Sometimes when you’re just be-bopping along, life comes up to you and sucker punches you. Sometimes, when you’re stuck in traffic and you’re driving a 50-year-old car, it overheats and breaks down. And our first natural response is to get mad.
Do we have the right to get mad about life in general? Well, it depends: are you mad that God allowed it to happen, or are you mad at yourself? Or are you just mad at something that you have no control over, and was (in all likelihood) statistically bound to happen eventually?
We have these funny ideas about how the world works, and who’s in control of things. Is it God? Is it physics? Is it our own willpower? Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Force?
Job was a righteous man who got very angry with how things played out. We see in Job chapters 38-41, God lays down this challenge in reply: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?” And Job, a righteous man, had nothing to say. He couldn’t defend his anger.
We get so angry, so very quickly. Everything is marked by outrage, indignation, frustration, anger, disappointment. But really, if we are to learn anything from Job, it’s that things happen. And sometimes God allows bad things to happen. We don’t always know why.
If you don’t believe in a Supreme Being, then how can you get mad at nothing? You can’t. It’s simply laws of probability, right?
If you do believe in God, and you get angry, are you presuming you know better than Him? He put the laws of physics and probability in motion to begin with! And He has the ability to override those when necessary. He doesn’t need to give an account to us, and even if we could understand why, we’d probably disagree with anything against our own favor.
Simply put, getting angry at life is misplacing your emotions. Instead, try to seek reason in the madness. Try to make sense of what’s happening, and try to learn from it. You’ll find that almost always, there is something to be learned there if you look hard enough.
Then Job answered the Lord and said,“Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You?I lay my hand on my mouth.“Once I have spoken, and I will not answer;Even twice, and I will add nothing more.” – Job 40:3-5