again could be realized, elimelech died.

to make naomi's homecoming even more unlikely,
to drive her unwanted roots even deeper into pagan soil,
here two sons chose to marry moabite women.
but in the ensuing years tragedy struck again...and again...
as both her boys died, leaving their young wives without husbands.

and naomi without a family.

in the well known story of her return to bethlehem with her daughter in law ruth,
the bible records the hometown reaction to this one who had gone away with her husband seeking fullness
but had come back even emptier than before-not just empty in body now but empty in soul.

is this naomi? they asked each other.
was this the same woman who perhaps at one time
had been so pleasant and happy,
so vibrant and contented with her life as a wife and mother...
before the days when her had led her away from everything familiar to her,
chasing a foolhardy scheme to fix his family's problems?
in the end-no matter how complicit she may have been in their relocation plans
-she felt that his unwise decision had ruined her.
as far as she was concerned,
life was over.

'do not call me naomi, she said to them -a name which means 'pleasant'.
instead, 'call me mara (bitter), for the ALMIGHTY
has dealt very bitterly with me.
i went away full,
and THE LORD  has brought me back empty.
why call me naomi, when THE LORD has testified against me
and THE ALMIGHTY has brought calamity upon me? ruth 1.20-1

do you see how is getting the blame for her calamity?
naomi and elimelech had made a choice.
if all had gone well, they would probably have patted each other firmly on the back
for being sharp enough to outsmart the elements and to read their situation so correctly.

but all had NOT gone well.
and God was taking the fall.

have you been there?
have you found yourself the victim of your own poor choices
or perhaps the poor choices of others?
but instead of taking responsibility for them
or choosing to forgive the one who misled or mistreated you,
your ultimate response has been anger toward God
for letting this turn of events occur without warning you,
without bailing you out,
without stepping in and stopping it while there was still time to avoid disaster?

it's at this point that some would even suggest a need to 'forgive God'
-as though He had erred and was in need of pardon.
US?

FORGIVE GOD?

think about it.
even if said by a heart not meaning to offend or overstep,
the very idea borders on outright blasphemy.
to think we have that kind of power over the righteous sovereign God
is to demean His name and inflate our importance.

no, God doesn't need forgiveness from us . He is never guilty of making mistakes
in fact, the thing you may think is a cruel injustice on His part may actually turn out to be
the best thing that ever happened to you.
it can at least, we know-by the Father's all wise grace-
be transformed for your good, for His glory, and for the advance of His eternal kingdom.

so i ask you to look again into the heart of God
and to see Someone who has a deeper, more loving plan for your life-
even in the midst of this painful turmoil-
than you could ever figure out on your own.
you can be confident that if you will choose to submit your way to Him through this trial of faith,
His presence and provision will be sufficient for you.
He will use this disappointment, this heartbreak, this unspeakable circumstance
to teach you, train you and fulfill His holy, eternal purposes for your life.

the alternative-anger with God-can do nothing but make things worse
and further delay your healing.

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

naomi didn't get that.
even the word she used for God in her outburst
-El Shaddai, 'the Almighty', the All sufficient One'
merely accentuated the depths of her anger and disillusionment.
sure, you folks may call Him Almighty, All Sufficient, Jehova
-all those high sounding names you fool yourself into believing-but not me.
He certainly hasn't lived up to His name in my life.

a friend told me the other day about a recent conversation with her sister
who has experienced some significant losses-
and is sounding a lot like naomi.
a professing christian, she feels God has turned His back on her
and has failed to be who she thought He was;
so she is living her own life, independent of God
and making decisions that are clearly contrary to His word.
though she doesn't acknowledge it,
here anger and bitterness have been turned toward God.

what about you?
do you feel that God has not lived up to His name in your life?
does it seem that He has been one thing in the sermons and the sunday school lessons
but quite another when you needed Him the most?

listen to yourself.
what are you saying about Him?
what is your life communicating to others about Him?

all naomi could do was talk about how awful God had been to her.
but when people hear you speak His name,
or describe His character,
or resent the circumstances that have come into your life
-what are they led to believe about Him?

..john piper on news of prostate cancer..
'this news has, of course, been good for me
the most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self reliance and the stupor of worldliness.
the news of cancer has a wonderfully blasting effect on both.
i thank god for that.
the times with Christ in these days have been unusually sweet...

..naomi's perspective was so different.

no question that she had suffered a great deal .
she had been forced to endure a lot of things that were probably not her fault.
but instead of running to God as her refuge,
she responded to Him in bitterness.
and the evidence was all over her face.

...i've seen over and over again the damage that 'naomis' can do
-in a marriage, in a church, in a workplace, in a ministry, in a friendship, in a family.
their bitterness, their anger toward God and others, is toxic,
though they are often the last to recognize both their bitterness and the effect they have on others.
in their attempts to salve their wounds or to gain sympathy and understanding,
they contaminate their corner of the world.

our anger toward God will inevitably become a poison that spreads far beyond our own hearts,
just as it did with naomi.
what seems so intensely personal becomes impossible to keep to ourselves.
believe me, it shows.

UNFULFILLED LONGINGS

perhaps your anger with God stems from a dream He hasn't allowed you to realize-
a promotion that went to someone else less deserving,
a financial setback that's forcing you to live
far below the standard of living you were once accustomed to.

perhaps your anger with God comes from being single in a married world.

childlessness, too, can be a source of anger against God.
why would He taunt any of us in this way,
at such a vulnerable part of our hearts and lives?
and yet we must learn how to accept what we receive-or don't receive from Him.
we must learn how to bow before His sovereignty.

it comes down to a choice:
blame God and rail against Him (first, in your heart)
for His capricious crueltycomplaining and insiting on getting our way.
or trust that He knows what He's doing,
that He is working in us to both purify and prepare us for lives of greater service and usefulness,
and that He is employing one of His greatest teachers-time-
in order to enlarge our hearts and expand our vision.

this is the hard work of isaiah 26.3,
the submissive discipline of keeping our minds 'stayed' on the Lord,
trusting Him in ways we cannot see of understand,
in places where we must learn to be content with mystery.

airline pilots have to learn how to read their instruments-
and to trust those instruments.
when they get into a storm or white out conditions,
they can get disoriented;
their sense of direction gets turned around and can easily mislead them
and cause them to make decisions that would endanger lives.
in those situations, they have to make a conscious choice to believe the instruments,
rather than their instincts or their feelings.

for believers, the word of God is our instrument panel.
there will be points in our lives when,
in the midst of  'white out conditions',
our feeling will betray us and contradict His word-
insisting God doesn't care or that He's made a mistake.
at that point, we dare not rely on our feelings but must choose to trust
that what the Instrument tells us is true.

we are born as people ruled by our emotions and feelings.
but we 'did not come to know Christ that way'. ephesians 4.20
part of being transformed into a new creation means that our feelings
no longer get full, unquestioned access to our internal 'driver's seat'.

in this way, then, the lines that separate christians and non christians begin to diverge.
no wonder the unbeliever has little choice but to be angry with God when life mistreats him.
his emotional outbreak has nothing bigger and more persuasive to check it,
no steady, objective instrument from which to gain perspective and to direct his response.

but by our redemption-by being forgiven-we are empowered by His grace
to submerge our hot, emotional, human anger
beneath a legitimate trust in God's loving, eternal purposes for our lives.

the longer i live under God's providence,
the more readily i can trust Him
when it comes to my unfulfilled longings
and life's unsloved mysteries.
the more joyfully i am able to love and worship Him
and to be satisfied with that which He supplies.
and the more patiently i can wait for that day
when faith will be sight and all that which made no sense to my limited frame of reference
will be made clear.

NEAR DEATH FORGIVENESS

humanly speaking, bill elliff's mom had every reason to allow
a root of bitterness to spring up in her heart,
after the way her husband had sinned against her.
then, as if she hadn't already suffered enough,
no more than a year after her husband left home.
she contracted alzheimer's.
another possible reason to be angry at God.

i can't imagine what that year had really been like for her. (perhaps you can.)
but i can imagine that it would bave been easier now than ever
to resent what here husband's heartless actions had brought on
-being forced to endure the slow,fearsome loss of her bearings and faculties
without a loving, supportive husband to be there for her,
to catch her when she was falling,
to lower her risk of embarrassment,
to keep her growing limitations from being quite so obvious and exposed for all the world to see.

her marriage was gone.
her health was going next.
what was left to trust God about?

one day bill let himself into her nearby apartment,
which the family had rented so he and his sister could keep a closer eye on her.
it was quiet.
too quiet.
and as he stepped into her room, he could tell something was wrong.

his mother was barely alive.
sweeping her into his arms, bill rushed her to the nearest hospital,
where doctors confirmed that she had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
before the afternoon was out, she had slipped into a coma;
the doctors held out little hope that she would live through the weekend.

yet a week later, she unexpectedly emerged from unconsciousness,
uttering words that were unintelligible at first, forcing bill and his sister to strain to make them out.
only one word was clear enough to be understood and she repeated it three times.

forgive...forgive...forgive.

the next day, as her family gathered around her bed
-sometimes singing, sometimes praying, sometimes reading scripture
or just sharing memories with their mom,
who was now aware of what was going on-the phone rang.

it was bill's dad.

the family put the receiver to their mother's ear...
and listened as she strained to put voice to her words of forgiveness and love,
the parting gifts of grace to this man
who had wounded her heart but could not steal her trust in a gracious and good God.
the next morning, as a brief window of lucidity opened
for her to express what her whole being was feeling,
she said to her son,
'billy, isn't it great about dad calling?
why, this is what we've been praying for, that he would return to the Lord!

later that night, the curtain of unconsciousness fell around her face once again.
a few days before her homegoing, her entire family gathered one last time around her bed-
her sons, her daughter, their spouses, her grandchildren...

and her husband.

bill's mom had realized early on in this ordeal that whe would never be remarried to her longtime mate.
she knew her life would never be the same, ever again.
but as she struggled with her emotions
and with the maddening effects of her unexpected, late in life trauma,
whe came to a point of surrender where she told the Lord,
'all i want, Father is for You to receive glory.

she could have chosen anger. that would have been only natural.
she could have shut God out and had no more use for what He offered.
she probably had friends who would have agreed.

instead, she gave herself to His purposes and  was able to see them come to pass.

what about you?
are you in a place every bit as treacherous and untenable
as bill and his siblings and mom were?
have you wanted to scream your anger toward God through clenched teeth,
banging on the doors of heaven that seem coldly closed to your heart and life?

hear God asking the question He twice asked of His resentful prophet:
do you do well to be angry? jonah 4.4,9

He knows your heart, dear one.
he has not left you alone.
and by trusting in His sovereign wisdom, goodness and love,
you, too, may one day see the sweet restoration of everything you've prayed for.

but even if not, you will have found a refuge in His will and in His care
-a blessed place that is reached only by those who trust His heart
-and keep trusting it even when the darkness closes in around them.