What exactly should we expect from God? What role does God play in human experience? What Can a Counselor Do When a Client is Angry at God?
In 2020, 48% of Americans surveyed by Gallup said religion was "very important" in their lives, and another 25% said religion was "quite important". Only 27% said religion was "not very important" in their life.
Among the 73% who answered that religion is very important or fairly important to them, there are undoubtedly a variety of beliefs about what a person should or should not expect from God. These deeply personal expectations can be dynamic as they are shaped throughout life and evolve and change over time.
As a licensed clinical mental health counselor trained in Christian thinking and faith-based counseling approaches, I am used to my clients coming into my office with a range of definitions of belief, religion and spirituality. They come with different beliefs and assumptions about God. These have typically been shaped by family traditions, religious institutions, influential friends and thought leaders, their own unique experiences and interpretations, or any combination of these factors.
I realized early in my career that people sometimes get angry with God when there is a discrepancy between their expectations and their experiences. I was already an ordained minister when I went to deliberation, but I knew I needed more training to deal effectively with faith-based issues. After getting my Masters in Church Counseling, I did a PhD in Christian Counseling so I could help people solve questions of faith and spirituality.
Customers usually come to me for something painful and unexpected: any kind of loss; an accident; a premature death; a miscarriage; a broken marriage; a sick child; an economic or work-related crisis; Abuse, assault or robbery; a health crisis; an injustice; a natural disaster; or any other traumatic event you can think of. Customers suddenly feel that their situation – or even their life – has a stamp imprinted on it: “Kindness Denied!” This creates a disturbing discrepancy between an individual's expectation of a loving God and his lived reality.
Why it is difficult to talk about anger at God
When a person experiences a crisis or a traumatic event, the initial feelings – sadness, anger, disappointment, fear – typically relate to the event itself. Other strong emotions often reflect existential questions about the role of God in their situation. Was God Present (Forsaken)? Why was this allowed to happen (confusion)? Then there are questions about their own feelings. Is It Okay To Be Angry With God? Are you allowed to feel that way?
Depending on a person's beliefs, the thought of being angry with God, an almighty transcendent being, may seem rather taboo. The mere mention of God suggests authority – an ultimate moral authority. Being angry with God can seem disrespectful or sacrilegious. It may be an anger that is easy to feel but terrifying to verbalize.
Clients with a spiritual or religious worldview may come to therapy because they fear being judged for these beliefs in the same way they fear being judged on factors such as race / ethnicity, economic status or sexual orientation. It is a sensitive area because spiritual or religious values reflect the principles by which a person makes decisions that govern their life. These values reflect a moral compass that determines the direction for one's own views, perceptions and decisions. Consultants are bound by our professional codes of ethics to respect the diversity of clients' religious and spiritual positions. We need to view these spiritual beliefs as elements of cultural diversity that require a commitment to cultural awareness and sensitivity in our counseling work.
The painful questions
When a crisis hits a person can be prone to question God's goodness. “God is good. What happened to me is not.” Did God cause the crisis? Why didn't God stop it? Why does God always love everyone but me?
A 2010 Baylor University Religion Survey project found that a person's expectations of God are determined by their answers to two questions. First, is God involved or indifferent in human affairs? Second, is God kind and merciful to mankind, or is he judgmental and critical of mankind? The model that emerged from this study suggested that the aspect of religion most relevant to a person's sanity is the nature of his relationship with God. It's about how people see that God relates to them.
Paul Froese and Christopher Bader from Baylor University described this in their 2010 book "America's Four Gods: What We Say About God – And What That Says About Us". They claimed that regardless of our religious tradition (or lack thereof), Americans worship four different types of God. First, almost all Americans believe that God loves. However, there are significant differences in the way people see God's commitment and judgment in the world. The study found that some Americans (31%) believe in an authoritative God who is more dedicated and judgmental. Others (24%) believe in a benevolent God who is more committed and less judgmental. There are also those (16%) who believe in a critical God who is less committed and more judgmental. The last group represents people (24%) who believe in a distant God who is less involved and less judgmental.
The Baylor model has provided me with a useful paradigm for case conceptualization. When I see clients angry with God, it is usually due to a mismatch between their experience and their expectations. The attributes they attribute to God no longer make sense. On the other hand, if their situation is consistent with the extent to which they believe God is inclusive and judging the world, there is less tendency for cognitive discrepancies and anger towards God.
In therapy I give the client space to let go of their anger. The way the client explains why they are angry with God tells what profile they are putting on God. This profile essentially forms the underlying beliefs that are studied in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
If the person's complaint against God comes from something that God did not do or did not provide, it indicates that the person expects God to be involved and benevolent in the situation. They can be angry with God for failing to offer protection from tragedy, denying something they expected, or failing to cure an illness. This runs counter to their expectation of a benevolent God who is kind, merciful, compassionate, and protective. There is then a large cognitive discrepancy.
Although people generally perceive God as loving, some clients may wonder why God does not seem to hand out punishment or judgment for wrongdoing. These clients may describe dismay at expecting some execution of righteousness, but it seems that God is allowing someone to "get away" with something. This deviates from their expectation of an authoritative God who is committed and who also immediately judges and punishes sin. “Why didn't God bring this party to justice? Why was I wrongly rejected while someone else was wrongly admitted? " they ask.
Customers who believe in a distant God will see God as uninvolved in today's world. They may believe that God created the world through some kind of cosmic force, but they see that God is now removed from this world and is simply observing from afar. For them, God set the world in motion, but it has remained unknowable and perhaps even mysterious. This belief suggests that God may not pay much attention to mere mortals. When tragedy comes – for good or bad people – there are absolutely no answers from God. God exists, but not to get involved.
Customers who see themselves as their problems can expect to go through life hopelessly. They often believe that a critical God allows the calamities of punishment and does not seek to improve human conditions for those who have failed morally. This leads to low expectations of an improvement in their situation.
While religious activities such as prayer and regular attendance at church services were the traditional measures of religiosity in Western culture, Froese and Bader suggest that these behaviors have little impact on a person's reported mental health. The study found that people who believe that their problems are the result of God demanding judgment because of sin have higher levels of fear, paranoia, and coercion than those who believe in a caring, dedicated God to them helps to master the challenges of life.
When counselors understand a client's image of God, they have the opportunity to explore that person's inner beliefs and thoughts and invite them to reflect. This can be useful for health care and disaster relief advisors as many painful problems raise the question, "Why me?" The most effective way to answer this question is from that person's point of view or belief in God, not by trying to change that person's beliefs (unless the person is willing to question their own belief system) .
A cognitive behavioral response
CBT involves the study of underlying beliefs that form the basis of a person's thoughts, feelings, and subsequent actions. The Baylor Study of America's God typologies offer four distinct cognitive beliefs that clients can join. A cognitive discrepancy exists when two findings are perceived as contradicting one another. An example is from a client who said, “God is good and brings good things into our lives, but what happened in my life is not good.” Another client who grieved over a number of miscarriages said, “ The womb serves to give life. My body only gives death. “These statements reflect emotionally painful discrepancies between these customers' expectations and their experiences.
People will naturally look for information that is consistent with their beliefs. However, if their emotional pain gets too great, they will also try to reduce dissonance by avoiding information that is inconsistent with the belief they are trying to hold onto. If they cannot find a way to keep the faith, they can give up their faith completely.
An alternative approach: Creation-Fall-Redemption
In my practice, clients coming from Judeo-Christian traditions found the following transformation particularly helpful in removing God from the four boxes. In this way, clients can contemplate and develop a theology of suffering that normalizes their pain and provides them with an alternative lens for their situation.
Creation: The sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity begin with the story of how God created the earth, everything in it and humanity. At every stage of creation, God stopped and said it was good. God gave the man (Adam) and the woman (Eve) permissions and parameters. As long as they followed God's plan, life was blissful. However, they were warned that working outside of God's permission and sound parameters would trigger a cascade of trouble all over the earth and across all generations. This disobedience would add knowledge of evil to the good things they already knew and disrupt the harmony of all creation.
The case: The second phase of the human experience was unfortunate because Adam and Eve both went beyond the established limits. This is commonly referred to as "the fall" (of humanity). Artists often portray this event as eating an apple, but that just seems like an artistic interpretation. It is important to recognize that the aftermath of this event brought three sources of problems into the world: moral evil, natural evil, and human limitation.
Each of these represents a different source of pain, which unfortunately all of humanity has to experience due to the introduction of evil into the world. Moral evil includes all selfish human choices that harm others or our world: violence, greed, assault, etc. Natural evil includes those things that bring destruction and devastation beyond our control: health problems such as sickness, disease, sterility, miscarriages, and atmospheric conditions like destructive weather, earthquakes, plagues and accidents. The third category, human limitation, includes limitations on our abilities, which we call weaknesses, and our now limited lifespan, which we call death.
Customers benefit from being able to categorize their problems. They yearn to interpret them, and it often seems that God is the only one to blame. Instead, customers can choose at least one of these three categories for every problem known to mankind. If you join a Judeo-Christian belief system, you will find the answer at the very beginning of human history in the context of a belief in which you already believe.
Salvation: Can it turn into something good? Is there any consolation in this pain? If the effects of the fall cannot be immediately reversed, then where is the hope? For clients looking for an answer within the Judeo-Christian tradition, salvation lies in their own faith – in the belief that God will not leave the world forever in the state that sin left them in the fall.
There are several symbols for salvation that depend on the client's belief system. I often ask clients what salvation means to them in the context of their faith. Some find consolation in knowing that no matter how painful their situation is, God's love is available to them and that God walks with them lovingly in the worst of times. Others may speak of current opportunities to turn their painful experience into something positive by helping others. Many Christians will speak of the resurrection of Jesus. Still others describe a sense of eternal justice that can still be understood here on earth.
In this way God is seen as with them in their pain, but not as the cause of their pain. The key point is that clients examine their conflicting beliefs and find a way to transform their tragedy or pain into beliefs that empower them with resilience. This will make it easier for them to resolve the cognitive discrepancy without letting go of the belief they love.
The cognitive behavior study
The process of examining which of the four types of God the person subscribes to and then introducing an alternative between creation, fall and salvation involves a basic cognitive behavioral approach. Here are some important discussion points for the cognitive behavioral process.
Identification of beliefs
Identify the spoken and unspoken beliefs about life, suffering, God, people, etc.
Research where these beliefs came from.
Discuss the expectations placed on these beliefs.
Reconciliation of thoughts
Identify the customer's thoughts on this particular situation.
Examine incongruences, inconsistencies, or dissonances between beliefs and thoughts.
Identify the form of evil in the client's situation: moral evil, natural evil, or human limitation.
Emotion management
Name the emotions. (What is the story of the individual with this emotion?)
Determine whether there is a need to forgive yourself or others. If so, ask the customer to decide if they want to act on it.
Behavioral adjustments
Encourage the client to determine how to use the anger or other emotions constructively.
Sample questions on cognitive behavior processing
Socratic questioning is a valuable tool in the CBT. This method is particularly useful on sensitive issues of spirituality and religion, as counselors need to approach the issue without judging the client's beliefs or values. The best questions are open, focused, precise, and neutral. Questions like these can be used at any convenient point in the process described above.
What would change for you if you could see God as mad at this injustice as you are?
How about you knowing that God is as saddened by your loss as you are?
What would you like to be the fruit of your pain?
What if you didn't have to figure out how to feel or act?
What if your situation is the result of a fallen world rather than a fallen God?
Diagnosis and treatment planning
What about a billable diagnosis? What about measurable treatment goals? Counselors often avoid religious and spiritual discussions in therapy because they need a billable clinical diagnosis for third party payers. On rare occasions, however, a client may initially report their current concern as anger at God. This is mainly because it is taboo and unacceptable to be angry with a Supreme Being. Clients experience symptoms of depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, adjustment disorder, and trauma-related disorders. The billable diagnosis is there.
Specific and measurable targets are found to reduce the frequency and severity of the diagnostic symptoms associated with the disorders. This may include a specific reduction in the number of days that certain symptoms cause clinically significant stress or dysfunction. This may include a specific weekly reduction in unwanted self-medication behaviors or a reported improvement in problematic sleep patterns. When the person resolves the religious or spiritual anger, such problems often improve. Success with this type of goal setting is to get a baseline measure of severity and then measure the improvement in ring symptoms over time.
Abuse problems are a clear exception to this CBT approach. If a client's history includes any form of victimization, such as spiritual manipulation or sexual abuse, the counselor must exercise extreme caution. In these cases, trauma-informed care and trauma-specific interventions are more appropriate than CBT interventions.
Summary
Clients with deep spiritual and religious beliefs can come for advice at an important crossroads in life. The perception that God denies the good can lead to a real crisis of faith. The tendency to type God into one of four frames leads to people having difficulty understanding a situation that creates a discrepancy between their expectations and their experience. Because counselors respond in a way that helps clients clarify their theology of suffering, we can also help them deal effectively with present and future problems.
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LaVerne Hanes Collins is a licensed clinical mental health advisor, a licensed professional advisor, and a nationally certified advisor. She owns New Seasons Counseling, Training and Consulting LLC where she develops personal and virtual training for licensed counselors on issues of race, belief, culture and trauma. For their web-based CE training on CBT for customers who are angry with God, please visit: http://bit.ly/3tqfMGu. Contact them at [email protected].
Knowledge-sharing articles developed from sessions presented at American Counseling Association conferences.
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Opinions and statements in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to reflect the opinions of the editors or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
