Can we really make God angry?

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rben20

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Hello Catholics and other peeps,

I ask this question because I am seriously lost. I’ve been told that God does not really get angry, that we can’t actually make Him angry. I’ve also been told that God does not punish us. We in effect punish ourselves.

Now the problem I have with this is that clearly the Bible says that God does punish the wicked and does get angry.

So my question is does God punish us and get angry with us or is scripture wrong in being taken at face value? Are we punished eternally with hell or do we punish ourselves through our choices? Is this new age stuff or scriptural?
 
The following link should help out a lot. It’s by Jimmy Akin!

GOD, EVIL, and METAPHOR
catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0211bt.asp

A quote from the article:
When a man is angry, his intense disapproval of something that someone has done triggers a particular set of physiological sensations and mental discomfort. A difference between anger and sadness is that the former tends to be provoked when we view the person’s action as harming or threatening something we care about (as opposed to having a sense of loss or unfulfilled hope). Anger also is very likely to motivate us to act in some way, particularly by seeking to strike back at the one who has angered us.
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Applying this to the divine, God does not have a body and so does not feel the physiological sensations we do with anger. Neither does he feel the mental discomfort associated with anger. He does intensely disapprove of sin and, when it is committed, will act. This action may take the form of allowing temporal calamity to befall those who engage in sin.
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This allowing of temporal calamity on those who have sinned is sufficiently analogous to human anger for Scripture to apply the term to it. Thus when in the Old Testament people suffer on account of their sins, it is spoken of as the product of divine anger.
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rben20 said:
Hello Catholics and other peeps,

I ask this question because I am seriously lost. I’ve been told that God does not really get angry, that we can’t actually make Him angry. I’ve also been told that God does not punish us. We in effect punish ourselves.

Now the problem I have with this is that clearly the Bible says that God does punish the wicked and does get angry.

So my question is does God punish us and get angry with us or is scripture wrong in being taken at face value? Are we punished eternally with hell or do we punish ourselves through our choices? Is this new age stuff or scriptural?
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Scripture is not wrong.
 
Look at it this way: God does not get angry, but He does have wrath, which falls on those who are disobedient to them. By analogy, if it’s raining outside, and I want to stay dry, I should stay in the house. If I don’t want to experience God’s wrath, I should stay in obedience to Him.

DaveBj
 
DaveBj said:
Look at it this way: God does not get angry, but He does have wrath, which falls on those who are disobedient to them. By analogy, if it’s raining outside, and I want to stay dry, I should stay in the house. If I don’t want to experience God’s wrath, I should stay in obedience to Him.

DaveBj
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Helpful analogy. Thank you
 
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