Mad at God

One of my favorite classes to teach at Anderson University is an undergraduate class in the Department of Adult Studies. It’s called “Faith and Human Development.” Over the last 30 years, I have taught this class about 60 times with a total of some 2,000 students. Their first assignment is to write their own Spiritual Autobiography; I want them to write about their own spiritual growth and development from birth to the present – before I pollute their pristine minds with faith development theory. J

Reading their papers is a joy and a burden.

Joy:

It is truly inspiring to read how God works in their lives. Through parents, grandparents, Sunday school teachers, youth counselors, coaches, you name it! So many of these students have been blessed in so many ways; it is a joy to read their stories.

Burden:

I have also read scores of stories about being molested as a child, about the unexpected death of a loving parent or sibling, about unemployment and homelessness, and the list goes on. Terrible things happen in people’s lives, and it’s burdensome to read their stories.

It’s even more of a burden to read the stories of those who got mad at God for the tragedies in their lives. Somewhere along the line, they picked up the false belief that God “did” these things to them. I read words like, “God took my baby away from me.” And I want to scream against the darkness: “NO! God did not do that!”

Somewhere in our discipling, we have taught people that God is personally responsible for everything that happens: every good thing, and every bad thing. I actually cringe when I hear people rejoice in “a God thing.” It’s as if God gets some perverse pleasure out of manipulating every event, pulling every string like a puppeteer, gleefully watching us suffer through tragedy and occasionally throwing us a bone to make us happy (the so-called God thing).

In a powerful sermon that he delivered in A.U. Chapel, President James Edwards tells the touching story of his granddaughter’s cancer. It was a heartbreaking time in his family. He states that he never asked God “Why did this happen?”

I too have never asked God why. In fact, I tend to lean the other direction. When something unfortunate happens, I often think, “Why not?” God never promised His people that He would build some sort of hedge around them and protect them from all calamity and catastrophe. What God has promised is that He would be with us when these things happen.

Toward the end of his sermon, President Edwards states his belief that this thing didn’t happen for a purpose. He respectfully says that some members of his audience come from traditions that do believe that everything happens for a purpose. And some of my students have quoted to me the old saying, “There’s a purpose for everything and everything happens for a purpose.”

And I want to talk about that philosophy – it’s called determinism. Determinism holds that nothing happens without God’s intention and purpose. I am not a determinist. I believe that some things just happen – with no intent or purpose. Accidents. Fires. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Cancers. 9/11. You name it. Sometimes bad things happen that God never intended and does not want. And God walks with us through those things to strengthen us, comfort us, enable us, empower us, etc. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28 NRSV).

Nowhere in the Bible do we read a word about determinism. Nowhere does the Bible promise us that only good things will happen, or that God is somehow punishing us when bad things happen. Yet many Christians today believe precisely that. And it gets them in spiritual difficulty. And it troubles me. Deeply. My first college psychology professor, Dr. Bill Farmen, once told me that in his experience most – if not all – psychological problems come from bad theology. I think he was right.

I remember my mother. She was a determinist. She believed that God planned and did everything on purpose. So when one of her grandchildren got molested by some older kids in the neighborhood, my mother went through a long time of being mad at God. She told me that she couldn’t even pray, so angry was she at God, who “did this” to her grandchild.

And when my mom died, her only sibling, my aunt, became so angry at God for “taking my sister away” that she couldn’t pray. Imagine that. So mad at God that you can’t even pray. The simple fact is that my mother lived a lifestyle that led to coronary artery disease and she died entirely too young, at age 68. But God didn’t do that! She did it to herself with a lifetime of choices she had made. And I say this with love, and with sadness.

One of my students wrote, “I found out that I was pregnant and I was absolutely devastated. I can’t say that I lost my faith, in that I never felt that God was not real, but I was so very very angry at him.  I shook my fist to the heavens and told him I wanted nothing more to do with what He was.” How sad. Where did she learn that God was responsible for her pregnancy?

Another student wrote, “My son and wife [were] in another wreck that totaled my truck. When I got to the scene all I could think was he was dead by looking at the truck…I thank God that he put us through all of this because it just made us stronger and closer as a family.” No! God did not put them “through all of this.” An accident is an accident – not an act of God. And while Romans 8:28 pertains – “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” – God does not put people through things like this.

So pastors, Sunday school teachers, parents, youth counselors, Christ followers:

I call you to a new mode of discipling. Instead of lying to children and youth, leading them to believe in a deterministic god who plans and does every little thing in life, please – for the sake of your children – teach them about the loving God revealed in Jesus, who said that the Father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45).