Ever Want to Punch God in the Head?

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Dreadsox

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Aug 24, 2002
Messages
10,885
I have not attended church now but once since May.

I am pissed off at God right now.

I cannot get through it and I want no part of the church community.

The church did nothing to me....my family still goes every Sunday.

I am pissed off.

I am angry.

I was ready to go back three weeks ago....

Then I lost two people in a car crash who were near and dear to me on Thanksgiving.

Then a former student drowned 48 hours later.

Then a good friends wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I am FUCKING pissed off at God.

And God had better be the bigger of the two of us...because the fucking chasm is pretty big right now.

Any thoughts?
 
in 1991

i had several losses, also

i did not think i would get out alive



i did read Kushner's book

"When Bad Things Happen to Good People"

it helped me a lot

i think it may give you some peace


i can not speak to your choice about not going to your church



i have more inner peace now,
than I have ever had in my life when I was seeking it from others

i had to come to terms with myself
and look at what choices I could make
life is much easier and rewarding, now

sincerely,

peace to you
 
Dread,

I've had my own screaming matches with God lately. I've had them before as well. The passage of time has enabled me to see why things happened before. I trust I will learn new lessons as I pass through another valley.

Prayers for your peace and true joy in these difficult times.
 
The other thing that has really opened my eyes is my new job. I do not feel comfortable typing about things that have been happening, but DAMN....where are we heading?
 
I do not believe God interferes with His creation as much as we'd like to believe. As such, we're generally left to make our own mistakes--with sometimes fatal consequences for us or others--and our genetics left to maintain integrity or completely corrupt on their own.

Plus, we also bear the burden of the mistakes of our ancestors. "Tradition" is a double-edged sword, as we often repeat the same mistakes that killed them centuries ago.

We have been granted the power to control our own destiny from the beginning; and we learn that it comes with both benefits and costs--as does everything. Even the existence of the Bible itself has proven to be a double-edged sword that often proves to be fatal just as often as it is "helpful."

And I do believe that God is bigger than any of us. I believe that to know God would be to surpass all human definitions of logic, morality, and perfection.

Melon
 
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I agree w/ deep, read that book

Sometimes it is when we are in our worst place with God, when we are our most angry with him, that we can find strength from him and love from him that we never thought possible-in spite of how much pain and hurt and anger we are feeling. Or maybe because of it, I don't know. It has happened for me in my life, I am just speaking from my experience. God understands how you are feeling, I really believe that with all my heart. Give yourself time then come back to Him when and if you are ready. You are human and have every right to feel the way you are feeling.
 
Hey Dread, I'm sorry to hear about your losses and the rough times you're going through. That's quite a lot to take on at once -- especially this time of year. You're in my prayers, as are the loved ones of your friends, the student you know and your friend's wife and family.

For me, it's always been diffiuclt to explain why crap like this happens. On one hand, when the tough stuff happens, I have to fight to trust that God knows what he's doing and that my understanding is weak. He is God after all. Then, on the other hand, I know there's a destructive force out there as well -- but then I know God uses all things for his glory, as trite as that probably seems to you at this moment.

I think above all and at the very least, I know that through the work on the cross, God understands the kinds of pain we go through -- physically, mentally and emotionally. That alone, to me at least, deserves my worship. I wouldn't worry about church right now -- start with just your own dialogue with God. Yell at him. Tell him you're pissed. He can take it.

"All God wants is a willing heart and for us to call out to him."
-- Bono
 
Dreadsox said:
I have not attended church now but once since May.

I am pissed off at God right now.

I cannot get through it and I want no part of the church community.

The church did nothing to me....my family still goes every Sunday.

I am pissed off.

I am angry.

I was ready to go back three weeks ago....

Then I lost two people in a car crash who were near and dear to me on Thanksgiving.

Then a former student drowned 48 hours later.

Then a good friends wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I am FUCKING pissed off at God.

And God had better be the bigger of the two of us...because the fucking chasm is pretty big right now.

Any thoughts?

Mr. Dreadsox, unlike most of the other people who have responded, I'm not sure if - in any forum here on interference - I have ever personally addressed. I do not know you as much as some of the other regulars in FYM. Nevertheless, I just want you to know that I've always enjoyed reading your posts. Your posts are illuminating, insightful, and they instigate critical thinking.
This one is no different. Immediately questions about God, evil, power, love, reality etc. all flood the mind. I think these questions often make us feel uncomfortable. So often this uncomfortability leads us to giving rather heartfelt, but unneccessary responses.
Church people do this so often - maybe more often that non-church people, I'm not sure though. Some common responses to someone going through a difficult time are, "God is trying to teach you something," "Maybe God is just trying to get your attention," "Remember to praise God in everything," "Well, just remember that without free will this wouldn't have happened, but without free will life would not be worth living."
- God is trying to teach me something? Like God - the big almighty Lord - can't teach me unless he uses something bad?
- God is just trying to get your attention? Again, screw God if he can't get my attention any other way. That's not a God i care to worship. Sounds rather limited.
-Remember to praise God in everything? Screw that. If i step on a nail, i'm not going to praise God for allowing me the chance to step on a nail and bleed. I'm going to say, "FUCK!" Why would God want to be praised for allowing me to step on a nail?
- Free will? When I'm going through painful experiences, the last thing I want to hear is some mini-philosophical/theological argument. C.S. Lewis had written a book on the problem of pain (titled thusly). However, when he experienced the death of his wife, the arguments he had put forth, gave little comfort.
Here's the thing though. The God i believe in is big enough to take our screams, yells, fights...i think God believes that all of that is a sign of faith. God, for all intensive purposes, invented logic, so if events seem cruel and illogical to you, then he will understand why you feel that way.
If you need another to person to scream at though, i think most of us here would be more than willing to listen. I believe that the people here - though i may disagree with them on political issues etc - are great people. We're hear to listen. :hug:
 
I am sorry if you´re having a hard time, Dreadsox.

There is a lot to say about death, and then nothing. I haven´t learned how to deal with it.

May this poem give you a little comfort.


Questions by the Lake

When, after two years you returned to Solentiname,
already a child of five, Juan,
I remember very well what you said to me:
"You're the one who's going to tell me all about God, right?"
And I who all the time
have come to know less about God.
A mystic, that is, a lover of God
called God NOTHING,
and another said: all that you say about God is false.
And if you were to have knowledge of God it was better
perhaps I didn't talk to you of God.
But once,
I certainly spoke to you of God by the lake,
on the dock,
during a twilight all pink and silver:
"God is one who's within all of us,
within you, within me, within everywhere."
"And God is within that heron?" "Yes." "And within the sardines?"
"Yes." "And within those clouds?" "Yes."
"And within that other heron?" "Yes."
A tiny Adam naming all your small paradise.
"And God is within this dock?" "Yes." "And within the waves?"
Why do children ask so many questions?
And I
why do I question why
like a child?
"And God is also within my dad and my mom?" "Yes, God is."
And you told me:
"But God doesn't get to the island of the bad ones, right?"
Now, 12 years old,
you're in the Association of Sandinista Children.
You go to the rallies. You take part in voluntary work.
You take watch turns for the revolution. You're in the militia.
(Now the bad ones have left their island.)
"And God is also within the little stars
the tiny little stars that are so big, right?"
The numbers measuring littleness
are as large as those for bigness.
Where did you come from?
And I was shocked, not only by your questions
but also because I thought that
of three hundred million spermatazoids
it was only you, Juan,
of the three hundred million Juans
distinct from the Juan that you are
but twins of you
it was only you, once.
And like you
three hundred million asked me from their nonexistence
where is God,
telling me I should tell them all about God,
and if God is also within them?
(And with them the whole infinity of nonexistents
infinitely greater than the existent.)
As if all at once I were interrogated
by three hundred million stars that didn't exist.
Although among all those millions,
within which God also is,
you were the only one, Juan,
the one who questioned me that day by the lake.
The one who one day believed that I would tell him all about God.


by Ernesto Cardenal
Translated from the Spanish by Marc Zimmerman
From FLIGHTS OF VICTORY (Orbis, 1985)
 
I just feel stretched.....

STRETCHED!!!!!!

Yesterday, during the breakfast with Santa that our Lion's Club was holding for the children of our town, a parent showed up a half an hour late. Missed Santa and the breakfast....

New to the town, she did not know where the breakfast was based on our directions.

This woman was in tears....uncontrollable anguish....

I attempted to get Santa on the cell to come back....the woman walked out with her daughter.

I call Santa back and say she was leaving to never mind....

Then we hear someone falling down the stairs....

She came back in without her daughter and lost her footing.....

Again in tears, she is telling us her four year old died a year ago of cancer....and her daughter wanted Santa to bring her baby sister a message....

---------------------

A month ago I get a call from a friend.....

Needs money....

His wife spent the money on a tatoo and a trip to FL with her....BOYFRIEND.

WTF? 4 kids...she cleaned him out...

He is in my house in tears....tears.......

His parents died on Thanksgiving.....and he could not afford a suit for the funeral....

----------------------------------

homeless children in school

and on and on......
 
Dread... wish I could say something to help. I hope you'll be okay. :hug: I know that's not much help.
 
I'm ok..my wife is telling me that I am carrying too much around for others....
 
It brings me great comfort knowing that Mother Thersea also had shout matches with God. She used to write a lot about what she thought was a lack of faith sometimes. Yet she continued on showing so many people God's love even when she wasn't sure herself. What a remarkable person!
 
I'm sorry, Dread. I know I've been there this year too, and what I have faced is minor in comparison. I don't have any advice but I do offer my sympathy. :hug:
 
My dad died when I was three, my friend's fiance was killed in a horrible car crash and a co-worker's son was killed in Iraq recently to name a few - I can see why some people have a hard time believing God exists. I've always believed in God, even though sometimes I don't think he hears me - and I also believe in heaven - streets of gold, pearly gates, never ending banquet - I know my loved ones are in a much better place than I am and someday I'll be hangin' with them again :yes:
 
Believe me, I am fine....Thank you....I am just angry....So much is happening to so many around me......

I am not joking... A tree fell on my truck Friday during the 70 MPH snow storm....and I am laughing because so much has happened to so many around me I could care less about the truck.

I am just angry at God right now.

I cannot fix the world....and it is frustrating me.
 
Dreadsox said:
I cannot fix the world....and it is frustrating me.

I know the feeling. I often believe the world has gone completely mad.

Melon
 
It's the immense powerlessness of it all, isn't it? Anger and rage and helplessness. A promise that seems broken, a covenant of some kind betrayed. And no one ever has an adequate answer.
We can't fix the world. God can't or won't. And for all the promises of some future somewhere, all we have is the here and now. And you're never as angry at God for yourself as much as for those you love. It's God's betrayel of them that you cannot forgive now or perhaps ever or perhaps sometime. I have no answers. But I know the feeling all too well.

It's a struggle to make peace with it.
 
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My father, the most important person in my world, died suddenly on my sixteenth birthday. This story gave me some comfort, along with a lot of praying and crying and shouting at God.

In Kabbalah, they say that the universe was created by a contraction of the divine energy, resulting in a shattering of the divine light. All of creation emerged from the chaos of the resulting void, and the fragments of the light suffused it like a shower of sparks. It is the job of man to gather up these sparks, coaxing them from the fragile and damaged world in which they are enmeshed, until the divine light is once again restored, and the creation is healed and complete. In this work, we are fully God's partners.

Some days it was all I could manage to find one tiny spark to gather, and it was comforting to know that that was sufficient witness all by itself. We can't, and don't have to, grasp the whole task and plan all at once. Stick with one small step at a time and eventually, inevitably, you'll come to the bridge you're looking for.

And when all else fails, just go back to shouting for awhile. As coemgen said, God's tough--He can take it. I do find, though, that often when I'm in shouting mode, it's more that I've temporarily lost recognition of who God is, and am in fact really shouting at myself. So if it just feels draining and not at all productive...that may be why.
Dreadsox said:
I'm ok..my wife is telling me that I am carrying too much around for others....
I think she is probably right. It is so much harder to watch someone you love suffer, than to suffer yourself--and when so many close to you are suffering all at once...

You and your friends will be in my prayers.
 
Dreadsox said:
I have not attended church now but once since May.

I am pissed off at God right now.

I cannot get through it and I want no part of the church community.

The church did nothing to me....my family still goes every Sunday.

I am pissed off.

I am angry.

I was ready to go back three weeks ago....

Then I lost two people in a car crash who were near and dear to me on Thanksgiving.

Then a former student drowned 48 hours later.

Then a good friends wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I am FUCKING pissed off at God.

And God had better be the bigger of the two of us...because the fucking chasm is pretty big right now.

Any thoughts?

i haven't bothered to read through this entire thread, but i will say dreadsox that this should be enough evidence for people to realize god is not in the building.

we have each other.

why can't that be enough?

i feel for your losses. take care.
 
:hug: I think Mrs. Dreadsox is right too - you are carrying too much for others.

I can't change the world.. but I can change the world in me...

You do a lot of great things to help make the world better. Try and focus on that too. What you do with your time is quite a wonderful thing. Teaching and volunteering really do make a difference.

I can understand your anger towards God... what happens in the world just can't happen when there is a powerful God to stop it. I do agree with Melon though - that God isn't interfering and isn't doing these bad things. I'm sorry that such awful things are happening to people you care about. Also realize that it's all out of your control and what you do that is in your control is good. :hug:
 
melon said:
I do not believe God interferes with His creation as much as we'd like to believe. As such, we're generally left to make our own mistakes--with sometimes fatal consequences for us or others--and our genetics left to maintain integrity or completely corrupt on their own.

Plus, we also bear the burden of the mistakes of our ancestors. "Tradition" is a double-edged sword, as we often repeat the same mistakes that killed them centuries ago.

We have been granted the power to control our own destiny from the beginning; and we learn that it comes with both benefits and costs--as does everything. Even the existence of the Bible itself has proven to be a double-edged sword that often proves to be fatal just as often as it is "helpful."

And I do believe that God is bigger than any of us. I believe that to know God would be to surpass all human definitions of logic, morality, and perfection.

Melon

Wow, we have very different beliefs and yet I agree with this completely.

Dread, at the risk of getting laughed right out of here, I can offer you an astrological explanation. Early August Leos like you and me are getting a direct hit from a Sun-Saturn conjunction, a once every 28 years occurence. Things ease up by year end when Saturn begins moving away from our suns and then returns for another exact conjunction in July 2006 before moving away from us completely (to bother the rest of the August birthdays through mid-2007). Hang in there. I too am getting stretched to the max. Stretched and squeezed, actually. :hug:
 
Dread, much has been said already that I would have said. I have been shouting at God pretty much since college. :wink: I often drown him and myself out that way. But yet, what DO we do with the questions you've raised? Kids who are abused, lovers abandonded, wars that level a country, waves that level half of SE Asia. Our 4 Hostages whose lives depend on the mercy of murderers. :sad: Friends who cannot seem to catch a fuckin break no matter what they do (so they do nothing LOL). I heard you. :hug: Keep wrestling.

"Jacob wrestled the angel, and the angel was overcome."

"Jesus, Jesus can you hear me? I'm alone in this world, and a FUCKED UP WORLD it is too"

Oh, and do listen to the Mrs. You do seem to be carrying a lot on those shoulders. :hug:
 
i have little to offer -- i am currently in one of the best stretches of my life as a whole series of things seem to be falling into place, though i can only appreciate it now because things have been such a struggle for the past 3-4 years. i remember those dark, depressed days vivdly. all you can do is put your head down, laugh when you can, find humor in the blackness, find love in the little moments, and remember not to blame yourself too much when things go wrong or to credit yourself too much when things go to well.

i do not believe in "God's Plan." i believe that all choices made, all events that transpire in this world, tragic or joyous, are 50% chance -- and as such, we must learn to accept what simply *is* in an amoral world. the world is neither good nor bad, it simply exists. and, to me, and i assume to you, the idea of letting go from some sense of responsibility for other's pain is an enormously emotionally difficult job. you care, deeply.

i know you're a pretty big guy, but i bet people wonder how that big chest can hold a heart that's even bigger.

the impulse to feel a profound sense of injustice and to seek to battle, everyday, against that injustice, is wonderful and we need more people like you. however, you also have to give yourself room to let the pain of life leave you at the end of the day by letting go.

accepting what is does not mean that we are passive in the face of pain or suffering, it just means that we can only respond to the pain and suffering in the best way we know how -- through love, through empathy, through compassion, and through understanding that sometimes there are no answers, there is no master plan, and that all we can do in the face of what seems like chaos is draw those we love closer to us and wrap our arms around them.
 
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I have gotten pissed off with God *many* times. Sometimes life is a pain in the :censored:. I'm sorry you're having such a hard time Dread.
 
I remember in college, not the first time God and I had it out, a friend told me, "You can get angry at God. He can take it."

When my sister was anorexic, for about three years my journals were full of angry scrawls at God. The language I used...but He's big enough. He can take it.

If you look at the book of Job, it's one long venting of frustration at God. And it's interesting, at the end of the book, when God finally answers Job, He doesn't answer Job's questions. But at the same time, He doesn't get angry with Job for talking to Him. He's angrier at Job's friends, who sit around blaming Job or pontificating about why this might happen.

I think God prefers that we have it out with Him than ignore Him... because at least if we have it out, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, sooner or later daybreak will come....

Hang in there.
 
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