“For we are consumed by your anger;
by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”
— Psalm 90:7-8
At first reading, some might read Psalm 90:7-8 and think, “God is so mad at us that God will destroy us and we should be afraid of how angry God is at us.”
Angry Teeth
Image courtesy of Jason Valendy
The problem is that when we take a verse or two and do not look at the overall arc of scripture we really can miss the much bigger point. In this case, the bigger point is that no matter how much we want to think that God is angry with us, God is not angry with us.
I know this can sound like I am speaking crazy since the “Scripture clearly says” that we are consumed by your (God) anger. How could this be a verse that testifies to how God is not angry with us?
The words here indicate that perhaps we are not consumed (as in that we are being destroyed) but that we are consumed (as in it captures our imagination) with God’s anger.
Humans are consumed, convinced and sure with God’s anger.
Maybe we are consumed with God’s anger because we believe, deep down that God cannot really love us. We are angry people and so God must be angry. We project ourselves onto God and thus violate the one of the big ten (thou shall not make graven images). God’s ways are not our ways and yet we are convinced/consumed with the idea that God must be angry.
God is not angry at you. You do not anger God – your actions are not significant enough to make God angry. Maybe we want to believe God is angry with us to convince ourselves that our actions are much more important then they really are in the grand scheme of things? Maybe we are convinced that God is angry at us as a way to exert some feeling of power and control? I mean what could be more powerful than to be able to get under God’s skin?
Valendy Thumb
Rev. Jason Valendy
The Rev. Jason Valendy, along with his wife the Rev. Estee Valendy, serves as co-pastor of Saginaw United Methodist Church in Saginaw, Texas. This post is republished with permission from his blog, JasonValendy.net.