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When I reflect on our anger with God, I immediately remembered of how Adam reacted when God confronted him about eating the forbidden fruit that Adam thought would "make him become like God." God asked Adam, "What have you done?" Adam blamed God and the woman: "The woman that you gave to me gave me the fruit and I ate it."
Ever since, we have been looking for somebody else to blame for whatever trouble we are in.
Very soon after Adam tried to fight with God and lost, Cain became angry
with God and killed his brother, Abel. The biblical account of Cain and
Abel is a remarkable study of how anger springs from rejection and leads
to hostility and internalized anger, isolation and depression. The
story in Genesis 4:3-16 does not tell us why Cain's sacrifice was
rejected, but it was. Wayne Oates said, "The angry self is the rejected
self." Cain could not get at God, who had rejected him; so he
transferred and misdirected his anger and struck out and killed his
brother. Later, Cain became depressed, isolated, lonely, paranoid and
homeless. He was afraid and his self-esteem was gone. God acted to
preserve Cain and give him a fresh start.
Job's wife had some definite advice for Job when he lost all of his
possessions, his health, and his family and just about everything except
his wife. She said, "Curse God and die!" Some have said that Job's
wife remained with him as his most severe test of all! Job's friends,
whom Job called "miserable comforters", came to Job to accuse him of
terrible sins that must have caused his suffering. They were wrong.
One of the most complex biblical stories about anger, violence,
depression and suicide is the saga of Saul, David and Jonathan in 1 and
2 Samuel, especially 1 Samuel 18-20 and 2 Samuel 1. Saul "loved" David,
but Saul also tried to kill both David and Jonathan.
The current listing of major religious denominations in America now
numbers close to 500. The individual denominations are divided into
liberal and conservative, homophobic and gay-affirming, rich and poor,
White, Black, Asian, Hispanic and many other isolating configurations.
I grew up in a very small town in South Carolina where there was a clear
division among the Baptist churches. First Baptist Church for town
people, Calvary Baptist Church and Lydia Baptist Church for mill
workers, and separate and very unequal Black Baptist Churches, along
with various "independent" Baptists. These divisions have greatly
multiplied in recent years, and there is no end in sight. Religious
separatism breeds hostility and leads to violence, suicide, physical and
verbal abuse, ridicule, family fights, child abuse and war.
As long as churches continue to identify themselves by whom they reject
and leave out, even by implication, they fail to be "Christian." Every
major story of the actions and teachings of Jesus in the Four Gospels
demonstrates the principle of inclusion. Including everybody was not
just a teaching, it was the main teaching. Jesus included everybody as
his basic plan and his way of life.
Many of you have rejected and abandoned the church because of the anger
that church has created in you through rejection and abuse. You are not
angry with God. But are you? We have been so brain washed by the
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" preaching and teaching of
evangelical churches that we have difficulty seeing God any other way.
We are a little like the man who got his arm broken in three places. He
decided not to go back to those places again! We have been going down a
dark haunted highway where we are whipped and bruised by shadowy forces
that claim to speak and act for God. No wonder we are angry. We need
to find a different highway to travel.
Religion that creates hostility between people and that intentionally
sets people against other people is alien to God, the universe and
objective rational thinking. Anger is contagious. Angry preaching
produces angry people. Judgmental preaching produces hypocrites.
Hostile judgmental hypocrites give the whole human race a bad name!
Conquer your anger, or your anger will conquer you.
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Redford Williams, M.D. and Virginia Williams, Ph.D. Steps to Recovery from Bible Abuse Rembert Truluck
Websites:
Steps to Recovery From Bible Abuse
Other Articles By Rembert Truluck:
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