Is it okay to be angry at God?

Anger at God has a place in Christian prayer. Perhaps you prayed for months for a child’s healing, and the child died. Perhaps you were abused, or betrayed, or told by church people that God rejected you. Perhaps the anger surprised you, and you are afraid even to say it aloud. Scripture is full of faithful people who said it aloud, and God kept listening to every one of them. The psalmist’s invitation includes your anger too:

Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us.

Psalm 62:8

What does the Bible say about being angry at God?

The Bible gives angry prayer more room than most churches do. Moses complained, “Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?” (Exodus 5:22). Jeremiah accused God of being “a deceitful brook, like waters that fail” (Jeremiah 15:18). Habakkuk cried, “LORD, how long will I cry, and you will not hear?” (Habakkuk 1:2). A whole congregation once prayed these words, which are now in every Bible:

Wake up! Why do you sleep, Lord? Arise! Don’t reject us forever. Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?

Psalm 44:23–24

Laments like this one, prayers of complaint and grief, form one of the largest groups of psalms. The church has prayed them for twenty centuries. Martin Luther, in his preface to the Psalms, compared the human heart to “a ship on a wild sea, driven by the storm winds from the four corners of the world.” In the psalms of sorrow, he wrote, “you look into the hearts of all the saints, as into death, yes, as into hell itself.” Luther treasured those psalms because they show that the saints were storm-tossed too, and that God gave them words.

What does the story of Job teach about anger at God?

Job lost his children, his wealth, and his health. His friends came to comfort him and soon began to explain why he deserved it. Job refused their explanations and turned to God directly:

Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

Job 7:11

For nearly thirty chapters Job argues, protests, and demands a hearing. When God finally speaks, God does not answer all of Job’s questions, and yet at the end God says to Job’s friend Eliphaz, “you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). The friends had spoken about God, defending him with tidy answers. Job had spoken to God, with all his anguish. God honored the man who kept talking to him.

Did Jesus ever cry out to God in anguish?

On the cross, Jesus prayed the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm of lament:

At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is, being interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark 15:34

The church confesses that Jesus is God the Son made human. In him God has spoken the cry of the abandoned from inside human suffering. The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who said that Christ found him while he was a prisoner of war from 1945 to 1948, wrote The Crucified God (1972) to say that in the cross God enters human godforsakenness and suffers with those who suffer. Because Christ prayed this way, you may too. The Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” and so “Let’s therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:15–16). Boldness includes the boldness to complain.

Is arguing with God part of Jewish tradition?

Abraham argued with God over the fate of Sodom, asking, “Shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). Jewish tradition has kept that courage alive. The Hasidic rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740–1809) was remembered as the “defense attorney” of the Jewish people before God. A Yiddish song traditionally attributed to him, A Din Toyre mit Gott (“A Court Case with God”), begins with a greeting to God and then summons God to judgment on behalf of his suffering people. Such prayer comes from covenant faith. People argue with a God they trust to be just and to keep his promises.

When does anger at God turn bitter?

Scripture distinguishes anger from what anger can become. “Be angry, and don’t sin,” Paul writes. “Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). Anger spoken to God and to trusted people tends to move. Anger kept hidden can harden into what Hebrews calls a “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12:15) that poisons a whole life.

Some anger at God is anger at a false picture of God. A gay man told that God despised him, a woman told to forgive her abuser and say nothing, or a child taught that every tragedy was a punishment may be angry at a God who looks nothing like Jesus. The God revealed in Christ weeps with victims and stands against cruelty. Rejecting the false picture can be the first step toward meeting the true God. For more, see Doubt and questioning God and Suffering and the love of God.

Anger can also be a sign of depression or of trauma that needs care. A counselor or doctor can help alongside prayer. If your anger has turned into despair or thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 in the United States to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.

What should I do with my anger at God?

Tell God. Say it aloud in the car or write it in a notebook. Pray Psalm 13, 22, or 88, or write a lament of your own using the psalms’ pattern: name God, pour out the complaint, ask for help, and, when you are able, recall God’s faithfulness. Keep coming to worship even if all you can do is listen, because the prayers of the church can carry you when your own words fail. A pastor or a spiritual director can walk beside you (see Spiritual direction), and if your anger comes from a loss, see Grief and the Christian hope.

Give it time. Psalm 13 moves from “How long, LORD?” to trust in six short verses, but for many people the same movement takes years. The poet of Lamentations wrote in the ruins of Jerusalem, angry and bereaved, and still found a reason for hope:

This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope. It is because of the LORD’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:21–23

God can hold your anger. The same Lord who heard Job, who answered Jonah with patience, and who cried out on the cross himself will hear you, and his mercies will meet you again tomorrow morning.