Why God is "Angry" in the Old Testament

You don’t have to agree with me at all. I only ask that you seriously consider what I’m saying here. I didn’t start to think of this until I was reading through Exodus v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

This is about the Moses/Yahweh relationship. And I am presenting it to you basically how it came to me.

There’s a part in the “Nightmare Before Christmas” where, after trying to explain the wonder and magic of Christmas to his people, Jack Skellington gives up and gives them what they want. Essentially the same thing happened to Moses. When he tried to introduce Yahweh to the Israelites they did not want to know “him” so “he” became a personification of karma to them.

In light of my own experiences with God, and the Jesus thing, I wonder if the anger and vengeance assigned to God in the text really was “him”. I’m tempted to read that the angry vengeful harsh voice was actually Moses and that the voice of reason was God in Moses.

We only know what got reported. Could it be that the way Yahweh interacted with Moses went more like this:

God: I will tell you all these horrible things you are thinking in your stress and anger. (Wipe out the nation, etc...) 

Moses: Oh, God! Don’t do that!

God: Exactly, you “convinced” me, not because I needed you to convince me but because by “convincing” me you now understand why I won’t do all of this.

When this was presented to the people they did not understand it as Moses did because they had refused to personally know Yahweh. What they got out of it was, “Yahweh is angry and scary and Moses is protecting us from HIM.” Interestingly this was “good politics” Moses had become the gatekeeper to Yahweh. This flawed vision of God was out of Moses’ control, it would take too much energy to correct. In fact, if he did try to correct it he could have died.

So it is not that there are two Gods, one old and cranky, and one loving, or that God (Yahweh) changed it’s that human understanding began to see in a new light. What had been merged in the desert could now be separated. Yahweh became distinct from karma most strongly through the teaching of the Christ. The dawning of this new light was always present in the story it just needed a teacher who could be the light because we could not accept an abstract. We could not understand a God without skin.

In correcting our flawed vision Jesus the Christ died. Moses couldn’t do it. Moses knew he was flawed.

After Moses the only people who had a direct dialogue with Yahweh were the prophets. Not even Joshua spoke directly with “him,” he had to go through the urim and thummim thing (Num27:21). And the kings went through priests and prophets.

The prophets were receiving messages that the people didn’t want to hear. Force was the only way they knew to motivate change and so they come out sounding extreme. In a lot of ways what the prophets heard was not fully understood, not even by the prophet himself. They had been raised to believe that Yahweh was karma. Whatever learned in childhood usually remains deep and unconscious unless brought to light and the light had not come yet.

And that is why the Old Testament is the way it is.
You're welcome.

The Klutzy Song

I finished a song today and being "praise day" or "singing religious songs day" I thought I'd unleash the words to the world.

The Klutzy Song

raised by a people who believed they were strong
taught that security meant I belonged
the price of admission was always too high
the demand that I make something of my life

outwardly failed in so many ways
inwardly struggling to see better days
the people around me can't see past their pain
cry out like drowning to be saved again

why is it they think I'm responsible
that I know what's up and can settled their scores
I'm only human exactly like them
just a jacked up tool in a perfect plan

You, you want me
Lord, you want me
klutzy and needy though I am
you want me

in this quiet place I stand though I know
storms are ahead and there's one way to go
struggles all ahead pain's in the past
I'm not giving up til we meet at last

You, you want me
Lord, you want me
klutzy and needy though I am
you want me.

About Quitting

2" By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." Genesis 2:2-3(NIV)

10 “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.” Exodus 23:10-11 (NIV)

Recently I quit my job. It was interesting to see my coworkers’ reactions. Every one of them secretly wished they could do what I am doing, just stop and not work for a while. 

My two favorite reactions were these; one actor openly admitted he was jealous and wanted to do what I am doing and the other went straight into telling me, “it’s a hard job marked out there…” I highlight these because the honest one was a bit of fresh air, no digging through subtext, but the worried one was more typical of how people respond to hearing that I don’t have a project lined up to jump into.

What the phrase, “it’s a hard job market,” really says is that, I should stay in this situation because it is a sure thing. What it does not take into account is my real situation. What the person who said this does not know is that staying, at this point, is way more dangerous than going. Yes, I work hard and I do a good job but the parade of crises I have been managing for the past two and a half years has left me depleted. There has been no recovery time. 

As a fighter I know that training should be challenging and sometimes hard but that rest and recovery are equally important to achieving the lasting goal of success. In work and personal relationships the same is true; there must be times of renewal. Without renewal I am dangerous because now I cannot be present to the circumstances that are actually in front me. I am too busy nursing old wounds and too distressed to properly care for the new ones. I am also unable to care for anyone else’s wounds and am more likely to lash out and wound others both emotionally and physically (you don’t know how many times I nearly punch someone in the gut).

In the environment that we were working in this was not a good position to be in. 

I have learned a lot about myself through all of this, that I need a good network of friends who can support me through these hard times, that sometimes it is better to be broke than broken, and that we all put way too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect. I have become very pragmatic, or cynical (I’m not sure), about perfection. I realized within the last few months that, though I am not living my ideal life I am living someone’s ideal life, and within the past year or so I have come to believe that we humans have no clue what perfection really looks like. We actually may be living perfectly already but unaware of it because part of what it means to be a perfect human is to be flawed, or at least unique, which oddly we do not like right now.

This does not mean we stop trying to mature and become “better” people. It just means that it is ok to own your mistakes and immature habits as your starting point and to not put another layer of pressure on yourself because you are not what you want to be yet. All this beauty and maturity of character takes time and pain to develop. But there must be rest.

See, even God rested and that is a lesson to us. We were created to need rest so that there would be an opportunity for our community to carry us. On my own I am insecure and very weak but if my friend and family carry me I am powerful. With this support I can and have survived two and a half years of difficult work. With this same support I can do something new and equally good. The quest now is for healing and sustainability.

I do not know what that will look like yet. I do know that it will require a shift in professional focus. I cannot do what I have been doing for the past six years. It just took too much out of me. 

I have a desire to see people understand themselves and to forgive themselves as I have come to forgive myself and am beginning to understand myself. This is the beginning of healing and the true evidence of salvation, because forgiveness is the first step of love, and love is salvation.

Pride Based Anger

It’s not often that I write something and think; hey I could do a whole series of posts on this subject. But after the anger post I just did I realize that I may have started down a line of thinking that will take more time to fully explore. Why explore this publicly? Well we all get angry and I think we all bear a little anger at God. 

The funny thing about my experience is that my anger did not push me away from God. And though I was very upset he still blessed me and gave me good things that I did not deserve. I realize that my experience may not look like yours or anyone else’s.

Having said that let’s be honest, the anger has robed me of one thing I desperately wanted and needed and that was freedom to express joy. I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out a way out of my situation that I wasn’t fully present to those who needed me or to myself. That is a danger in anger.

(I just realized that danger is just anger with a d in front of it. Now I feel like a nerd. I also want to go down a tangent about the relationship between danger and anger. But that would be kind of confusing and really off topic, except I’ve gotten off already.)

Ah, anger. You know, it’s all wounded pride. Pride is a disregard, an ingratitude, toward all things even the self. It’s not arrogance. Arrogance is the thing that says, “I am and deserve the best.” Pride says, “You have done nothing for me.” or I suppose worse yet, “This is your fault.” Pride blames. Unfounded anger comes out as blame in the end. 

No wait let me back up. You need to understand that there are two angers. The pride based anger and righteous anger. All the above has nothing to do with righteous anger. That is an anger born out of true injustice and produces good. Whereas the pride based variety, when taken to extreme, ends in death, literally. Mine was pried based I know because of the things it prevented me from experiencing and because there was no real injustice in the situation. 

It would be so nice if I could just get over myself and not have to go through this struggle but that’s not how things are done here on earth. This is hard training.

More thoughts will come. This will take time to get through, probably a life time.

Unhappiness Toward God

Last Wednesday something quiet and amazing happened. I simultaneously realized, confessed, and marveled at my anger at the Holy Spirit.

Yes, I was upset about a prophesy I’ve been living under for about three years. It was so bad that I hadn’t told many people that the prophesy even existed. Whenever I did there was a deep pain, anger, I would be on the verge of tears. I didn’t know why.

And then while talking myself through an imaginary scenario, this happens all the time, I said to the other person, who wasn’t really there, “I’m angry at the Holy Spirit about X.” This caught me off guard. I’ve never expressed anger at the Holy Spirit before. I stopped the scenario and had to sit with this realization. 

Twenty-two years of walking this path and I don’t know how to be unhappy with God. I mean, it's kind of a crisis, right? Lovers can be angry with each other and recover and be better to each other for it. But I, I never knew I could be angry at God. Ok, intellectually I did know but I thought I wasn't when obviously I was. And God is one of my oldest relationships. If in twenty-two years I was never angry at, say, my brother wouldn't that be weird?

Maybe this unacknowledged anger is why I’ve been frustrated at every turn. Why I’ve fought so hard against good things. Why I’ve tried to control what people know. After this realization I found myself happily telling people that I am an artist, though I’ve fought that too.

Unhappiness toward God is actually common, I think. See there’s some part of us that tells us we’re the only one thinking this way or feeling these things when the reality, like, 98% of the time, is that someone else, usually many someone elses, has felt the same. But what I wonder about right now is the message, that I unknowingly carried, that said I shouldn’t be angry at him. Why not? I don’t think anger is a sign of disrespect.

God does and says plenty of things I don’t like, naturally I would be upset. He made me to get upset. Inside of anger I shouldn’t sin* but this acknowledges I will be angry. The source of my anger could be a flaw in my vision, or it could be a deep thing happening in me, or it could be injustice. I think injustice is the main and legitimate external source of anger. But honestly anger is usually something rooted in me. My own flaws, what’s wrong in me, reacting, just blindly reacting.

I have a lot of anger.

*Eph4:26