Growing Up With An Angry God
by Keith Watson
I grew up with church parents. You know, parents who were at church every time the church gathered – Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday and for all the extra events. We moved a pretty good bit when I was younger and that meant we attended several different churches. I am thankful for my parents and for the years I had in church as a child.
But not everything that I took from those early years in church was good.
I don’t remember many sermons or Sunday School lessons, so I don’t blame any of the people in those places. I know well enough that sometimes we hear things that aren’t really said or interpret the words of others in ways they were not meant to be understood.
Let me get to the point. I grew up with an angry God.
Somehow, regardless of what I was actually taught, my take away from all of the Sunday School lessons and sermons about me and God was that God was really angry with me. I saw him as an ever-watching perfectionist who expected my perfect obedience to his every wish. I remember one Sunday in Climax, Georgia (yes that’s a real place) hearing a sermon on the horrors of hell. Hell was the place for all of God’s stored up anger and wrath to be poured out forever on people who sinned. I knew I didn’t want that so I did what I needed to do! I walked the aisle in fear and with trembling and after a talk with the pastor and I’m sure my parents, we set up my baptism.
But that didn’t change my view of God.
I still saw him as an ever-watching perfectionist who expected my perfect obedience to him. With each failure on my part, I believed that God stored wrath. No matter how large or small, each failure on my part added to his anger with me and when he had had enough, he would punish me. Everything bad in my life, I saw connected to my failure and his anger. Seriously – EVERYTHING.
I didn’t love God. I feared him.
I didn’t see him as someone to be desired. I saw him as needing appeasement.
I didn’t pursue him. I tried to hide from him, to hide my failings, my sins, myself.
Eventually, I stopped going to church or church events.
As an adult, finding misery in my life at almost every turn, I decided to “try God” again. I began attending services, even joining a men’s group. If I was going to “try God,” I was going to be all in. An amazing thing happened at one of those men’s meetings – I met Jesus!
At 24 or 25 years old, I finally met the Jesus I had learned about and knew about from all of those years of church.
It was real. My life was changed.
Well, most of it.
I still saw God as the ever-watching perfectionist expecting my perfect obedience and always ready to strike me with some anger filled punishment for my failings. As a result, my pursuits were often of knowledge – knowing more about God and what it meant to be good, and obedience – I must do better and be better.
This is getting long! But I thought it was important, because I don’t think that my understanding of who God is strays far from the understanding of many, many others. So let me share some good news. I was wrong. Somewhere along the way in my journey I discovered a whole other side of who God is and who I am.
First, I think it would be wrong if I did not affirm the truth that God is angry with sin and that the Bible does clearly teach that some will bear his wrath against sin forevermore. But here’s the thing. They won’t bear his angry wrath simply because they sinned; it will be because they did not trust Him for their redemption from sin, their salvation from that wrath. Ultimately it will be because they did not trust in his provision of Jesus – “whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life” John 3:16.
The good news is that God has, in Christ Jesus, done for us what we could not do for ourselves. Jesus lived the perfect life that we could not. He died the death that we deserve because of sin, taking God’s just wrath against sin on himself. Then, on the third day he rose from death, defeating death, sin and Satan for all who trust in him. This is the gospel!
But wait, there’s more!
While I understood this in part, I am still discovering all that it means. For example, if Christ really bore the wrath of God that I deserve, then God is not looking for reasons to punish me. Jesus took care of that! (Romans 3:24-25)
AND
If it is true that when I believed, I also became a Child of God, and it is true, then I am not an outsider that God looks on with suspicion or disdain, I am now a son! And God is not just God, he is my father. (John 1:12, Ephesians 1)
AND
Because God is by his very nature, good, righteous, and perfect, then he cannot be a bad father. In fact he is the BEST father! Look at these words from Jesus:
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:7-11
The gospel really does change everything!
Jesus has not just made a way to heaven for me, if I can be good enough. He has taken away God’s anger toward me, and he has made me a son rather than an enemy. God is a good, good father who loves his children and wants their very best. He is not looking for reasons to punish, but like any good father he is looking for reasons and ways to give good gifts!
This doesn’t mean that every day is a great day and that life doesn’t have bad days and suffering. But it does mean that God is not angry with me because I failed him. It does mean that my bad days aren’t bad because my father is disappointed in me and angry. It means I don’t have to hide from him when I stumble and fall short of perfection. It means I am no longer working in fear to please him, I am free to enjoy him as the good and loving father that he is.
Sometimes my Christian walk is one step forward and two steps back, and that’s OK with my father. When that happens, he is still for me. He still loves me. And he isn’t angry with me. I am his beloved, loved, and cherished child and I will be until the day of my final redemption, when he welcomes me into his presence forevermore.
