If God is love; God is anger too?

[souldiver]

It’s many times that people from the Bible and God himself in the Bible talks about God’s anger, and God show it many times and in God level severity like in the Genesis flood and the Revelations. Sometimes it’s called God’s wrath. God’s anger is even constant:

Job 9:13 “God’s anger is constant. He crushed his enemies who helped Rahab, the sea monster, oppose him.”

So anybody here believe or at least consider that “God is anger” too?

 

[Mary_Ellen]

No. I believe God is love. In His love he shows both justice and mercy.

 

[Faxero]

:idea:

Anger isn’t bad in and of itself. It is a natural emotion that can be used for both good and evil purposes, depending on how the individual utilizes it.

It is acceptable for God to crush those who oppose him because of his status as the creator. As the most powerful being who will ever exist, God has the inborn right to assert his dominance for all of his creations, including, and especially those who persist in rebelling against his natural, rightful authority.

Rather than saying “God is anger”, it might be more accurate to say that God can become angry, and that he uses this anger to reinforce his authority and to administer tough love to the rebels who have a chance of repenting.

 

[souldiver]

administer tough love to the rebels who have a chance of repenting.

But he kills people in anger, they can’t have chance to repent if they are killed. Tough love maybe making it difficult for the person, but not killing him.

 

[tm21]

But he kills people in anger, they can’t have chance to repent if they are killed. Tough love maybe making it difficult for the person, but not killing him.

As the giver of life, God has the authority to take it away. How do we know there was not a last minute conversion and that this last trial of death was not lessening pains in purgatory? Or perhaps God’s taking this life brought others to conversion and eternal life. We can not presume to fully understand God’s actions. However, because of the Incarnation and passion, death, and Resurrection of Christ, we know that God’s love and mercy for us is limitless.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

But he kills people in anger, they can’t have chance to repent if they are killed. Tough love maybe making it difficult for the person, but not killing him.

I assume you’re reffering to certain passages of the O.T., especially when God is setting up his covenant and statutes with Moses and the people of Israel. It’s true, these are very difficult passages for us to understand nowadays; that is because our shares almost nothing in common with the early human civilizations.

There are two important things to consider when looking at these passages:

#1: It was of the utmost importance that God stress the necessity of His law, and that the people of Israel adhere to it. This was not because God is a vindictive being who only wants us to do what He says; it’s because His moral law is the only way for a person to truly live a joyful and fulfilling life. The people who actively desired to undermine or ignore these laws were threatening the happiness, safety, and faith of the rest of Israel; so God put a stop to it in a very, very obvious and direct way. This was, simply put, the only way to get the point across. We know this because…

#2: These people were not ignorant of God’s power. It’s not like Moses was just saying these things out of the blue and expecting people to follow them because he said so. Every last person that followed Moses into the desert (even those who were consumed by God’s wrath due to their disobedience) had experience God’s intervention firsthand. They had watched the plagues ravish Egypt; they’d walked across the dry seabed; they’d seen the pillars of fire and smoke descend to guide them; they’d eaten the Mana, and they’d seen the water flow forth from stone. These people had seen God act in literally the most direct way possible (until Christ came around at least). Yet, in spite of all of this, in spite of all of these wonders, miracles, and gifts which they had seen and experienced with all of their senses, and which they had eaten to sustain themselves, they still chose their own will over Him. Those people who chose themselves over God presented a danger to the foundation of the People of the Covenant, and so God protected His people by removing the threat.

Another small note. We do not know if God allowed those people a chance to repent before their judgment. He may have, we simply cannot know.

As to the question of God’s wrath, and Him being anger. You have to remember that God is beyond our understanding. Whatever words we use to describe him are lacking because words cannot describe him at all. We use the word anger so that we may have some understanding of what occurred, but really it is not anger, or wrath, or even love as we understand them. I know this isn’t much help to you, and I wish I could explain it better, but it’s not something I’m well versed in explaining, so I apologize.

 

[o_mlly]

It’s many times that people from the Bible and God himself in the Bible talks about God’s anger, and God show it many times and in God level severity like in the Genesis flood and the Revelations. Sometimes it’s called God’s wrath. God’s anger is even constant:

Job 9:13 “God’s anger is constant. He crushed his enemies who helped Rahab, the sea monster, oppose him.”

So anybody here believe or at least consider that “God is anger” too?

The proper object of anger is evil. When confronted with evil, this emotive force moves us to mitigate or eliminate the evil which is anathema to God. Since God is passive, that is unmoved, He does not feel anger. Rather we believe He confronts evil in his creation by replacing it with goodness, that is, Himself.

The scribes of the OT put God’s inspiration into the reality known to them. Not to do so would make understanding God a completely otherworldly affair. Making God immanent as well as transcendent, the scribes wrote for a people at a time in which the scriptures explained Yahweh working in the world. The scribes’ message, though, was primarily theology and secondarily history.

As historians, the ancients attempted to explain recent events not by analysis but by God’s action which required they use story or myth. Myth was serious business; they did not intend these stories to be merely entertainment. They were recounting events upon which their very existence depended.

Ancient historians, like their modern counterparts, used inductive reasoning. They produced their myths after examining actual events. If the myth stood the test of coherence and gave meaning to the phenomena, it endured passing from generation to generation. But the sacred writers, unlike their contemporary and our modern historians, used deductive reasoning. Through divine inspiration, the sacred writers had definite knowledge of God’s plan. This knowledge was a priori and independent of Israel’s many traditions, oral or written. From this certainty, using their human faculties, the sacred writers enlisted the available stories, selecting and manipulating them to write the Truth for the people of their times.

When the sacred writers put the story together in ca. 450 BC, the issues were clear: How was the world made such that Israel served God in a Temple that was destroyed and now rebuilt, in a land that was lost and now regained, in a holy way of life that was set down in Sinai, violated but then recovered and renewed? The central theme for the Israelites in this story is the Exodus. Prior to the Exodus experience, the Hebrews as community lacked an organizing principle. If people are to be bound together, they do so not only by blood and soil, but also by shared experience. The Israelite community begins with Exodus, an experience that creates hope and establishes direction and purpose. In Exodus, God acted in Israel’s behalf and laid upon them lasting obligations to God and fellow human beings. Exodus provides the model for how the people of God should seek justice in society as the only appropriate response to the liberation they had experienced.

 

[ffg]

The freedom for nature to work in it’s own environment, which includes the ability to act in a way contrary to reflecting the love of God, doesn’t mean God can / should be redefined.

This is outside of the common error that love is an emotion, like anger.

Love is action, anger is emotion.

Take care,

Mike

 

[fisherman_carl]

Looking at the definition of anger it is described as an emotion. However, the definition of love is to will the good of the beloved. So these are 2 very different kinds of things. In the OT God’s punishment is assumed with his wrath. However, God does not have human emotions. We project those emotions onto him. But, He does change and human emotions do.

On Mt Sinai God passes before Moses and declares himself as ‘slow to anger’. We can also think of this as slow to punish since God does not actually have emotions. It’s not like at one point he was not angry and then he became angry.

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,… "

In the NT we found out God even loves his enemies as it says Christ died for us while we were his enemies or sinners. God’s love is constant. But, that doesn’t mean God will not punish us if we do wrong. But he does so as a father desiring to correct his children. In Wisdom 12 it says God punished the Caananites little by little giving them a chance to repent. And they were about the worst sinners you could be, sacrificing their own children in the fire. Thus, even in his punishment he is merciful and desiring us to be brought to repentance and healing. It says that God does not desire anyone’s death, but rather he wants to give us life.

So God is not an angry wrathful being by nature. Nor does he become emotional. Rather his nature is all good and he is love. And He is constant. Yet, he does correct his children out of love, for their own good, so that they can walk in the way of righteousness.

No punishment seems pleasant at the time but yields fruit of righteousness.

 

[Aloysium]

It’s many times that people from the Bible and God himself in the Bible talks about God’s anger, and God show it many times and in God level severity like in the Genesis flood and the Revelations. Sometimes it’s called God’s wrath. God’s anger is even constant:

Job 9:13 “God’s anger is constant. He crushed his enemies who helped Rahab, the sea monster, oppose him.”

So anybody here believe or at least consider that “God is anger” too?

As a Christian, one reads the Old Testament in the light of the New.
What we have is a Trinity that is Love itself - a giving union of two Divine Persons.
The Second person, the Son, the Word of God became one of us to not only demonstrate what is Divine love, not only to teach us the way back, but to be that Way, to redeem and save us all.

For another perspective, here’s what Pope Francis said at the Holocaust museum:

“Adam, where are you?” (cf. Gen 3:9). Where are you, o man? What have you come to? In this place, this memorial of the Shoah, we hear God’s question echo once more: “Adam, where are you?” This question is charged with all the sorrow of a Father who has lost his child. The Father knew the risk of freedom; he knew that his children could be lost… yet perhaps not even the Father could imagine so great a fall, so profound an abyss! Here, before the boundless tragedy of the Holocaust, That cry – “Where are you?” – echoes like a faint voice in an unfathomable abyss…

Adam, who are you? I no longer recognize you. Who are you, o man? What have you become? Of what horror have you been capable? What made you fall to such depths?

Certainly it is not the dust of the earth from which you were made. The dust of the earth is something good, the work of my hands. Certainly it is not the breath of life which I breathed into you. That breath comes from me, and it is something good (cf. Gen 2:7).

No, this abyss is not merely the work of your own hands, your own heart… Who corrupted you? Who disfigured you? Who led you to presume that you are the master of good and evil? Who convinced you that you were god? Not only did you torture and kill your brothers and sisters, but you sacrificed them to yourself, because you made yourself a god.

Today, in this place, we hear once more the voice of God: “Adam, where are you?”

From the ground there rises up a soft cry: “Have mercy on us, O Lord!” To you, O Lord our God, belongs righteousness; but to us confusion of face and shame (cf. Bar 1:15).

A great evil has befallen us, such as never happened under the heavens (cf. Bar 2:2). Now, Lord, hear our prayer, hear our plea, save us in your mercy. Save us from this horror.

Almighty Lord, a soul in anguish cries out to you. Hear, Lord, and have mercy! We have sinned against you. You reign for ever (cf. Bar 3:1-2). Remember us in your mercy. Grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have done, to be ashamed of this massive idolatry, of having despised and destroyed our own flesh which you formed from the earth, to which you gave life with your own breath of life. Never again, Lord, never again!

“Adam, where are you?” Here we are, Lord, shamed by what man, created in your own image and likeness, was capable of doing.

Remember us in your mercy.

 

[Neofight]

It’s many times that people from the Bible and God himself in the Bible talks about God’s anger, and God show it many times and in God level severity like in the Genesis flood and the Revelations. Sometimes it’s called God’s wrath. God’s anger is even constant:

Job 9:13 “God’s anger is constant. He crushed his enemies who helped Rahab, the sea monster, oppose him.”

So anybody here believe or at least consider that “God is anger” too?

Anger is a human, not divine attribute. When man speaks of God being angry, it is because of man’s inability to comprehend the divine, so he tries to give attributes he can understand (human) on God.

God IS Love.

Just like I tell my grand daughter, “You can’t eat cupcakes and cry”, God, because He IS love, CANNOT be angry, because love and anger cannot co-exist.

PEACE AND ALL GOOD!

 

[mikekle]

:idea:

Anger isn’t bad in and of itself. It is a natural emotion that can be used for both good and evil purposes, depending on how the individual utilizes it.

It is acceptable for God to crush those who oppose him because of his status as the creator. As the most powerful being who will ever exist, God has the inborn right to assert his dominance for all of his creations, including, and especially those who persist in rebelling against his natural, rightful authority.

Rather than saying “God is anger”, it might be more accurate to say that God can become angry, and that he uses this anger to reinforce his authority and to administer tough love to the rebels who have a chance of repenting.

Wouldnt this infringe on our free will?

I didnt think God could really have any ‘human emotions’ in the way we think of them anyways, so anger would definitely be one of these I imagine…right?

Somehow a ‘god’ that acts like ‘worship me and me alone, follow all my laws, etc or else suffer terrible retribution/ consequences’, does not sound like the God I know.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Somehow a ‘god’ that acts like ‘worship me and me alone, follow all my laws, etc or else suffer terrible retribution/ consequences’, does not sound like the God I know.

God is love and He wants us to love Him and love each other.
Everything but love is transient and illusory. We never had any of it really.
God’s laws are statements on how we are to care for and give to each other.
On this basis I have to say that the quote above pretty much sounds like the God I know.
I don’t see how sex for its own sake, all the money and fame, and pretty much the best that these four-score years can give, can in any way equal let alone be superior to what is in store for us following the Way who is Jesus Christ.

 

[laocmo]

:idea:
It is acceptable for God to crush those who oppose him because of his status as the creator. As the most powerful being who will ever exist, God has the inborn right to assert his dominance for all of his creations, including, and especially those who persist in rebelling against his natural, rightful authority.

Rather than saying “God is anger”, it might be more accurate to say that God can become angry, and that he uses this anger to reinforce his authority and to administer tough love to the rebels who have a chance of repenting.

This is the “wrongest” answer I have ever heard. God cannot become angry. Check out his attributes. One is that he cannot be affected by anyone or any thing, You cannot make him angry, you cannot make him sad, you cannot make him happy, etc. His Church accepted attributes make him about as alive and sentient as a rock. And just because I created something doesn’t give me the right to destroy it. Nor does it him. That logic would allow me to encourage my wife to have an abortion. It would excuse his Old Testament genocide.

 

[Aloysium]

This is the “wrongest” answer I have ever heard. . .

I am of course referring to what followed this introduction to your post.

You should familiarize yourself with what the Catholic Church teaches.

Honestly, what perverse pleasure drives you to come here and make a fool of yourself?

 

[fisherman_carl]

However, God does not have human emotions. We project those emotions onto him. But, He does change and human emotions do.

I just need to correct my typo here. It should say “But, He doesn’t change and human emotions do.”

 

[Faxero]

Wouldnt this infringe on our free will?

I didnt think God could really have any ‘human emotions’ in the way we think of them anyways, so anger would definitely be one of these I imagine…right?

Well, Jesus Christ overturned the tables of the money-changers who were camped within the temple.

Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Men. As a man, he has the human nature that we ourselves have. It’s not far-fetched to think that Christ is able to feel human emotions due to his human nature.

God has the human nature. Therefore, he has, or can experience, human emotions.

This is the “wrongest” answer I have ever heard. God cannot become angry. Check out his attributes. One is that he cannot be affected by anyone or any thing, You cannot make him angry, you cannot make him sad, you cannot make him happy, etc. His Church accepted attributes make him about as alive and sentient as a rock. And just because I created something doesn’t give me the right to destroy it. Nor does it him. That logic would allow me to encourage my wife to have an abortion. It would excuse his Old Testament genocide.

Not necessarily. We human beings don’t have the right to destroy other human beings, while God, as the creator, has the right to create life and take life whenever he desires.

It is wrong for humans to kill infants. It is not wrong for God to kill infants. We humans naturally have less authority than God himself has. What may be acceptable for him to do or think may be unacceptable for us to do or think.

 

[souldiver]

Not necessarily. We human beings don’t have the right to destroy other human beings, while God, as the creator, has the right to create life and take life whenever he desires.

It is wrong for humans to kill infants. It is not wrong for God to kill infants. We humans naturally have less authority than God himself has. What may be acceptable for him to do or think may be unacceptable for us to do or think.

Does that means that God is above morality? Because he has the highest authority? So authority is more important than morality?

 

[mikekle]

God is love and He wants us to love Him and love each other.
Everything but love is transient and illusory. We never had any of it really.
God’s laws are statements on how we are to care for and give to each other.
On this basis I have to say that the quote above pretty much sounds like the God I know.
I don’t see how sex for its own sake, all the money and fame, and pretty much the best that these four-score years can give, can in any way equal let alone be superior to what is in store for us following the Way who is Jesus Christ.

I see what you are saying, but everyone is different, maybe for some people, sex for its own sake, or worldly riches, are most important to them? they have free will like anyone else, whats the point of free will if you are not really allowed to exercise it?

Ive always believed as long as no harm comes to anyone else as a result of their choices/ actions, there should not be any consequences to their choices, if they are happy and content not having God in their lives and hold worldly treasures higher than anything else…so what, its their choice. God said he didnt want ‘mindless robots’ all worshiping him just because they had to, well that is the downside to free will, there will always be a certain number of folks who choose not to have God in their lives.

 

[Aloysium]

I see what you are saying, but everyone is different, maybe for some people, sex for its own sake, or worldly riches, are most important to them? they have free will like anyone else, whats the point of free will if you are not really allowed to exercise it?

Ive always believed as long as no harm comes to anyone else as a result of their choices/ actions, there should not be any consequences to their choices, if they are happy and content not having God in their lives and hold worldly treasures higher than anything else…so what, its their choice. God said he didnt want ‘mindless robots’ all worshiping him just because they had to, well that is the downside to free will, there will always be a certain number of folks who choose not to have God in their lives.

I suppose if you have never chased empty promises and earthly treasures, you wouldn’t know the pain that comes with their loss. To live one’s life solely in their pursuit will ultimately leave it unfulfilled, likely replete with only hopelessness, bitterness and regret rather than the joy that comes with love.

We do not bring any of this into existence. It is never ours until we give it away. We thereby unite with He who is the ultimate Source of all the fruit in this garden of life to be enjoyed and shared.

There are consequences to everything we do. They ripple through time with each interaction in the body of humanity. And, it is not only what we do but what we choose not to do.

We create ourselves through our passage in time. The life we create cannot, not be.