October 25, 2020: Does God’s Blood Boil? – Amanda Lum

There are many stories in the Bible about God getting angry. One even pits God as so mad that he needs to take some time off, some time away to cool down, because if he doesn’t he’s gonna lose it! And when God loses it, God turns and destroys people. A lot of people. This portrait of God is alive and well today. Some point to God getting really angry over some very specific sin - sin they are never guilty of - which is convenient. But there is a more subtle way of talking about a god that is kind of a jerk. Not long ago I spoke with someone who spoke of how their god got her attention by causing her to be in a terrible accident. What? This is how god got her attention? By hurting her, putting her in the ICU for 3 ½ weeks and scaring her family because they thought she’d die? 

It’s important to note that any parent who did something similar to their child to “get their attention” would be arrested and imprisoned. Rightly so. But this is how we talk about God (I guess there is some kind of divine excuse for abusing people that we as humans don’t get)? And we do it quite often. How can we love a god like this? Trust a god like this? Believe in a god like this? Worship and pray to a god like this?

But this is the portrait painted in many passages of the Bible: God. Is. Angry. But what if this is one portrait of God and teaches us something, not about God, but about humans? What if this is a reflection of the ancient, primitive, backward view of a fire-breathing deity who needs to be satiated by our good deeds and proper behavior at every turn? Perhaps God’s anger has something to teach us - not about God but about us.