Growing Angry

  I would have to say that one of my biggest struggles is anger.  I get upset pretty easy.  It's my default emotion I think.  It's at this point that I feel like I need to warn you:  The blog is about to make a nerdy left turn. 

  I play games in my free time.  I'm not talking about Yahtzee or Scrabble.  Those are both great games, but I'm referring to video games.  The interesting thing about playing online with people is that the sinful nature can very easily take you over.  Most of the time for me this looks (sounds) like a burst of pure verbal sewage pouring from some great sin reservoir I have.  It's rather embarrassing, and my wife hates it.  Truth be told, I hate it too.  It's just easier to get angry than to deal with not winning at something!

  Let me set something straight right now, gaming is not the only thing that makes me angry.  There are lots of things that make me want to exact justice on some peeps, but it's not like I'm a Neil version of the Hulk running around hoping to smash and maim whatever gets in my path and looks at me funny.  Other drivers, for instance, make me angry even when I'm driving the exact same way.  Injustice, it ticks me off.  People not heeding others feelings, thoughts, ideas, well-being makes me almost homicidal, even though I do all of those on a daily basis.  I've wondered sometimes why I get so angry, for just and unjust reasons.  I realized a while back that the reason is that if God created us in His image, then that means that the range of our emotions must also be created in His image.  Unfortunately, the fall must have warped what was a powerful agent to see justice prevail into a base emotion that roils and burns when it shouldn't.

  I came to today's passage and was quickly reminded of this.  I know that when people are trying to come up with arguments for why they don't believe in God that this passage could probably be used to make their case.  On the surface, it looks like at the best God is a manic depressive creep who's ready to wipe out the people He supposedly loves in a heart-beat upon their tiniest of infractions.  He certainly burns with anger in the passage I looked at, but if we're honest with ourselves, we can't fathom this type of anger.  We only get a glimpse of how God's anger must work.  We get such an imperfect example of how it's supposed to be if we use our own anger as the standard.  Our anger burns when Starbucks gets our order wrong, and I'm sure the lightning would fly if we were in charge.  Poor baristas.  They always get the smiting shaft.  But God's anger is perfect because He is perfect.  Think about that for a second.  It doesn't make sense in our frame of reference.  This is what Number 14:10-12 says:

10 But all the congregation said to stone them with stones.  Then the glory of the LORD appeared in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel.

11 The LORD said to Moses, "How long will this people spurn Me?  And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?

12 I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they."

  So how did this come about?  The spies returning from the promised land with the report that the nation of Israel faced a tough challenge.  There were giants, and conquering them doesn't look like it's going to be feasible.  The people being the wonderfully trusting individuals they are respond by putting a plan together.  A plan to pick a new leader and walk back to Egypt.  Moses and his brother Aaron fall to the ground in supplication because this can only end up one way.  They begin to pray for Israel. Two of the spies challenge the nation's thinking.  Joshua and Caleb tell them how it is.  God is for them, why be afraid?  If God has told them to go into the land and take it for their own, then why be fall back now.  Who are you trusting Israel?  Your own might or God's protection and blessing?  The people did not like this.  They wanted the easy path.  How dare these youth challenge their brilliant plan!?  So they go to stone Caleb and Joshua.  God shows up and addresses Moses.  "I've done a lot for these people.  How long will this continue?  Tell you what, I'll thin the herd and start over again.  I'll start with you faithful few."  Do you understand how angry God is right now?  In the midst of their idiocy God reveals to the nation that He's fed up.  He's ready to wipe the slate and start again.  Will the faithful rise to the occasion or will they fall in line with the dissenters and crash and burn, probably literally?

  You see Moses and Aaron knew how God would respond to this.  Maybe not exactly, but they knew He wasn't going to be happy.  Moses spent so much time conversing with God on a personal level.  He understood how the latest round of insubordinance would play out.  The Bible says Moses and God spoke "face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." (Exo. 33:11)  That's why they fell in supplication to God.  They were displaying the proper position the nation should have been taking.  Laying themselves at God's feet to be used how He desired.  Moses knows His God, and knows how serious He truly is about the proposition.  Moses knows though that God's name and character are on the line with this experiment called Israel on a global scale, and he knows that God loves His people.  It's why the LORD's reacting the way He is.  He chose them to represent Him and to eventually reconcile the world to Himself.  God wishes to be glorified through His creation, and wants to see if there's anyone who desires the same thing.  So he lets the LORD know that he desires to see God glorified through those who fail to trust Him.  This is what Moses says in the presence of the nation (Numbers 14-13-19):

13 But Moses said to the LORD, "Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from their midst,

14 and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land.  They have heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people, for You, O LORD, are seen eye to eye, while Your cloud stands over them; and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.  

15 Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say,

16 'Because the LORD could not bring this people into the land which He promised them by oath, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.' 

17 But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared,

18 'The LORD is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving(nasah; Heb. to lift, carry, take) iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.

19 Pardon (salach; Heb. to forgive, pardon), I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven (nasah; Heb. to lift, carry, take) this people, from Egypt even until now.

  Moses knows His God.  He knows that God didn't have to say a word.  He could have wiped them out and replaced the family of Abraham with the family of Moses without a second thought.  But God showed up to teach them some important lessons. 

1.) The LORD needs no one, but He chooses to use the broken, ugly, petty, and imperfect to be glorified. 

2.) We're all being refined by a Consuming Fire.  How well we endure is dependent on our trust in Him.

3.) He will defend those who follow His will and trust Him unflinchingly.

  His standard is justice.  He wasn't going to let the rabble-rousers win.  He wasn't going to sit idly by while the righteous were beaten and killed for standing up for His name and glory.  He wanted, especially the ones He had called to be His, to know that.  It was so that when people stood to lead them towards God's promise and not away that they would know the difference between the two.  I can't say the same for my own anger.  I don't think my anger has ever led anyone to glorify God, but I could be wrong.

  I know that I haven't always lived up to His standard.  I just pray the next time red starts to course through my veins that I remember why that impulse is there.  That I am imprinted with One who knows what it is to be angry, and what it is let that anger lead to glorification.