A Quote by Bill Johnson
Some people need a theology of an angry God to justify their anger against sinners.
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When you feel angry, there is no need to be angry against someone; just be angry. Let it be a meditation. Close the room, sit by yourself, and let the anger come up as much as it can. If you feel like beating, beat a pillow.
When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. "She's got a lot of anger in her," people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, "He's a deeply angry man" (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one). If anger isn't released, it "turns inward" and metamorphoses into another creature altogether.
Anger at happenstance for its absurd timing. Anger at myself for being so angry. I hate being angry and every time I got this angry it made me more angry at the fact that I was so angry. I realized though that I couldn't really be mad at any of those things.
Many atheistic books and blogs seethe with anger. Remarkably, the authors do not limit their anger to Christians. They seem most livid with God. I don't believe in leprechauns, but I haven't dedicated my life to battling them. I suppose if I believed that people's faith in leprechauns poisoned civilization, I might get angry with members of leprechaun churches. But there's one thing I'm quite sure I wouldn't do: I would not get angry with leprechauns. Why not? Because I can't get angry with someone I know doesn't exist.
Anger and the like are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect. Thus, because to punish is properly the act of an angry man, God's punishment is metaphorically spoken of as His anger.
Have you ever played ping pong up against a wall? You get exhausted a lot quicker than playing against someone. It's the same with getting angry. If you keep getting angry on your own, all that anger will just come back to you.
The anger that you see expressed out there in Los Angeles, in my district this evening, is a righteous anger, and it's difficult for me to say to the people, "Don't be angry." When people are angry and enraged, they do do senseless things. They do act even sometimes out of character, and that's why it is the responsibility of America to try and avoid putting people in these kinds of situations.
Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God's people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger-as long as it is the anger that is part of true love-through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.
Is all anger sin? No, but some of it is. Even God Himself has righteous anger against sin, injustice, rebellion and pettiness.
Although God loves us unconditionally, He does get angry at sin, wickedness and evil. But He is not an angry God. God hates sin, but He loves sinners! He will never approve of sin in your life, but He always loves you and wants to work with you to make progress in living a holy life in Christ.
We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.
The ultimate goal of theology isn't knowledge, but worship. If our learning and knowledge of God do not lead to the joyful praise of God, we have failed. We learn only that we might laud, which is to say that theology without doxology is idolatry. The only theology worth studying is a theology that can be sung!
It is true that some have greater power of resistance than others, but everyone has the power to close his heart against doubt, against darkness, against unbelief, against anger, against hatred, against jealousy, against malice, against envy. God has given this power unto all of us, and we can gain still greater power by calling upon Him for that which we lack. If it were not so, how could we be condemned for giving way to wrong influences?
I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be LIVED and PRAYED and SUNG! All of the great doctrinal writings of the Bible (such as Paul's epistle to the Romans) are full of praise to God and personal application to life.
Why do we need to justify God's existence? He exists. We need to justify our own existence.
You are angry, and you watch it. You are not just angry, a new element is introduced into it: you are watching it. And the miracle is that if you can watch anger, the anger disappears without being repressed.
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