When I was in high school, I experienced a betrayal by someone I thought was a friend. I cut off communication and haven’t spoken to him since. My hurt and anger were protective. He wasn’t a trustworthy person—at least not at that time. I was smart to keep my distance.
More than forty years have passed since then. Occasionally, I’ve wondered what became of him. I hope he overcame his teenage demons. I wish him well but if I met him today, I’d be wary. Although my initial hurt and anger are gone, they’ve been replaced by a lingering resentment that only surfaces when I call him to mind.
I don’t get angry easily, but when I do, it’s hard for me to let it go.
Reading the Bible as literature
My last post shared that for the Bible’s authors, the idea that God is perfect wasn’t important. That idea was an invention of later commentators. In a future post, I’ll share that imitatio dei, the idea that humans should imitate God, is also an invention of later commentators.
It’s easy to read the Bible and assume that if God lashes out vindictively in anger, then it must be okay for people to do so as well. But the Biblical authors weren’t invested in the idea that God’s behavior should be perfect or serve as an example for humans to follow.
I like to keep in mind that the God of the Bible is a character in a work of literature. This character may or may not accurately reflect your beliefs. That’s up to you to decide.
The Bible’s God says out loud the sorts of malicious and destructive things that can run through my mind when I feel I’ve been wronged. I would be embarrassed to say those things out loud so there’s something comforting about knowing that thousands of years ago, people were prone to the same sorts of inappropriate fantasies as I am. When I feel betrayed or angry, I tend to have unhinged thoughts. That doesn’t mean I act on them.
When I read in the Bible that God acted on these sorts of thoughts, for example by bringing a devastating flood, I don’t jump to the conclusion that there is an actual deity who decided to destroy the universe with a flood. Rather, I read it as a literary fantasy of how enraged humans imagine they might respond (if they had the power) when they experience despair over the mess people can make of the world.
Anger, especially when combined with power, is easily abused. I read God’s anger in the Bible as a cautionary tale rather than an exemplary one.
If the character of God has a problem with anger, can we learn anything from God’s example?
In the Hebrew Bible, God often struggles with anger. In my last post, I wrote:
The God of the Hebrew Bible isn’t perfect. Like us, God gets angry and sometimes handles that anger poorly. Like us, God needs to learn how to relate to anger productively. Like us, God works on this challenge; because, like us, the God of the Hebrew Bible cares about people.
On the one hand, God seems to handle anger poorly. The character of God in the Hebrew Bible is overly concerned with status wounds and prone to rage. Status wounds are the types of offenses I’d prefer to ignore.1 And God often expresses anger by threatening massive destruction. I wouldn’t tolerate this type of verbal abuse in myself or in people with whom I choose to associate.
On the other hand, as we saw in the discussion of the Cain and Abel story, God provides an example of care and concern when people harm one another. God’s anger sometimes serves to underscore that something isn’t right, and the situation must change.
Rather than regard anger as always problematic (an attitude taken by the Stoics and many later religious teachers) the example of God in the Hebrew Bible suggests that anger can sometimes serve a useful purpose.
The anger I had toward my former friend was useful. It protected me from further interaction with an untrustworthy person. And perhaps my ongoing resentment is still playing a protective role. But it’s also possible that my bad experience with one person made me overly cautious toward all people.
What, if any, resentment should I retain? And what should I leave behind?
Hosea
The way anger functions for God in the Hebrew Bible becomes most interesting to me after God’s bursts of anger dissipate. What do you do when anger disrupts a valued relationship? The prophet Hosea provides a good example of how God responds to this situation.
The metaphor of marriage runs through the Hebrew Bible. In this heteronormative metaphor, God is the husband, the people are the wife. The marriage began when the people first came into a relationship with God after they escaped from slavery in Egypt. In this metaphor, the revelation at Mt. Sinai is a wedding ceremony.
In the book of Hosea, God is (once again) outrageously angry that the people have worshipped other gods. God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute and then uses Hosea’s marriage as a metaphor to describe the relationship of God with the people. In this metaphor, God is the husband, the people are the wife, and the other gods are the wife’s lovers who paid her for sex.
Because this metaphor can be hard to follow, I will alternate verses from Hosea with an explanation of how the metaphor is functioning.
Acting as God’s mouthpiece, Hosea says:
She is not my wife, and I am not her husband.
God, married to the people, and Hosea, married to a prostitute, both exclaim that the marriage is over.
She thought “I will go after my lovers, who provide me with my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.”
The people worshipped other gods because they thought those gods were the source of their sustenance. But it was actually God who provided nature’s gifts.
Hosea’s wife had sex with other men thinking that they would provide her with sustenance as payment.
I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, which she thinks are a payment she received from her lovers. I will turn them into brush, and beasts of the field will consume them.
God will destroy the land’s natural abundance which the people think they have received as a reward for worshipping other gods. Wild animals will overrun the land and eat the rotting vines and fig trees.
Hosea will destroy the property his wife received as payment for sex with other men.
Thus, I will punish her for the days she spent with the other men, when she brought them offerings and decked with earrings and jewels, she would go after her lovers, forgetting me.2
Ba’al, the Hebrew word for “men” in this verse, is also the Hebrew proper noun used to name local deities. The destruction of the land’s abundance is how God will punish the people for worshipping other gods. Similarly, Hosea will punish his wife by destroying the gifts she received from other men.
At the end of this verse, God and Hosea strike a different tone. Their anger turns to pain.
When I read this passage in Hosea, I am reminded of Nonviolent Communication founder Marshall Rosenberg’s advice surrounding anger.
Instead of saying “I am angry at you because you did X” we would be better off saying, “I am angry because I need Y.”
After declaring the marriage is over and threatening to “lay waste” to the land, God and Hosea end this harangue about worshipping other gods and having sex with other men with the real source of their pain: she (the people) forgot me.
God has a broken heart.
God has relationship needs that go unmet when the people forget God’s existence and instead consort with other gods. God experiences heartbreak. And it’s God’s acknowledgment of heartbreak that creates the opening for a different response.
When my heart breaks, my instinct is to curl up and nurse my wounds. It’s hard for me to share my vulnerability even though that’s where healing and growth can be found. So, the very next set of verses surprises me.
I will speak to her encouragingly, lead her through the wilderness, and speak to her tenderly. I will give her vineyards from there…There she shall respond as in the days of her youth, when she came up out of the land of Egypt…I will betroth you forever, I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, and with goodness and mercy; and I will betroth you with faithfulness.3
Despite God firmly viewing God-self as the injured party, God recognizes that a broken heart is a sign of love. God’s anger transforms into mourning the lost relationship and a commitment to rekindling the romance with the people. God will lead the people to the wilderness, where their love affair began. Back in the place where they first fell in love, God will woo and cajole and try to win her (the people) back.
Yes, God gets hurt by what God perceives as the people’s betrayal. But God wants to move beyond the betrayal and re-establish the relationship. This time, God says, the relationship will be built on the foundations of righteousness, justice, goodness, mercy, and faithfulness.
The relationship needs to be re-negotiated after the past painful events. But God’s love proves to be more powerful than God’s anger and hurt.
I’m not advocating for all betrayals to end with the parties recommitting to the relationship. For example, I’m not motivated to re-establish contact with my former high-school friend. Rather, I’m noting that God doesn’t get stuck in the emotions of hurt and anger. After the betrayal, the relationship can’t continue as it was. It has to change. From God’s side, the change is motivated by love and care.
Because of the intensity of the vindictive and destructive statements God makes when angry, it can be hard to accept the tender statements of love at face value. It’s up to you as the reader to decide how you want to understand God’s volatile emotional life.
How I understand my volatile emotional life
When I read that God turns from betrayal and anger to reconciliation, romance, and love, I see another side of the human imagination. Rage can get the best of us, but it doesn’t need to be a permanent state. The destructive capacity of anger can be cured by the healing balm of love and care.
I don’t learn from the example of the Bible’s God by trying to imitate God. The lesson I choose to learn from the Bible is that when my anger gets activated, I serve myself and others best by turning to the unmet needs that are the source of my anger. When I successfully tend to these wounds my anger dissipates and I am again capable of acting with sensitivity, care, and love.
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Hosea chapter 2 verses 4, 7, and 14-15
Hosea chapter 2 verses 16-17, and 21-22
Excellent writing and thoughtful interpretations of the Bible, Dan! I like your view of the anger you felt toward your high school friend as a protective device. I had a very similar experience with my cousin, who was my best and intimate friend through high school and for 15 years beyond. But I was becoming uncomfortable with his attitude and then we got into a big fight and we never spoke again until last year (I am 59 now). When we met up last year, he said, "We don't have to talk about it." (and we also "don't have to talk about" politics since his views are the opposite of mine).But the thing is, I wanted to talk about it. Not politics, I mean about the reason we had stopped talking. We didn't. Afterward, viewing his interactions on Facebook, I saw that he had become a cruel person, which was in part my issues when we were young. The upshot is that I now see that my anger was also protecting me. I thank you for permission to have had that, for staying away, because often I wondered if I just was being a scaredy cat not looking him up and trying to make up. I'm glad we met up, because he is my first cousin, and we see each other occasionally at functions (until now I just kept my distance or didn't go to the function) and it will be more comfortable now, but we are not going to resume our friendship. My choice.
Anger can have value. But once that value has been provided, the trick (for me) is to integrate whatever valuable lessons and actions the anger provided and then to allow my anger to be cared for the way I might take care of an angry toddler. “There there…that thing happened. Did it make you angry? How do you feel now? Still angry? We can sit together for as long as you like.” After a while, the toddler has fully felt their anger and is ready to move on to other things.
The thing happened. The lessons are learned and appropriate actions taken. And then the anger (with a caring embrace) can be released.