Anger as Sacrament – A Response – Paul Fahey

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Greetings, Brad. I read your article, “Does God feel anger?“ It was great. I wanted to share with you an additional facet of God’s anger that has been on my heart for the past several months.

A couple of years ago, the previous pastor at my parish, acting from his own trauma and insecurity, publicly and falsely accused me and several other former parish employees of grave sin. This was the public culmination of years of his narcissistic behavior that happened behind closed doors. The whole experience wrecked my relationship with the church, a relationship God had been slowly rebuilding in the years since. 

In any case, last fall, I was talking with a friend of mine about how angry I felt every time I attended my parish. The new pastor is fine, not a narcissist, but he and the community just want to move on from everything that happened with the previous pastor. I saw this huge creator of hurt and betrayal in the middle of the parish while everyone else pretended it wasn’t there. Going to church felt like reenacting the story of the Emperor with No Clothes. 

My friend said to me: “God is angry at the injustice in your church, too. You don’t have to try not to be angry in order to worship him. Maybe your anger at the injustice is God allowing you to participate in his anger, or maybe your anger here is a type of worship.”

That proposal opened up so much for me personally. I began to see my anger, in this case, as a kind of sacrament, a physical way of connecting with God, and I incorporated it into my prayer. And as I did that, the anger in me dissipated. There are even some signs that the Lord is moving me from feeling only anger at injustice to now also feeling compassion for those who I felt were my enemies. 

All of that to say, not only does God in Christ experience human anger, and not only is God close to us when we feel anger, but perhaps anger at injustice can be a kind of sacrament, a way of bodily participating in God’s love for humanity – as you said – refracted through our sin. 

Thank you for your ministry.