The Flaming Toilet of Death

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (6) - Conclusion (and the answer is "No")

This is the 6th and final post in a series centered around the question of "Is God primarily angry?"

Previous posts are here:
Is God "Primarily Angry" (1)
Is God "Primarily Angry" (2) - Defining Our Terms
Is God "Primarily Angry" (3) - Trinity
Is God "Primarily Angry" (4) - Cross
Is God "Primarily Angry" (5) - Eschatology

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"Is God primarily angry?"

That was the question posed in a sermon several months ago.

Initially, my intent in writing this series of posts was to simply address the fact that people often believe God to be "primarily angry" because the God that they are presented with from a variety of sources and in a variety of ways is, in fact, "primarily angry".  That's all in my prior posts, though, and I don't want to rehash it all here.  But this series turned into a good deal more for me, and for that I'm grateful.

So after a good deal of rambling in these 5 posts over the course of several months, how shall I conclude?

Perhaps I'll return to the beginning.  As I stated in an earlier post, we live in a semantic universe.    What do we mean by the term "primarily angry"?

Does the term "primarily" suggest that God has "parts" and that we're attempting to identify which of these parts is the more fundamental?  Does "primarily" expose a sort of tension that our theology demands within the heart of God?  Are certain traits at war with one another?  A tension between love and justice?  A god whose mercy and righteousness war for the right to be "primary"?

What do we mean by "anger"?  Is divine anger in the interest and for the good of the object of anger (think discipline) or in the interest and for the satisfaction of the offended party aka God (think retribution as an end in and of itself?)  These aren't the same thing after all.  And I think people frequently defend God's anger using the former, but effectively mean the latter.

Now all that said, I absolutely love the way that the question (a loaded question for sure) was posed to the congregation and it inspired me to wrestle with it for myself.  After all, the semantics cannot obscure that the question itself is fairly easy to apprehend at first glance.  It does it's job.  Do I believe deep down that God looks at me with anger or disappointment at my behavior, lack of faith and gratitude?  Is God impossible to please?  Does God love reluctantly and through gritted teeth?  Do I use the word "love" but actually mean something else?  Something more sinister?  Something that isn't consistent with "love" at all?

The way that the question was phrased reveals our propensity to perceive a sort of tension within the heart of God - justice vs. mercy, love vs. holiness, etc.  And we need to get on God's good side.  Where does this come from?  And why does it so stubbornly persist?  Is it true?

There is a lot that I might have said but didn't.  I didn't mention Biblical violence (Old Testament genocide) at all.  I didn't mention personal experience at all - that sense that "God is out to get me" after going through a rough stretch of loss and pain.  This is completely legitimate and I have great sympathy for it.  I suppose that I chose not to address it here because there are many people who believe in an angry God even if things are going well.

I've argued that, in our time and place, common theological understandings of eschatology and atonement reinforce and even require a "primarily angry God".  Our anxiety that God is primarily angry comes from them and not in spite of them.  This isn't isolated to the theologically minded.  I think all Christians, rightly or wrongly, have a basic idea of "why Jesus had to die" even if it isn't wrapped up in fancy language.  And these things may work deep below the surface in the heart and mind of the individual and be so integrated within the ethos of a faith community as to go virtually unnoticed, but I believe such things whisper to us.  They shape how we formulate our conceptions of the nature of divine love, anger, forgiveness, and our own worth. They have for me.

One sees a "primarily angry God" emerge because they do believe what they're told, not because they don't.  Returning to my post on eschatology, for example, how could a person be told that "Revelation is the worst book ever written if you're not on God's side" and not consider if God might be primarily angry?

So what matters to me, in the end, is not whether we assert that "God is not primarily angry".  It's whether the underlying theology supports such an assertion.  And I don't mean "theology" in an look-at-me-I'm-a-smarty-pants-theologian way, but in the practical truth that everyone thinks about God, whether they do it with fancy language or not.  Whether God is "primarily angry" is bound up with the answers to many other questions - of that I am sure - and the relevant questions matter to us regular people.

I am thoroughly convinced that an "angry God" is the natural result of (some of) our theology, and so we must either (1)discard that theology that causes it or (2)discard the notion of a God who is not "primarily angry".  I suppose that sentence is the summary of everything that I was hoping to say in this series.

Their is a strong temptation to avoid the cognitive dissonance that this creates.  I hate cognitive dissonance.  I really do.  But the place of seeking and wrestling with these questions is the place where the soul reaches for God, and so I'm less and less afraid to wrestle even though it's lonely and it hurts.  The journey of faith requires it, even if the wrestling leaves me limping like Jacob.

I conclude with a quote from Thomas Merton:

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

Let us hope and believe that God is eternally good and loving and greater than all our thoughts about Him.

Return to 1st post

On Existential Efficiency

Don't use tough love when gentle love will do.
Don't use wrath when kindness will do.
Don't make enemies when friends will do.
Don't berate when encouragement will do.
Don't take when giving will do.
Don't buy more when what you have will do.
Don't speak when silence will do.
Don't move quickly when slow will do.
Don't hold grudges when forgiving will do.
Don't use three words when two will do.
Don't curse when a blessing will do.
Don't imprison when freedom will do.
Don't detach when the moment will do.
Don't run away when your presence will do.

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (5) - Eschatology

This is the 5th in a series of posts centered around the question of "Is God primarily angry?".

The 4 previous posts are here:
Is God "Primarily Angry" (1)
Is God "Primarily Angry" (2) - Defining Our Terms
Is God "Primarily Angry" (3) - Trinity
Is God "Primarily Angry" (4) - Cross

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Throughout this series of posts, I've argued that those of us who do struggle with the idea of an angry God do so largely because of what we're told about God, not in spite of what we're told.

Some might think that the above distinction is just a matter of semantics....told vs. not told.  What we are told, after all, is necessarily an absence of something else being told.  I hope that this post will help to clarify what I mean.

This post (the 5th in a "series" that has been dragging on for far too long) is about eschatology, or the completion, purpose, and end of things.  It's a wide ranging and controversial topic.  I've been trying to to find a way to take a ton of thoughts and condense it into a post of reasonable length but just haven't been able to do it.

But suffice it to say, like the cross (atonement theology), eschatology is often ground zero for "angry God theology".  It's the fertile soil, maybe THE MOST fertile soil in which it grows and flourishes.  And I'd simply like to demonstrate an example of that in this post.

First though, one must recognize that eschatological thinking can't be dismissed outright as an irrelevant endeavor whose most zealous participants are a weird and freaky circus of dispensationalist hermits mining sacred texts for a road map of the future.  That is not eschatology.

Where is creation going?  What is the destiny of creation?  When the veil is pulled back, what do we see?  To the degree that we dare speak of the unknowable, what do we say?

These are eschatological questions.

As David Bentley Hart says,

"In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them forth from nothingness."

Who is this God who creates, who brings forth something from nothing?  Eschatology is inseparable from this question, and this question transcends time.  To put it simply, eschatology matters for the now.  It creates a vision of the sort of world that is possible, the sort of world that lasts and triumphs because it's in harmony with the life of the One who created it.

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The Biblical book of Revelation is often one of THE primary sources for this eschatological conversation.  And so we come to it - the content of a recent sermon at Lifespring:

"I want to demystify something right now.  The book of Revelation is not some weird thing that you should stay away from.  It is a book of victory.  It is the summation of all of the rest of the Bible.  It is the stamp that closes it and says "this is done".  It is done."

Pause here.

Importantly, this says nothing about HOW to interpret the book of Revelation.  That is NOT the point here.  But note the build up and significance being created.  It is a "book of victory".  So what is the nature of this victory?  It is the "summation of all of the rest of the Bible" and "the stamp that closes it".  So how does it end??

And so the sermon continues.

"It is done.  It's a book of victory.....unless.....you know......well, put it this way.  It's either a book of victory if you're on God's side or it's the worst book ever written if you're not."

In the audio version of the sermon you can actually here the "chuckle chuckle" of the congregation.  Perhaps it's an uncomfortable chuckle.  Perhaps not.  In any case, it's a knowing chuckle.  A chuckle of familiarity.

The exact details may differ, but we all know what's being said here, right?

"The worst book ever written".  That is presented as "the summation of all of the rest of the Bible" and "the stamp that closes it".  Never mind that we recently sang "Mercy, mercy, as endless as the sea".  We didn't mean it.

And so concludes the tragic and dualistic story of creation, the end to which we are inevitably hurdling.  That is the revelation of the God who has called us forth from nothingness.

Think this doesn't have an impact on how a person sees God?  Sees themselves?  It might create an evangelical "urgency", sure.  But an urgency derived from what?

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to pick on my church.  I just want to note the depth to which an angry God permeates our thinking and is intertwined with a great many things that we say about God.

Can we really have this sort of an eschatological vision and say with a straight face that God isn't "primarily angry"? 

No, ultimately this vision requires an angry God.

Continue to part 6 - Conclusion

The Mystical World of George MacDonald (Parts 7 - 8)

The following videos are part of a 51 minute documentary entitled The Mystical World of George MacDonald.  The documentary is on YouTube as 8 separate videos.  Parts 7 & 8 (the final 2 parts) are below.

Parts 1 & 2 are here.
Parts 3 & 4 are here.
Parts 5 & 6 are here.

Part 7

Part 8

The Mystical World of George MacDonald (Parts 5 - 6)

The following videos are part of a 51 minute documentary entitled The Mystical World of George MacDonald.  The documentary is on YouTube as 8 separate videos.  Parts 5 & 6 are below.

Parts 1 & 2 are here.
Parts 3 & 4 are here.

Part 5

Part 6

Is God "Primarily Angry"? (4) - Cross

This is the 4th in a series posts centered around the question of "Is God primarily angry?".

The 3 previous posts are here:

Is God "Primarily Angry" (1)

Is God "Primarily Angry" (2) - Defining Our Terms

Is God "Primarily Angry" (3) - Trinity

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I believe that God’s disposition towards humanity is revealed in Jesus' cross (though the cross can't be viewed independently of incarnation and resurrection).  It's ground zero.  Start here.  Many Christians would confess as much, yet what is actually intended and communicated by the assertion to "start here" isn't without ambiguity.  

“To know if God loves us we must look to the cross.”  But what do we see?  When we hear that “God did not spare His Son but gave Him up for us all”, what exactly do we hear?

Many modern Christians have been indoctrinated into a way of thinking about God in which He IS primarily angry.  This includes me.  I've had to come to terms with that, rather reluctantly at first but then quite relentlessly and unapologetically.  

Despite assertions to the contrary (assertions which, at times, seem to me to be quite empty) the way that the cross is understood often subconsciously (or quite consciously) displays a God who IS angry, who’s default position towards humanity is anger that is purely retributive.  Rather than holding on to a “primarily angry” God in spite of the cross, we hold to an angry God precisely because of the cross, because the way that the cross is theologically interpreted actually requires an angry God.  It makes little sense without one.

Now I realize that the (large) majority of people probably don’t think they even have an atonement theology, and/or that excessive talk of it is irrelevant and impractical gobbledygook.  But that's not true.  Everybody has some sort of "atonement theology", and I catch hints of it regularly. 

“Jesus died for your sins.”

Ok, what does that mean?  It’s not actually as unambiguous as it might sound at first, though the ambiguity might be well hidden due to deeply embedded and largely unchallenged ways of hearing it.  And that deeply embedded view (within western theology) is usually clarified like this:

“He died to pay the price for your sins.”

Again, not as unambiguous as it might sound at first.  What is the “payment”?  And to whom is it “paid”?  What does it mean to say that "It's finished?"  How does it all work?  Is it just "magic?"  I think the answers to these questions are so prevalent and assumed within popular theology, contemporary music, etc. as to be basically invisible and largely unquestioned.


When working it all out, the whole thing is conceived as a sort of economic transaction that goes something like this ("quotations" intended to call attention to our presuppositions):

God has rules.  Humanity as a whole and each of us individually broke and continue to break these rules.  This creates a “debt” with a God who is holy and all-knowing and thus keeps track of every single breaking-of-the-rules, every single failure, every single careless word, every failure to live up to goodness.  This rule breaking makes God infinitely angry.  It brings humanity under the condemnation of God's judgment and it forces God’s hand.  He’s bound by the law and by “justice” to exact retribution because retributive punishment, in the end, is what it means to “take sin seriously”.  God cannot "just forgive."  

Now, the verse “the wages of sin is death” means that because of sin, humanity is under the active judgment of God.  Judgment is not a mere "natural consequence" - it is an active and retributive wrath.  These are God’s rules being broken, so the “debt” that is created is infinitely higher than a human being can “pay”. The cross, then, is Jesus somehow transactionally and metaphysically "paying the price" by “becoming sin” and being punished in our place.  Jesus becomes a substitute, and God, "in his mercy", turns away from, forsakes ("why have you forsaken me"), tortures and kills Jesus rather than humanity.  

So God kills Jesus, thus fulfilling both divine justice and His own wrath.  God is now "satisfied".  His wrath has been appeased.  He is propitiated.  Justice has been done in the form of Jesus "paying the price".  The "payment" of the atonement is then "credited as righteousness" to the believer through faith via a transactional exchange.  Instead of seeing dirty old me, God's sees Christ's "righteousness."  IF you "have faith", and what "faith" entails varies.

That then is the meaning of "pierced for our transgressions".  Pierced BY GOD.  He "suffered the retributive wrath of God in our place".  The death of Jesus, thus understood, is a “payment” for sin - the suffering, death, and blood being the “currency” which effectuates the possibility of divine forgiveness..... if we "accept the payment."  And the suffering itself is an important part of the “payment terms” (lest the suffering of the cross be unnecessary gratuitous violence independent of the “payment” of death).  


This represents a distinct way of viewing the Christian narrative and the plight of humanity and a particular way of viewing the cross, one that is supported by a number of pillars (allegedly).  We might point to the OT sacrificial system which is viewed as a systematic way to appease God, a system that (so it goes) was pretty much right on in that God needed to be appeased, but that a sacrifice sufficient to appease God on our own just hadn't been made available.  We might point to the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.  We might point to the blood, wrath, and retribution in the Old Testament.  We point to any number of isolated verses that speak of “sacrifice”.  We might point to a handful of verses in the New Testament - "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins", etc.  Perhaps more than anything, we simply trust the principle of retributive punishment that rules our world.

Note this tweet by John Piper:

That says it all.

For another helpful visual of this particular view of atonement theology, see this chart.

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A few qualifications or clarifications might be needed here or there, but this represents the dominant narrative of the cross in the mind of many people, is in many a church "statement of faith", in books, etc.  This is not a caricature.  I'm not portraying something that nobody actually believes.  LOTS of people in the pews of the church that I attend understand it this way.  It's all rather logical after all.  It fits our pre-existing understanding of retributive justice, I guess.

To return to the original question of if God is "primarily" angry, is it really believable that anger/wrath is not a primary ingredient here?  

No.  This widely accepted view of the cross simply doesn't make sense without anger....primary anger.  It's predicated on anger.  The entire thing is conceived of as a forensic solution to a forensic problem, a way to escape the wrath of an all knowing despot who had to kill and torture his own Son in order to gain the necessary capital to forgive.

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In my own life, the wrestling with a vengeful and retributive God has led me to the cross.  The cross is either the end of this angry, retributive God, or the ultimate and eternal affirmation of this God.  It is HARD to think through these things.  It can be scary.  It might feel like "losing your faith."  It's been all of these things for me.  

But there are many out there who have helped me.

Many are familiar with CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Well, God is not the witch.

We intentionally ask the question of "Who Killed Jesus?" and "How Does Dying For Our Sins Work?"  We look to "The Crucified God".  Only if we ditch the retributive and forensic models of the cross entirely (not even grant them status as "one facet") can we can assert that "God Is Not a Monster" and that "Jesus Died for Us...Not for God".

If you dare to, witness the vitriol in some of the comments of these posts.  Note the accusations of “making a God in your own image.”  Again, these simply point out the degree to which an angry God is vigorously defended and even needed for the cross - and therefore the entirety of the Christian narrative - to make sense.

Bottom line, I don’t think there is much possibility of truly believing, unequivocally, that God is love and light without a robust, well understood, and liturgically practiced way of understanding the cross that eliminates “appeasement” and the literal nature of “payment” all together.  We can't simply say that "the cross displays love" but still retain that forensic "God-punished-Jesus-so-that-he-could-forgive me" thing.  There is no actual "forgiveness" in this transaction after all.  There is only payment.  What sense does it make to speak of "forgiving" a debt that has been paid?

Simply calling a thing beautiful (the cross) doesn't make it so.

"Oh, yes.  They say so.  And then they tell you something good about him that isn't good, and go on calling him good all the same.  But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know."

---Robert Falconer (by George MacDonald)

I speak from experience here.  This is hard for me, and is very much an ongoing process.  The groundwork for the above "penal substitutionary atonement" model was laid early and deep.  It is not dug up easily.

In the end though, it's necessary to either (1) prayerfully challenge and deconstruct ALL that implies that the cross is a payment that appeases an angry God and then reconstruct deeply understood ways of thinking about the cross non-punitively, or (2) concede that God IS "primarily angry" and stop pretending otherwise.  

Continue to part 5 - Eschatology