God gave us emotions because God is emotional

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/080519.cfm
Numbers 11:4-15
Matthew 14:13-21

God can become enraged with us. Really? Is he that engaged in our lives that he experiences both anger and love? Is he like us?

All of us have read that rage is part of God’s personality in scripture. In the reading from Monday, August 5, the authors of the book of Numbers report on God’s interplay with the desert bound Israelites. The Chosen People start whining about their limited menu. God’s anger manifests in fire at the edges of the twelve tribe’s encampment. The fire calms them down for a minute or so, and then the whining picks right back up. Exasperated, God goes wild and dumps so much poultry on them that they make themselves sick.

Scripture tells us that God can be angry. How many of us believe that?

When whining and obnoxious behavior from our children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews drive us into a blooming rage would we ever give them all the things they want in such an abundance that it leads to engorgement? There have been several times when I have done this. Popcorn and potato chips piled high and stuffed into tummies that later hurt. Buckets of ice cream too easily scarfed down. Brain freezes and late night bathroom nightmares. Mounds of candy collected in bags on Halloween, and overflowing in Easter baskets. 

Were these perfect teaching tools? Not really. Well, maybe almost perfect.

The idea of an angry God greatly disturbs those of us who put limits upon God’s range of power. I am speaking of a purposeful assumption that God does not engage with us emotionally, because emotion implicates potential weakness. In fact, many of us doubt that God can display any extra sensory communication with creation. 

A wall stands between us and God. We should not project our demeanors upon God! God does not resort to anger, desire, curiosity, pain, and therefore even love. To think so forms God in our image. Assuming that God is wholly different from us, because we are not God, properly takes away from God anything that we are. God is not us, so he’s nothing like us.

Well, that’s just a very bad logic loop. God is who God is, and we are his creation. We are evidence, not false trials in a lab. One can be true (God made us like him). One is ridiculous (we can limit who God is).

I think we distrust scripture’s portrayal of God’s anger because the very idea of his anger is frightening. To believe God can be angry allows for God to be the source of our emotional makeup. In God’s perfection, with emotions in play, his anger would be not only be justified. God’s anger would be required. Why would he resist appropriate anger? 

Aaaak. We are certainly doomed. Unless he loves us. Oh.

Next, giving God emotional range implies Numbers could be correct, noting that God has the ability to physically interact with us. We don’t want to be alone, but do we want to be watched by God? By fencing off God we conclude that God cannot step into our lives and affect our movements and activities. God cannot see into our hearts and minds. God would not deign to break the plane of creator and creature. Would he? God cannot physically display his presence in some unmistakable way. Can he? 

Now the people complained bitterly in the hearing of the LORD; and when he heard it his wrath flared up, so that the LORD’s fire burned among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp.

Numbers must be some allegorical concoction, a clunky contraption meant to scare us into being good rather than bad. That’s what some of us think. 

The Israelites, hounded by “riffraff” who hungered for meat, complained for meat rather than just manna. God agreed to give them meat. So much meat that the Israelites would gorge themselves and meat would pour out their nostrils. Moses doubted that such a thing was possible.

Can enough sheep and cattle be slaughtered for them? If all the fish of the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?

God then becomes annoyed with Moses. This old guy had plenty of reason to be weary of both the Israelites and of God. Surely, many of us hope, this scripture is a manufactured teaching of some sort and not an accurate, eyewitness account of God and humanity.

The LORD answered Moses: Is this beyond the LORD’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.

What if this story is true? It would smash the wall between us and God. It would mean that we are like God, a God who expresses emotions in a range so wide as to include the ability to project consequences. 

Therefore the LORD will give you meat to eat, and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the LORD who is in your midst, and in his presence you have cried, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”

Yet, if we believe this can be an authoritative and reliable account of God and us, then the other demeanors which we display can be presented in God’s perfection. That is, mercy and love.

When the youngsters we overfed as a fun and terrible teaching tool cry out in pain, we soothe them. When they can’t control their bowels or their stomachs, we clean them up. When they hoard their candy and gorge on it later, we discuss with them the ugly outcome of crystallized chocolate. Just like God we know what will happen with unbridled eating.

Anger isn’t the only emotion we experience with children. All the other emotions are at play too. We suffer the pain along with those in our charge, and we hold them. We laugh with them. We are surprised with them, even when nothing is really surprising. We engage with them completely. 

We are not only angry with the little ones. All the emotions engage us. To not be all in with our children would be cruel.

This makes us like our God. Mounting frustration. Awful anger. Righteous punishment. Complete forgiveness. Abundant provisions. Undeserved and unexpected Mercy. All of these with constant love. 

These spent emotions do not diminish God. They affirm that he is our Father. He lifts us up to him.