An Angry God, and Broken Michael W Smith CDs...

In case you haven't realised, I can be quite an angry person...

Its true...

Ask my mum...

I get angry far more often that I'd like...

I get angry at really stupid little things. An example? Last night I got angry because the covers on my bed weren't big enough...

Stupid little thing...

That's not to say that I don't get angry at big things either. The cowardice of a lot of Christians...that really ticks me off. Its equivalent to someone going up and punching a complete stranger square in the jaw for no apparent reason. It makes me very angry.

Hold on, you might say...Christians aren't meant to be angry.

Right?




Wrong.

Despite what modern culture and the media, and even some pastors say, Christians get angry. Its a fact. We're human. Its not because of our sin nature that we get angry. Its because we're made in the image of God.

Jesus gets angry. He gets angry quite a lot.

We've just read the passage where He's chucking over tables and throwing merchandise in the temple so many times that its lost its power.

It'd be like Jesus walking into a Christian book shop, and deciding to burn the entire self help section, all the while crushing Michael W Smith CD's.

Now wait a second there Phil. God isn't angry, God is love!

Very true. I won't deny that. The Bible clearly states that God is love. If I were to deny it, I'd be denying a big part of scripture.

But more often than not, God is attributed in scripture to being holy and righteous and just. And so He gets angry.

At what?

Sin...

and sinners...

But what about hating the sin and loving the sinner? What about that Phil?

That's never mentioned in the Bible. What is mentioned however is that, in places such as the Psalms, that God hates all that do evil, ie. sin.

Read that again...

God hates ALL that do evil.

Not just some, ALL. That includes you and me.

I'm not supposed to tell you this. Christians are meant to be nice, that's how much of the world perceives us.

Yes, we're meant to be kind...but we're meant to tell the truth...even if it offends people.

Really?

Yep...in case you haven't figured this out, we worship a guy who got murdered, who claimed that there is only one way to salvation, and it is through Him. The cross is an offence. And if we don't proclaim it as such, then we're lying to people.

I'll stop with the whole "Rob Bell" style of writing.

Seriously, if we don't proclaim what is written and what we believe without sugar-coating it, we're lying to the world. And ultimately we're offending God by not proclaiming His word. So if its to come down to offending God, or offending a person, the person's gonna get it every single time. Its ridiculous how Christians today are so cowardly! Why? Cause they're afraid of what the people they're talking to will say!

That shouldn't matter. God is the only one who should matter, what He thinks is the most important thing in our lives. Not the opinions of idiots. Cause lets face it. We're all idiots. Maybe not by choice, but we are by nature. After all, we turned down a happy relationship with God for an apple...

But there's no excuse for us not to proclaim that Jesus is the Savior of all man-kind, and if you don't believe in Him, then you my friend are going on a very long holiday...tempurature...INFINTLY HOT!

In case you don't realise, I'm describing hell, although not a lot of people seem to get my humor.

We're made in the image of God, and if God gets angry, then so should we! Its incongruent with who He made us to be. The verse from which this all stems from is Nehemiah 13 v 8;

"And I was very angry..."

The gist of the story is this. Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem, rebuilds the city, constructs a new temple, and gets people to start running it. He goes off back home, and then when he's an old guy, finds out that the city is being run by God haters, and that the people of the city are acting like douches and falling back into old habits. So he goes, kicks out the God haters, and hires new guys to make sure that its run smoothly.

And the whole back drop on this is the following...its OK to get angry. What depends is whether its righteous or unrighteous anger. Lorcan knows what I'm talking about here, I've had this convo with him before. Righteous anger is being angry for the right reasons and responding in the right way. Unrighteous anger is being angry for the wrong reason and/or responding in the wrong way.

If someone was to get raped for example, they're allowed to be angry. Who wouldn't be! Its a sign that we're agreeing with God!

And I know this post has been kinda jumpy, going back and forth between one idea and the other. But I'll close with this. The reason why Nehemiah came back to fix the problem in Jerusalem was that the guys in the city weren't going to fix it.

Its the same with Jesus. God saw the problem of sin, saw that we weren't going to fix it, and so sent Jesus. And here's the thing. Jesus died for our sins. But not only that, He propitiated the wrath and anger of God from us to Himself. Simply put, He took the beating that we should be getting from God.

Earlier on I said that God is angry with all of us. I jumped the gun there. There are people out there that God is angry with.

But...if you've accepted Jesus as Savior, you can sleep easy...

He got his metaphysical ass kicked for you.

Let Him be the Nexus of your life...