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Belief in an Angry God is Linked to Mental Illness

By Jeremy Myers
15 Comments

Belief in an Angry God is Linked to Mental Illness

I get dozens of emails every week from people all over the world who are scared of God.

They had some bad thought enter their mind and are now afraid that God is going to kill their family and then strike them down with cancer before burning their house down around their ears and sending them off to eternal torture in hell.

angry godThey are so scared, they cannot eat, they cannot sleep, they cannot think. They tell me about physical problems, emotional problems, relational problems, and all sorts of other problems they are experiencing because they are so afraid that God is out to get them because of something bad they said or thought about God.

Does Your Church Teach an Angry God?

Whenever I get these emails, this is the very first question I ask them. I ask them (1) if they attend church, and if so (2) what their church teaches them about God. Without fail, these Christians who contact me have attended, or currently are attending, a church which teaches them about an angry, vindictive, vengeful God.

Usually, they have heard some fire and brimstone sermon about the unpardonable sin or the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and because of the book I have written on the subject, people contact me because they are scared out of their mind that they have committed this sin.

I always try to tell them that God loves them, forgives them, and accepts them … no matter what they have said or done. Due to the large number of emails I get these days, I rarely can get into long explanations or discussions via email about why this is true.

But my heart always goes out for these poor people. Their emails are full of pain and fear, and I sometimes think that many of them are manic-depressive, or bi-polar, or maybe even have OCD.

An Angry God and Mental Illness

So it was with great interest that I recently read that belief in an angry God is linked to mental illness. Here is the article I read:

Professor Nava Silton of the Marymount Manhattan College and her colleagues have reached these conclusions following their analyzing data collected during the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults.

Thus, Professor Nava Silton focused on three different categories of people: those who believe in an angry God, those who believe in a loving deity and those who work on the assumption that God is a neutral entity.

“Three beliefs about God were tested separately in ordinary least squares regression models to predict five classes of psychiatric symptoms: general anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion,” reads the abstract for this paper.

Furthermore, “Belief in a punitive God was positively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, while belief in a benevolent God was negatively associated with four psychiatric symptoms, controlling for demographic characteristics, religiousness, and strength of belief in God. Belief in a deistic God and one’s overall belief in God were not significantly related to any psychiatric symptoms.”

The link between the belief in an angry God and mental illness was studied in the context of the Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, which states that anxiety disorders are mainly the result of the brain’s not properly interpreting threats.

Professor Nava Silton wished to stress the fact that her research does not establish causation between the belief in an angry deity and anxiety disorders.

Quite the contrary, the study merely pins down a correlation between the two.

“That means we’re not saying belief caused psychiatric symptoms, but we see relationships between beliefs and these psychiatric symptoms,” the Professor emphasized.

The disclaimer there at the end is interesting, but I think this was more of a copout by the Professor to avoid becoming the target of angry religious people who feel he might be blaming God for mental illness.

Ironically, those who hold to a belief in an angry God also believe that God strikes people with mental illness because of their sin and disobedience…

It may be clear that God has something to do with what happens everyday in the world, but probably not personally to every person that’s ill, sometimes they just don’t the best care of themselves and their bodies.

Anyway, I think that there is a clear correlation between belief in an angry God and mental problems. I further believe that we become like the God we worship. We become like the God we believe in. So if we believe in an angry, vengeful deity, we are likely to behave in angry, vengeful ways. And of course, if we believe that God’s anger could be directed at us, life will be filled with fear and dread.

belief in an angry god

What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you believe in a God of anger, retaliation, vengeance, and violence? Do you believe that God’s anger could be directed toward you? If so, how do you cope with this idea? If, on the other hand, you’re like me and you used to believe in an angry God but now believe that God looks like Jesus, what happened in your life to bring about this change?Fi

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: anger, violence of God, wrath of God

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You sound Angry, Bitter, and Critical

By Jeremy Myers
12 Comments

You sound Angry, Bitter, and Critical

My neighbor’s name is Carissa. She is twenty-one years old. And she is beautiful.

But she has a very … strange relationship with her boyfriend. His name is Kirk. It is not that Kirk is abusive … not really. I suppose you could say he is controlling and manipulative, but I don’t even know if that is exactly accurate. Something just seems “off.”

He wants to know where she is at all times, even though she hardly ever knows what he is doing most of the week.

He demands to know where she spends her money, and also requires that she contribute a portion of her money to their “date fund.”

Their “dates” are really something closer to appointments. They go on one date per week, from 7:00-9:00 PM every Friday night. If she is late or has to cancel, Kirk wants to know why. If she doesn’t wear the right clothes on their dates, he chides her for not looking her best. He constantly reminds her that if she wants their relationship to work, these dates are critical.

But they do the same thing every week for their date. He picks her up at 7:00 sharp. They listen to music on the way to a restaurant. He only lets her pick from 20 “date approved” songs. And they go to the same restaurant every week. He orders food for her without asking what she wants. What he orders varies from week to week, and while it is occasionally the cheapest thing on the menu, it is never the most expensive.

During the meal, he asks her how her week was, but doesn’t listen to her answers. He does most of the talking. When the meal is over, they go for a walk around a local park while holding hands. Then, at 8:50 PM they get back into their car so that he can drop her off at her house by 9:00 sharp. He gives her a kiss on the cheek and says, “I’ll see you next week! And remember, I’ll be thinking about you all week long.”

That’s their date.

During the week, Kirk sends her emails and text messages, but they all sound identical to the ones he sent last week. “I’m thinking about you!” he texts. “Can’t wait to see you this Friday! How’s your week going?” But when she texts back, he never replies.

I could go on and on about this strange relationship Carissa has with her boyfriend.

holding hands

But last week something happened …

This relationship has been going on for several years now, and I have gently tried to tell her that she should dump this guy and look for a new boyfriend. She always says that I don’t understand what they have together. That their relationship is fine. That he loves her and she loves him.

But last week, as she told me how great her relationship was, I must confess I got a little upset.

I said to her, “You could do so much better! You are young, beautiful, creative, talented! There is so much you could do. So much you could experience! So much of life you are missing out on! This guy Kirk … I don’t know what his deal is … but he is not right for you! He doesn’t really care about you, despite all his lame texts and empty emails and pointless dates. He apparently just likes to show your picture to his friends and say, ‘That’s my girlfriend.’ But that’s not a relationship! Get out! Leave him! I hate this guy. I hate what he does to you! He is not good! He doesn’t make you shine! He doesn’t honor you, respect you, or treat you like the princess you are! He does not love you. He is only using you.”

And do you want to know what Carissa said to me?

She looked at me with sort of a shocked, hurt, confused look on her face, and she said, “You sound angry … Are you bitter about a bad relationship from your past? … Why are you so critical of my boyfriend?”

I was stunned.

Angry? Bitter? Critical?

I don’t want to be any of those things …

Was she right?

I do often get upset at things when I shouldn’t. And I have had rocky times in my past relationships. My marriage isn’t perfect. And could it be that I was frustrated at my own failures as a husband and was unfairly and critically projecting these onto her boyfriend?

Maybe I should just back off and raise up my hands and say, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I know very little about your relationship. I wish the two of you all the best.”

But then I realized something.

If Carissa were my daughter, would I feel any different?

No! In fact, my love for my daughter would only amplify my feelings. If Carissa were my daughter, I would absolutely, definitely, be angry, bitter, and critical. Love would demand that I be angry, bitter, and critical.

Why? Because my daughter deserves better! Since I love her, I am required to fight for her. To hate how she is being treated. To be bitter that some jerk is treating her like trash. My love for her requires me to be critical of him, his ways, his tone, his attitude, and his complete lack of genuine love for my daughter.

So absolutely I was angry! Angry about a fake relationship that was passed off as the genuine thing!

You better believe I was bitter! Bitter that someone else’s daughter was getting treated so callously!

And of course I was critical! Someone needed to be critical of this guy so that hopefully Carissa would see that how she was being treated was not right and that she deserved so much better!

I told her these things, but she didn’t hear them. She was convinced that she knew better and that my “anger, bitterness, and critical spirit” were causing me to only see the bad things in her deadbeat boyfriend.

She admitted that her boyfriend and her relationship with him wasn’t perfect, but said, “There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship.”

“That’s true,” I told her. “But there certainly are better relationships than the one you’ve got.”

“I used to think so too,” she replied. “But now I realize that those sorts of relationships are only in movies and books. We all long for those sorts of relationships, but the sooner we realize they don’t actually exist, the better off we’ll be.”

better relationships

I understand where she is coming from. I do. I was in bad relationships when I was young, and nobody else could tell me they were bad. I had to come to that realization on my own.

And like her, I believed that there were no relationships like the ones in movies and books. But I have also started to see in my marriage to my own wife, that unless you believe that your relationship can get better, and work toward that goal, it will only get worse.

So I trust that Carissa will soon learn that her boyfriend is not good for her. I hope that she will leave him and will find the relationship she longs for her in her heart but doesn’t believe actually exists.

I hope she will eventually learn to see that although I was angry, bitter, and critical, it was only because I loved her, and wanted something better for her than what she has.

abusive church … By the way, this entire story was a parable.

I do not have a neighbor named Carissa. I don’t even know anyone named Carissa.

But I do have a neighbor named “Christian.”

… And she has a boyfriend named “church.”

This post was part of the May 2015 Synchroblog on the topic of anger. Here are other contributors to this month’s topic:

  • Mark Votava – Becoming Dreamers Again
  • Carol Kuniholm – God’s Economy: Managing Anger Assets
  • Clara Ogwuazor Mbamalu – The Easiest Way to Control and Manage Anger 
  • K.W. Leslie – Anger
  • Glenn Hager – The Many Faces of Anger
  • Paul Meier – The Value of Anger 
  • Pastor Fedex – Chain Reaction 
  • Michael Boden – Anger is Not a Godly Emotion
  • Kathy Escobar – underneath anger.

God is Redeeming Church Bible & Theology Topics: anger, bitter, church, critical spirit, love, synchroblog, Theology of the Church

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God is Not Angry With You

By Jeremy Myers
10 Comments

God is Not Angry With You

God is not angryOne of the reasons Jesus came was to reveal God to us.

Among all the truths that Jesus revealed to us about God, one of the most critical truths in connection to the violence of God in the Old Testament is that God is not angry.

The violence of God in the Bible makes it appear that God is angry with us, and one way He deals with His anger is by slaughtering people through flood, earthquakes, pestilences, diseases, and enemy armies.

God is Not Angry with the World

When people believe that God is angry with the world, and is actively punishing us for the sins we have committed by sending us diseases, famines, earthquakes, storms, terror, and death, we malign the character of God. God does not torture, rape, kill, and murder in order to teach us to love and obey Him. While there is indeed blood on God’s hands, this blood is His own. God does not force us to bleed for Him so that we might learn some sort of lesson about obedience.

[God does not bring] about suffering in order to discipline a person. …This presumption morphs to cruel absurdity when we are speaking of horrors like a man mourning his murdered wife or a mother grieving over her stillborn child.

This way of thinking takes the cruel arbitrariness of life and deifies it by projecting it onto God. When this is done, the beautiful clarity of God’s loving will revealed in Christ and centered on the cross is obscured by a nonbiblical picture of a God of power. And Jesus’ simple words “If you see me, you see the Father” are qualified by every terror-stricken scream of torture throughout history (Greg Boyd, Is God to Blame? 82).

But God is not angry.

God is not out for bloody revenge.

God does not punish, kill, torture, or maim so that by some inscrutable aspect of His mysterious will, He might teach us a lesson.

Quite to the contrary, as I reveal in my book, The Atonement of God, God’s nature and character is revealed in Jesus Christ.

God is not Angry

How Jesus Reveals God is Not Angry

When Jesus began to minister in Galilee, one of the common threads of His miracles and message was that God is not angry at us. Instead, God loves us, and wants to redeem, deliver, and rescue us from the clutches of Satan, the bondage of sin, and the sting of death.

I wish we had space and time to go miracle by miracle and parable by parable through the Gospel accounts to see how Jesus reveals the love and forgiveness of God through everything He says and does.

Such a study would reveal that the consistent message of Jesus is not that God is angry with us and has departed from us, but that we have misunderstood God and have departed from Him, and now, finally, God is bridging that divide by drawing near to us and reconciling us to Himself once and for all in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

God is not angry

The Parable of the Prodigal Son Reveals that God is Not Angry

Take one of the more popular parables as an example: the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know the story. A man has two sons. The younger asks for his portion of the inheritance, and when he has received it, travels to a far country where he squanders his inheritance on parties. He eventually finds himself living and eating with the swine, and so decided to return home to his father, in the hopes that he might be taken on as a servant. But when he is a long way off, the father sees him coming and runs to him. Then the father throws a party for his long-lost son, which leads to a teachable moment for the older son.

There are multiple levels of interpretation to this parable, but one is sufficient for our purposes here.

The prodigal son is not just a story about a wayward Christian, but is a story of cosmic proportions. It is about a father who loved his son so much, he let the son think the worst of him, insult him, slap in the face, treat him as if he were dead, and then on top of it all, depart into a foreign land. Note that the father goes nowhere. The son has done all the leaving while the father stays right where he was.

prodigal sonWhen the son returns, the father has clearly been watching for his return, for when the son is still a long way off, the father sees him coming, and runs to meet him on the road. For a wealthy middle-eastern man, any sort of running was considered shameful, but to run to meet a son who had betrayed you was extremely shameful. Nevertheless, due to the father’s great love for his son, he runs to meet him, and not only that, but gives him a warm welcome and throws a party for him.

The only thing that is really different about this parable and how God behaves toward prodigal humanity is that God came Himself into the far country to seek and save the lost. Then, when God found His lost child, the child killed Him.

But other parables represent this aspect of what God has done for humanity in Jesus Christ. The point of this parable, as well as many of the other parables by Jesus, is to show humanity how badly we have misunderstood God and what God is doing in this world, and that God is not out to destroy us, slaughter us, or punish us, but is seeking to bring us back into His family, to rescue us from the pigsty we find ourselves living in, and to throw us a party when we are reconciled to Him.

This sort of message is found, not just in the parables of Jesus, but in all the other teachings and miracles of Jesus as well. By the love of God, those who were once far off have been brought near and have been accepted once again into God’s family.

God is Not Angry; God is Love

God is not angry with us; He loves us! And since the first sin of Adam, God has been doing everything He can to rescue and deliver us from sin, death, and devil.

The violent portrayals of God in the Bible are actually part of this rescue operation of God. He is not the one commanding or performing these violent actions, but is instead, taking the blame for them. Just like the father of the prodigal son, out of His great love for us, God is shaming Himself for our sake.

God of the Old Testament and JesusHow can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

These are the sorts of questions we discuss and (try to) answer in my online discipleship group. Members of the group can also take ALL of my online courses (Valued at over $1000) at no charge. Learn more here: Join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship Group I can't wait to hear what you have to say, and how we can help you better understand God and learn to live like Him in this world!

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: anger, prodigal son, Theology of God, Theology of Jesus, violence of God, When God Pled Guilty

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Advice for a Crisis

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

Advice for a Crisis

If you are facing a crisis in your life, or know someone who is, here is some advice for both situations.

If you Know Someone Who is in a Crisis

If you have a friend facing a crisis, just go be with them.

Just listen to them vent.

Don’t chide them for their emotions, fear, anger, hurt, despair.

Please don’t quote Scripture unless they ask you to.

Don’t offer theological truths which you think will help them.

Don’t ask them what sin they might have committed to make God discipline them.

In other words, don’t throw rocks. If you are afraid of saying the wrong thing, don’t say anything at all.

Most of the time, hurting people just want others to be there.

If you see something tangible that they need, offer to provide it for them, food, clothing, money, helping hands, resources. The only intangible aid you should offer is prayer, and only say “I’ll pray for you” if you are also thinking of ways to be an answer to your own prayers.

My father died when I was two, and my mother says that what I have written above holds true in that sort of crisis as well. A friend of mine lost his brother in a hiking accident a few years ago, and he confirms this as well.

Crisis Advice

When Facing Your Own Crisis

In a recent crisis my wife and I faced, one of the things that initially bothered us was how when we shared with others that we were going through a crisis, they responded by sharing a crisis that they were facing or had faced in their own lives.

Our first reaction was, “Don’t try to turn this around to you. I’m the one in pain!” But then we realized, “Wow, how self-centered are we?”

Yes, pain hurts, and sometimes life stinks.

But it’s this way for everybody at times.

And one way to get over your own pain, fear, hurt, and disappointment, is to realize that it’s part of life, that others are facing it too (and many of them much more than you are), and that you can either have a pity party for yourself, or try to help others through their own pain, which in turn helps you.

To help others through their own pain, go back and look at point number one above.

A Story About a Crisis

One day a Rabbi stood on a hill overlooking a certain city. The Rabbi watched in horror as a band of Cossacks on horseback suddenly attacked the town, killing innocent men, women, and children. Some of the slaughtered were his own disciples. Looking up to heaven, the Rabbi exclaimed, “Oh, if only I were God.”

An astonished student, standing nearby, asked, “But, Master, if you were God, what would you do differently?” The Rabbi replied, “If I were God I would do nothing differently. If I were God, I would understand.”

Like it or not, I think the Rabbi is right. The best we can do in a crisis (and maybe the most we should do) is simply say, “I don’t understand.”

In the comments below, please share your own suggestions for handling a life crisis, whether it is your own crisis or helping someone else through their crisis.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: anger, counseling, crisis, Discipleship, fear, hurt, life, mourning, pain

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Is Yelling at God a Sin?

By Jeremy Myers
35 Comments

Is Yelling at God a Sin?

One thing I have learned in times of crisis is that God can take our anger. If we feel like yelling at God, it’s okay… He can take it.

My wife and I were discussing this and she talked about how it is just like our children.

Children often get angry at their parents for not giving them something they really wanted (like candy before dinner), or taking something away that they had (like a sharp knife). The parents, if they are good parents, do this because the parent sees the bigger picture and knows what is best. While we don’t enjoy having our children upset at us in such situations, we can handle their anger because we know that we did what was best.

yelling at God

Yelling at God our Father

Similarly, we are God’s children. As our Father, He sees the big picture and knows what is best for us. We may get angry and upset, and if we do, He can take it because He knows we just don’t understand. I don’t think such anger is sinful or carnal, but just anger from ignorance.

God would rather have us come to Him in anger than run from Him in anger. When we are angry at God, but try to hide it, this doesn’t please God, for this is just a form of pious dishonesty. Do you feel like yelling at God? Don’t hold back! Tell God what is wrong.

Yesterday, one of my daughters was angry at me, and I couldn’t figure out why. As I tried to figure out what had happened, I gently probed her with questions. But rather than answer my questions, she just kept saying “Nothing!” No matter what I asked, that was her answer. This is how we act toward God when we don’t vent our anger at Him, and instead just clam up about what we’re feeling.

Yelling at God is a healthy spiritual and relational practice.

The Psalmists all understood this, and in the Psalms, we encounter some of the most angry writing in all of Scripture, and much of it is directed at God. The Psalmists had raw emotions and were not afraid to vent at God. If you ever feel like yelling at God, I highly recommend you read some of the Psalms and yell at God along with the Psalmists.

Yelling at God reveals Honesty

God wants to be with us in our pain and anger, especially if He is the one who caused it. This is because going to God when we are angry and frustrated at life and at Him is an indication of our love for Him.

So are you angry at God? Are you angry about something he allowed to happen in your life?

Go ahead. Yell at God. Curse if you have to. There is nothing you can say that God hasn’t heard already… It’s not like God has virgin ears. Tell God your blasphemous thoughts. You have permission to be honest with God about your thoughts and your feelings.

God always prefers angry honesty over the sullen silent treatment. So yell away.

In my own experience, after I have yelled at God, I have often “felt” His arms around me afterward, saying, “Thank you for letting it all out. I was waiting for you to be honest with me. Now, let’s talk about it…”

What is your experience with yelling at God? Have you ever done it? How did you feel afterward? Did Christians condemn you for doing so? Did God? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Can I pray when I’m angry at God?

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: anger, blasphemy, Discipleship, honesty, life is hard, prayer

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