Dear friend,
You wrote to me asking, “Is it okay to be angry with God?” I’m sorry this letter is so long, but I felt it was worth the words and the time. The question you ask is so important, because it has everything to do with your relationship with God—which is at the very center of your life, and which in fact is your life (John 17:3).
I’m going to split my letter into sections. Imagine I’m holding up three fingers, telling you I have three responses to your question. Each section is a response—I want to be sure I don’t forget any of the points that came to mind when you asked it.
And please imagine us like we usually are—talking in the car in the driveway under the stars in order to avoid the midwestern cold, or at a coffee shop in a corner with something hot, or up late on the couch talking out what’s keeping us awake. Or take it as a letter I’ve slipped under your door after you texted. Just remember that I care.
The Question You Ask: “Is It Okay to Be Angry with God?”
I’m going to assume you’re asking this question because you are angry at God. And you’re distressed because you are either feeling guilty about it or just inwardly uncomfortable with your state of mind.
You find that your heart toward God is cold, and at any mention of him—the Bible, songs that praise him, people’s comments—makes your heart seize shut. All the positive talk about God sounds platitudinous and feels untrue.
You don’t want to open the Bible, but when you do, your eyes glaze over the page and refuse to process the words. Or the words just feel irrelevant—or too shallow to be helpful.
Yes, I know that you have put your faith in Jesus and believe the Bible is God’s Word. You’ve often sought refuge there. I know that in the state you’re in, you’re not questioning the truth of these things. You’re not doubting God—that’s not the problem.
You’re mad at him.
The first thing I have to say in answer to your question, “Is it okay to be angry with God?”—and I hope this is a welcome sort of cold wind to your heart that refreshes even as it stings—is, “Well, you are.” You are mad at God, and you’ve got to own this.
Your question assumes you have a choice before you—to be mad at God, or not to be mad at him, based on whether your anger is wrong or not. But right now you don’t have a choice; you’ve just got your present state of the heart. You are mad at him.
To deny this is sin, for it would be dishonest (1 John 1:8). To accept it is to tell the truth about yourself and keeps you from self-deception. Don’t live as if your anger is unreal. It’s not. It’s real, and it’s powerful! It’s better to acknowledge its presence so that you can deal with it correctly.
To put it another way, this is how Bible teacher John Piper answers your question:
It is wrong—always wrong—to disapprove of God for what he does and permits. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25). It is arrogant for finite, sinful creatures to disapprove of God for what he does and permits. We may weep over the pain. We may be angry at sin and Satan. But God does only what is right. “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments” (Revelation 16:7).[1]
Stick with me here. I know that’s blunt! Piper would say, you’re right to feel uneasy. For it is sinful to be angry at God. He doesn’t deserve it, and your anger toward him in particular is not warranted. Yet hear how Piper follows this conviction that it’s wrong to be angry at God:
If you sin by being angry with God, don’t add to it the sin of trying to conceal it from him. That would double the offense.[2]
Yes, being angry at God is wrong. But if you are angry, and you deal with it by denying it, well, that worsens the offense.
Since you are angry at God, the question is not whether you are “allowed” to be so—you’ve already crossed that line. Pretending you are not will only make matters worse. So, the question becomes, What to do about it?
What Do You Do When You’re Angry at God?
Before I answer that question, I want to say that any counsel I give you here comes from God’s Word, not me. That’s where we should always turn with our questions as believers in Jesus. God is not only the best person to answer this question about your relationship with him, but he also identifies himself in the Bible as “the Wonderful Counselor.” I hope my words open the Bible for you and point you to his counsel.
The answer the Bible gives to the question of what to do when we are angry with God is simple but not easy.
Here it is: Tell him!
Tell God That You Are Angry with Him
Tell God that you are angry with him. God knows you’re angry. To conceal it from him will only hurt your relationship more and deepen your denial of the truth. Out with it, friend! Tell God that you are mad at him.
And, with all due respect, quit trying to pray correctly. In the helpful words of C.S. Lewis, “We must lay before him [God] what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”[3] Stop shaping your prayers to be what you think God wants to hear. He sees the insincerity there, even if you believe yourself to be well-intentioned. He’d rather hear your honest heart. Praying correctly is praying from the heart—God knows every word you will say to him before it comes out your mouth (Psalm 139:2, 4). Don’t posture. Just say it‚ God I’m angry at you!
Tell God Why You Are Angry with Him
Don’t just tell God that you are angry with him. Tell him why you are angry. I know—here a thousand but, but, buts sound like sirens in your mind. You know you’ve got no right to be angry at God—and you’re right. But you still are! So, tell him why.
You think that what you say will condemn you because it borders on blasphemy—and you’re right, it condemns you apart from Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf. But by trusting in Jesus for your salvation, you have been sheltered from all condemnation, so that you might be brought close to the Father (Romans 8:1; 1 Peter 3:18). Jesus paid in blood for you to be able to enter the throne room of God in prayer in whatever state you’re in. Don’t deny him what he rightly purchased in blood by refusing to enter the acceptance he bought for you. Embrace the grace that he offers you!
You think God will shut his ears to your prayer and dismiss it for its absurdity. But “there is never a time in the Bible where God said to one of his servants, ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’”[4] God hears his children when they cry. He hears all that they cry.
Cast all “buts” aside right now. Tell God why you are angry at him. Again, don’t dress up your prayers with things you think God might want to hear. What he wants to hear is you, the real you. “For behold, I delight in truth in the inward being,” he says (Psalm 51:6). Tell God the truth when you talk to him—including the truth of how you feel about him right now.
I know, this is exceedingly hard to do. But, friend, it’s hard for us; it’s not hard for God. God can “take” what you say to him. It’s our own pride that may not be able to handle our honest thoughts and confession—to face the sinful disposition within us and the ugly thoughts we harbor in our hearts that we know to be wrong.
If you tell all, you’re probably going to find yourself uttering things you know are blasphemy. I warn you—taking your anger to God will make you uncomfortable, and you’ll be tempted to stop. Don’t stop. Tell him all that’s on your mind until your heart is emptied of all its angry musings. God tells us to pour out our hearts before him—dump them out entirely—not let out only a few drops (Psalm 62:8).
Tell God you’re mad at him. Tell him why you’re mad at him and all that’s running through your heart.
Embrace the Grace of God for You
Don’t tell yourself you’re a disappointment to him and a nuisance, either. You’re exercising faith by drawing near to God, you’re telling the truth (the Bible calls this “confession”), and you’re embracing the grace Christ earned for you at the cross—the deepest, most infinite kind of grace (Hebrews 11:6; 1 John 1:8-9; Hebrews 4:16).
Jesus Christ offers to you a profound grace—prayer. It is God’s gift offered to you to unclog your soul of all the distress that your anger is producing. Yes, it’s okay to bring your honest self to God in prayer, especially prayers of confession, making known to God your sinful suspicions of him smoldering under the surface of your heart. How do I know? Well, if you open the Bible, you will read surprising prayers—and they are preserved in God’s Word in order to say, you can do the same.
Job accused God of being an enemy shooting arrows at him (Job 6:4). Naomi accused God of treating her severely, saying he dealt bitterly with her (Ruth 1:20). Jeremiah accused God of deceiving him (Jeremiah 20:7). And that list doesn’t include any of the accusations we find in the Psalms!
Look at this prayer: “For I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink, because of your indignation and anger; for you have taken me up and thrown me down” (Psalm 102:9-10 ESV). The psalmist tells God that he has treated him like a ragdoll, slamming him on the ground!
God is not ashamed of these prayers of his people. In fact, he has preserved them for us in his eternal Word! God has preserved raw, honest, borderline-blasphemous prayers in the Bible as a way of saying to his children, “I know that the world you now live in is going to be exceedingly painful. And I know that when you’re in pain, your thoughts of me will go dark. So if you get to the place where I seem to be your enemy, well, I’ve already given you words to tell me so. Remember that I welcome your expressions of disorientation and your questions and accusations so that I can lead you out of them. I can take it!”[5]
The Bible testifies that godly people pray honestly. “Honest” may not be a strong enough word here. Honest means being 100% truthful.
You must tell God what’s in your heart. Confess it. Don’t cut corners and leave your darkest questions or musings out. Drag your honest thoughts into the light before God, no matter how much they scream and kick against you along the way. Take up your case with him! His steadfast love is stronger than the raging river of your anger. He is slow to anger, and your rage won’t set him off. His forgiveness outweighs anything you may end up repenting of saying.
He’s not afraid of your doubt
So go ahead, let it all out
Nothing can shake him
Nothing can break him
Say it out loud
Lift up your voice to the sky
Just scream it out, asking him why
Nothing can shake him
Nothing can break him
Go ahead try
Go ahead try
Try, go ahead try[6]
“Are You Sure I Can Do This?”
I hope this answer to your question sends you off to pray—prayer being the fancy word for taking your anger to God. But before you go, I must clarify. I’m not encouraging you to go talk to God because it’s therapeutic. This isn’t scream therapy.
What I’m concerned about—and what I think you’re most concerned about, judging by the question you asked—is the fact that you’re at odds with someone very important to you; namely, God. Something’s amiss in your relationship with him. This anger is increasing your relational distance.
If you were mad at me, boy! I would want you to tell me about it rather than passively/aggressively keep your distance from me! God is a person, too, who has gone to great lengths to close the gap between you two (1 Peter 3:18). He wants to keep you close. Although he has promised to keep those whom he saves, he also calls us to persevere in our loving, trusting relationship with him (Philippians 2:12-13). He warns us against shrinking back (Hebrews 10:38).
Jesus knows that bringing you close to God means you will sometimes wrestle him on your way to heaven, just as Jacob did (Genesis 32, 22-28). He knows it will sometimes mean arguments and hard talks. He knows it will mean chasing after you when you go astray (Luke 15:4). Having you close is part of the “joy set before him” for which he endured the cross—even though having you close includes your beating on his chest in prayer (Hebrews 12:2). He loves you that much:
When all I can bring you is my doubt and my anger, you’d still rather fight with me than let us be strangers. Is that what you want from me? The way you get close to me?[7]
Friend, as someone who belongs to Jesus Christ, the closest thing you will experience to hell is the distance you create between yourself and God by avoiding him and the anxiety that accompanies being at odds with him, living in the unrepentant, unconfessed sin of anger toward him. Drawing near him may manifest as a fight, like a heated kitchen argument between spouses, but God won’t walk out. He’s in the kitchen waiting for you even now.
Romans 8 tells us that “nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God”—and that includes our angry accusations lobbed against him (Romans 8:39-38). God will never let go of those who belong to him—even those, like the prophet Jeremiah, who wanted to let go of God in their pain. God won’t let go of you even if, in your anger, your thoughts toward him are completely dark right now.
I want you to pray because I want you to stay close to God—nearness to God is our good (Psalm 73:28). I want you to embrace him as your refuge—a refuge whose walls will not crumble at your agonized screams. Yes, I expect you, like Job, and like I have many times, will eventually put your hand over your mouth. I expect, as you confess to him the angry, sin-stained, and even wicked thoughts of your heart, that your hard heart will finally melt under the mercy of God when he responds to your prayer with gentleness (Romans 2:4).
He will respond to you, and his response will be kind. The Bible tells me so. Sure, sometimes he is quiet for a long time. But he always responds to the cries of his children (Psalm 34:17).
When Job cried out to God and demanded that God answer him, God appeared in a whirlwind and spoke directly to Job (Job 38:1). When Habakkuk the prophet wrote out his disoriented thoughts, angry at what he perceived to be God’s injustice, God responded (Habakkuk 1:5).
God responded to Naomi’s bitterness over her bereavement by placing a grandbaby in her arms (Ruth 4:14-15). He responded to Jeremiah’s complaints that no one listened to him by raising up a young man named Daniel who diligently studied Jeremiah’s prophecies and carried Jeremiah’s message of hope to the next generation (Daniel 9:2).
Job’s angry cries led to him understanding the compassion and mercy of God (James 5:11). Jeremiah’s impassioned cries resulted in a deep assurance of the Lord’s steadfast love (Lamentations 3:21-24).
I don’t know how God will respond to you, nor when. But I know that he does respond to the cries of his people, and that they always—in the end—find him to be exactly who he claims to be in his Word—gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6-7). He lives up to his name.
So is it okay to be angry at God? Well, you are. Admit it. Tell him about it. Don’t hold back. Tell it all. Tell him again and again if you have to. And trust that your prayers don’t hit the ceiling—they go to the throne room of God. Even if you are having a tantrum, your Father’s heart is for you, and he will be sure to respond because you are his child and he loves you.
I know you might not believe that now—but you may begin to believe it as you draw near to God in faith. Just the act of drawing near to God is an exercise of belief (Hebrews 11:6). God rewards those who seek him—you know the Bible says this. And he draws near to those who draw near to him. Those are his promises. Take hold of them today.
. . .
Sources
[1] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-it-ever-right-to-be-angry-at-god.
[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/it-is-never-right-to-be-angry-with-god.
[3] Letters to Malcolm, Chapter 4, paragraph 15.
[4] This is an indirect quote of Andrew Peterson, who said this in a talk I heard several years ago.
[5] This idea was first shared with me by my friend Abraham Philip in conversation. He and his wife Liza write music together. You can find their work at songsfromscripture.com.