When You're Angry At God

Is it Blasphemous to be Angry at God?

By Adam Dickter

Our faith in the Creator leads us to praise and thank Him when we feel blessed and content for all we have been given. So it might seem only natural, if we believe everything is destined in heaven, to feel cheated or picked on when times are tough.

If we are taught to believe that God controls everything, how can we avoid resentment for tragic events, failed or missing relationships, illness or financial setbacks? Unlike our relationships with mortals, negative feelings about God can make us feel guilty or uneasy. Maybe our anger will only incite more hardship.

But in the end, say many rabbis, we are only human, and there is nothing wrong with exploring our complex emotions.

Adam Dickter is Assistant Managing Editor at The Jewish Week.

God's Response

"God can certainly tolerate your anger," says Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, spiritual care coordinator for the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services in New York. "Being angry shows that you are in a relationship."

The Scriptures are full of examples of larger-than-life figures who expressed their anger at God.

Perhaps the best-known example is the Book of Job, in which a pious man at first accepts the misery in his life as punishment for his sins. But even he has his limit. After the death of his children, the destruction of his possessions and the infliction of painful illness, Job began to question God, insisting he had done nothing to deserve his trials. God's response is an angry one: "Where were you when I created the Earth?" In other words, who is this puny mortal to question the Master of the Universe?

Failed Prophecy

With his thirsty tribes waiting for water in the desert, Moses defiantly struck a rock with his staff twice, rather than ask it to open its spring as God commanded. As a result, he was punished with death before his people entered the Promised Land.

In the book of Jonah, the prophet is told by God to warn the people of Nineveh that they will soon be destroyed, but he balks at his mission and jumps on a ship to Tarshish.

When the people of the Kingdom of Judah ignored the prophet Jeremiah, who was trying to warn them of the impending Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, he gives God one of the sharpest rebukes ever recorded: "O Lord, you have deceived me." He had believed that the prophecy would be heeded.

Surrendering To God's Judgment

Rabbi Twersky recalls the Biblical chapter where the patriarch Jacob's sons wanted to return to Egypt taking their brother Benjamin with them. Jacob feared for Benjamin's safety, unaware that the Egyptian viceroy who summoned them was his other son, Joseph. When the brothers convince him, he loses faith and says "I am bereaved," as if his son were already dead.

"Even Jacob allowed himself to express anger," says Rabbi Tweski. "But in the end he surrendered to God's judgment. There may be some super-tzadikim [righteous people] whose faith in God is so perfect they don't see anything bad. But for super-ordinary mortals, when we feel pain we say 'ouch, why are you hurting me?' Only later on, in retrospect, do we say we accept God's judgment."

Beyond Guilt And Anger

"Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us?" writes Rabbi Kushner. "Could it be that He doesn't decide which families shall give birth to a handicapped child, that He did not single out Ron to be crippled by a bullet or Helen by a degenerative disease, but rather that He stands ready to help them and us cope with our tragedies if we could only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him? Could it be that "How could God do this to me?" is really the wrong question for us to ask?"

But struggling with our feelings about God, says Rabbi Dickstein, is a natural tendency that affirms the nature of an evolving relationship.

"It's all a part of the struggle," she says. "When people are struggling with something they don't think should have happened to them, and they don't know how they can tolerate it, if they believe God has a role in their lives anger can be very natural."

"It's all about the engagement."