Is it OK to be angry with God?

Suffering, Evil & Hard QuestionsIn theological review

The short answer

Yes, in the way the Bible itself models: bringing anger to God honestly in prayer is not rebellion, and roughly a third of the psalms do exactly that. Job accused, Jeremiah protested, and Jesus on the cross prayed the opening line of Psalm 22, a psalm of abandonment. Scripture never rebukes grief stricken honesty. What it warns against is the anger that hardens into contempt and walks away rather than speaking.

The fuller answer

Take your time with this one, because the people who ask it are usually carrying something heavy. The short truth is that the Bible is full of faithful people who were angry, confused and close to accusing God, and who said so to his face. Their words were not edited out. They were collected, set to music and handed to God's people as the official prayer book of Israel and the church. That fact alone should slow down anyone who wants to call honest anger a spiritual failure.

How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?

Psalm 13:1 (BSB)

Psalm 13 opens with four rapid questions: how long, Lord, will you forget me forever, how long will you hide your face? Psalm 88 goes further and never comes back up for air: it ends in darkness, with the psalmist calling God the reason his friends are gone. No verse arrives to correct either prayer. The church kept both. Whatever reverence means, in the psalter it clearly does not mean pretending. God would apparently rather be argued with honestly than flattered falsely by people in pain.

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42:11 (BSB)

Job said he would not restrain his mouth and would speak in the anguish of his spirit, and at the end God said Job had spoken rightly, unlike his polite friends. Then there is the cross. Jesus, dying, cried out the first line of Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, taking a sufferer's prayer onto his own lips. If the Son of God prayed abandonment aloud, his followers need not fear that voicing it puts them outside his company. He has already prayed from inside it.

At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Mark 15:34 (BSB)

There is a line, and it is worth naming gently. The psalms bring anger to God. Contempt walks away from him. Lament keeps talking, even when the talking is raw, unfinished and mostly questions. So bring the anger in prayer, out loud, in the psalmists' own words if yours run out. Bring it to a pastor or a trusted friend as well, because God often answers through people. And on the days you cannot pray it, let the church's old prayers carry you. They were written by people who could not pray either.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

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Where is God when it hurts?With you, is the Bible's answer, though rarely in the way we would have scripted. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble, says the psalm, written out of trouble, not about it. And in Christ he has not watched suffering from outside it. The God of the cross knows the inside of pain, and his invitation to the weary is rest, not explanations.Why does God seem silent?The Bible treats God's silence as a real and painful experience of faithful people, not as proof that he is absent or that you have been abandoned. The psalmists begged God not to be silent, Job searched and could not find him, and Habakkuk was told to wait for an answer that would surely come. Scripture's pattern is that silence is a season to be endured with lament and trust, and it is never the end of the story.Is doubting a sin?Doubt itself is not treated as a sin in Scripture: it is treated as a condition to bring to Jesus. A father cried, I do believe, help my unbelief, and Jesus healed his son without rebuking him. Thomas demanded evidence, received it, and confessed the fullest faith in the Gospels; Jude instructs believers to be merciful to those who doubt. Settled refusal to believe is a different matter from honest, struggling questions.Why doesn't God answer my prayer?Sometimes he has answered, and the answer was no, or not yet; sometimes our own refusal to listen or obey blocks the conversation; and sometimes heaven is silent for reasons we are not given, as it was for Paul and, in Gethsemane and on the cross, for Jesus himself. What Scripture never teaches is that unanswered prayer means an absent God, and the same Bible that records the silences commands us to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. Bring the unanswered prayer itself to him. That too is prayer.Bible Character: JobThe blameless man of Uz who lost his wealth, his servants and his children in a single day, refused to curse God, argued his case through long nights of debate, and was restored.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.Bible Character: DavidThe shepherd of Bethlehem who killed Goliath, became Israel's king, received God's everlasting covenant, and wrote many of the Psalms.