God and Emotional Honesty

Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

There is much to be said for a raw emotional honesty before God, however it may manifest itself. Whether we cry out with a broken heart, express deep anger or shout for joy in His presence, the God of the Universe does not begrudge us our emotional outbursts. I believe He would prefer that we engage in an open and genuine discourse with Him rather than display a forced and false outward piety. He knows what is really going on inside of us anyway; we might do well to acknowledge that fact and voluntarily share our deepest feelings with Him. God is not insecure. He can handle seeing what comes out of us at our worst moments as well as our best, even when the pain and anger we express is directed toward Him.

Despite this, many sons and daughters of God are terribly afraid of being “real” in the presence of their Lord. I knew of one man who was so fearful of expressing his anger toward God about great misfortunes in his life that he would physically injure himself instead of confronting the Lord (or anyone else.) The result was not just an injury but a continued emotional paralysis that, at least partially, prevented him from doing anything constructive about the afflictions that made his life so miserable. I believe the primary reason he would not allow himself be openly angry with God was his great dread about how God would respond.

If we look in Scripture, we find many emotional outbursts of various kinds in front of the Lord, often coming from people dear in His sight. Many names come to mind, with David, Job, Jeremiah and Peter among them. Sometimes they may have said the wrong things to Him in wrong ways. They are not severely punished by their Creator and Redeemer. Although they may have suffered intensely emotional experiences, they all continue to be men of great faith to the end of their lives. They also continued to be loved by a God who never stopped blessing them throughout their lives.

It is true that our Lord, a perfect and perfectly loving being, is incapable of acting in a way that legitimately warrants our wrath. So, the Lord never deserves our negative emotions directed toward Him. But, there is a huge difference between willful anger toward God as a continued state of being and an instance of emotional honesty. The latter can open the door to a cathartic release, repentance, and renewed relationship with God. More than once in my own life I found that after I “had it out” with God, I came to a new place of love for and appreciation for who He is and how He continues to lavish abundant and unmerited grace and love on me.

The Bible tells us that the One in whom we have placed our faith desires “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). It may be that such truth cannot continue to exist if something deep within us remains un-confessed by a refusal to bare our emotional selves to Him. Could it be that stuffing our feelings may damage our innermost being? I think so. At the very least, a lack of emotional intimacy with God thwarts our spiritual growth and sanctification. It seems much better, on all counts, that we outwardly express to God what is going on within our hearts.