Being angry with God is a common feeling that can come up in the life of a Christian, however, it’s not something that is widely talked about. It feels shameful to have any negative feelings towards God and so I think that many people suppress that anger and it comes out in other ways. For me, anger towards God has come out as anger or even hatred towards other Christians, as well as losing my desire to connect with God.
I have often had periods where I had no desire to read the Bible, pray, worship, etc. Sometimes thinking of doing those things would even make me angry. I think when some people feel this they interpret it as losing their faith and even falling away from their Christian beliefs. I think the shame that comes with intense anger or even hatred of God is more than people can bear and it’s easier to let go of a relationship with Him than confront those feelings.
Before I became a Christian I fully embraced my anger and hatred of God anything related to Christianity. I would attack anyone who tried to talk to me about Jesus with venom. I said terrible things about Christians and used Jesus’ name as a swear word. When I became a Christian I naturally assumed those feelings would disappear. I loved God with all my heart and gave myself over fully to Him, so when my feelings of intense anger came up I was surprised and ashamed.
For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Romans 10:11
The Christian culture in the United States seems to revolve around an attitude of appearing perfect and hiding sin. We have to look and act like we have a changed heart even though we haven’t done the work to change anything. When Christians are exposed for some secret sin and we are shocked, it’s because they are playing the role of a good Christian but are not fully surrendering their lives to Jesus.
It takes more than looking or dressing a certain way to follow Jesus. Those things don’t matter to Him as much as surrender heart, because He already knows the condition of our hearts. It is shame that causes us to hide the darkness within us, but to see that darkness is a blessing. It is relieving to stop having to hide everything and instead find freedom and healing from it.
The more I have been willing to look at what my deeper beliefs were the more I could understand the motivation for my outward behavior. If I have hatred for God, there is a reason for that. If I believe God doesn’t care about me, or has abandoned me in my suffering, it’s because of a past event that has shaped that belief. Beliefs come from impactful moments in our lives where we make decisions bout why something is true.
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion; instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy.
Isaiah 61:7
As a ritual abuse survivor, I have been forced to renounce Jesus more times than I can count. I have been put to death to force my agreement in it. When you are being tortured as a child to become part of the Antichrist army, there is no escaping this renunciation. They will not stop torturing you until you have agreed to it.
Jesus knows this, and He knows it was not your free will. It is manipulation that has made the agreement, but in order to protect ourselves we have to believe it was our choice. We have to hide the information about the torture and the ritual abuse to survive. The abusers are banking on the dissociation they created to keep us separated into hundreds of pieces that can’t connect. It’s the only way they can keep the programming in because once we learn the truth there won’t be anything keeping us from Jesus.
The first time I learned that I had renounced Jesus I was horrified. I hated myself. It was such deep self-hatred that I wanted to die. What kind of Christian am I if I could do that? It impacted my daily life for a long time. Yet nothing has impacted me more than the underlying pain and the contracts I signed that I had no awareness of.
For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.
2 Corinthians 7:10
Those agreements with death and to make Lucifer my Jesus have caused me so much grief and I could not understand the source. I just thought God didn’t care about me, or perhaps Christian beliefs were false. The Bible was just made up and I had chosen wrong. I lived day to day in a spiritual desert because I couldn’t understand why I felt so far away from God, and I felt helpless to change it.
I wish it were a simple thing to find the root beliefs of our anger towards God, and we could just confront them and pull them out. The enemy has worked hard to bury them under so much shame and self-hatred that it makes it nearly impossible to find on our own. Thank God that we have a helper in the Holy Spirit who can walk us through the process of understanding our thoughts and feelings.
It is a slow process, but it starts with surrender. We must be willing to die to ourselves and surrender our pain and shame to Jesus. We must be willing to face the fact that we have any feelings of anger towards God, let alone hatred. We must be willing to let go of the shame it has caused us and embrace forgiveness of ourselves and God, even though neither of us is responsible.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:13
I have been on my healing journey for nearly ten years now, and I am still finding memories of renouncing Jesus and dealing with anger towards Him. Sometimes I don’t even realize I have anger, but it comes back to that aversion to prayer and Bible study that leads me to investigate why. That is the reason I am writing this blog post because it just came up for me again.
Jesus is always kind and loving to me, even when I am struggling with these feelings. If I am unable to read the Bible or pray, He understands the pain that has caused that. He has never blamed me, but walked with me through all of it and used it for my good. It’s because I have been willing to face it that I have been able to grow a more intimate relationship with Him.
Through my struggles and anger, I have learned so much more about the character and nature of our Father. I have come to understand the difference between His sovereignty and a programmer manipulating me. I have understood His holiness in the face of the evil that has happened to me. While the enemy meant to break me, God used it to increase my capacity for His Spirit.
He is so good. Nothing can compare to His goodness and at the end of this age, all of our fear, pain, and shame will fall away in His presence. We won’t remember the hell we’ve been put through because we will be living in His glory forever. Keep fighting the good fight – He is worthy.
“On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him.
Malachi 3:17
