SOF 47 / May 2001 ALAN NORTON-TAYLOR reflects on Job’s anger with God - and takes Job’s side anger and spirituality Don Cupitt wrote in SOF (Autumn 1998): “Religious language offers us unifying and reconciling symbols through which, from time to time at least, we are able to get ourselves together and to feel ourselves completely in harmony with the world. In such moments we can say yes to life, and feel completely happy. We are not alienated in any way from any thing; we are in continuity with the everlasting flux of things in which we are immersed.” In contrast, Job wrote “No! I can’t be quiet! Iam angry and bitter. I have to speak” (Job 9.11). Job complains loudly about life and God. So this article is about spirituality and anger.
First I want to say clearly that I am on the side of Job. I believe that mankind has a right to its anger. Life offers much that is good. But it also brings us much pain. And when we feel pain, being the human animals we are, we howI out in anger. If I may write personally, | watched for twenty three years as my wife suffered from multiple sclerosis. Seventeen of those years she spent in a wheelchair. I myself have Parkinsons disease. So I know a lot about pain, and a lot about anger too.
Also, as a clergyman for twenty five of those years, and as a psychotherapist for a further ten, I have listened to the agony of many, many people as they struggle with enormous hurts. They too have a right to their rage, and to “My wife had MS, I have Parkinsons.
So I know a lot about pain and anger” their tears. There is however in the Christian religion very little about this conflict between us and life. And certainly in worship it is all about the goodness and wonder of God, in contrast to our sinfulness. The complaint of Job, of me and of my patients, never seems to be honestly faced.
A punishment for sin?
One traditional answer to this problem is that the harm we endure comes as a punishment for sin. Job did not believe this and even God in the introduction before the poetry sections in the book boasts about the goodness of Job. One of the psalmists may say that never has he seen a good man suffer or the evil prosper; but that is not my experience. I have seen many good people suffer grievously. Eliphaz says in Job (15.14 and 16) “Can any man be really pure? Can anyone be right with God? Man drinks evil as if it is water; yes, man is corrupt; man is worthless.” SOF 47 / May 2001 That again is not my experience. I have been lucky enough to know many good people. And suffering comes to good and bad alike.
Another argument is that suffering is due to the corporate sin of mankind; that we went astray, rebelled against God, and so we bear the consequences. But the truth is that for mankind there never has been a Garden of Eden. We developed over the centuries from primitive man to the present day. And life was tough and difficult. There never has been that place of bliss. Nor as individuals have we come from Gardens of Eden. However good our parenting, even there there is pain. We may develop inside a watery bliss, always at one with our mothers. But the quarters rapidly become cramped and we are expelled into the outside world.
Again we may be lucky enough to be received upon our mother’s breast; but pretty soon we realise that breast belongs to someone else, and whether or not it appears when we want is not under our control. We then realise that there are other people around; siblings or that awful man that our mother goes to bed with. We do not come from a paradise, but from a place of love and hate; of unity and conflict; of beauty and of loss. Life is not easy from the beginning, even for the most privileged.
So Job protests against God, and surely rightly. The answer of the book is however less than satisfactory. God appears in a storm in all his majesty and power, and confronted by this Job repents. “I know, Lord, that you are all-powerful; that you can do anything you want. I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. So am ashamed of all that I have said and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42,3-6). Job’s misfortunes are then restored.
I find myself deeply let down by this answer. There is I think some truth in it. The vastness of our own solar system and its smallness in relationship to the whole universe surely fills us, whether theists or not, with wonder and some humility. I feel the same humility and wonder when I listen as a therapist to the experiences of others and all that they have been through. I know how little I know, and a right sense of wonder and humility is surely appropriate. But this sense of humility does not lead me to “repent in dust and ashes”. My sense of justice is still outraged by what I see in life around me; the answer of Job is only in part for me. My anger remains.
The life of Jesus helps only in part. I see in him a person of deep compassion, who was not judgemental, and who had a great warmth towards the needy. His mercy then I find helpful. But the cross gives me more problems than solutions, for in front of the cross there feels to be no place for anger. I:may feel at times that I might want to drive the nails into the hands of God and say now he knows what it is like; but then I am faced with the awful suffering on that cross that makes me feel bad about my rage. And in fact I do not want anyone dying for me. What I want is someone robust enough to hear and receive my anger and not be harmed by it.
T have been fortunate to receive that in my own therapy.
And in my work as a therapist I try to do the same thing for my own patients. I had a supervisor who said to me that it may have been ok for Jesus to get himself crucified, but I had to survive my patients. People I see as a therapist do get disappointed by me in many ways, and that is unavoidable.
I may not see them as often as they might want and I also make mistakes at times. I have to understand and survive their anger because they have a right to it. And if lam harmed by it it does neither of us any good.
But in front of the cross all this becomes difficult. The contrast is made between the all-giving love of Jesus and the sinfulness of people. The hymns and prayers and often the preaching conspire to make us feel that it is our fault that this terrible thing is happening. One prayer says “In the fulness of time I sent you my Son, that in him you might know me, and through him find life and peace; but you put him to death on a cross”. Now this is neither just nor honest.
It was the situation in Palestine that conspired to put Jesus on a cross, and tragically mankind does this sort of thing at times; this is a terrible truth and clearly we need to learn from these situations. But to pretend that my petty sins or those of the average congregation cause this amount of suffering is frankly untrue and unhelpful. So I want a reality that is more robust, that can understand and survive my rage. I look at the cross and I say, yes, life is sometimes like this; it can be terrible and I feel sad about that. But it is not my rage that put him there.
What then helps?
The spirituality I want, then, has to have a place for acknowledging that mankind has a right to anger. In practice what helps me as an individual is acknowledging that anger, and exploring the piace from which it comes. There is no need to act out our anger, and make others suffer for it. At times of course the actions of others may make the anger justified, and then it is time to be firm and use the anger as constructively as possible. But the more general rage that we feel at times about life is something to be known by us individually and acknowledged there, without making others pay the price for it. Finding someone to hear it may be the answer for many, and that may mean paying for a person to do just that.
Which brings me back to the Cupitt quote with which I started. In part I know what he means. To watch a beautiful sunset; to see a tree dressed in all its autumn colours; to meet a friend and to really talk; to be in the arms of a person one loves; to hear beautiful music, and so on. All this can be deeply good, and I know the feeling of being “in continuity with the everlasting flux of things”. But protest still remains, because if all these things are good, the bad is real as well. So there needs to be a place in spirituality for that protest which finds its expression in sadness and anger.
Alan Naylor-Smith was an Anglican clergyman for 25 years.
Towards the end of this time he trained as a psychotherapist and then worked as a therapist for ten years in private practice. He describes himself as “agnostic but seeking a relevant spirituality”.