Does God get angry?

"Looking around at [the Pharisees] with anger, and grieved at their hardness of heart, [Jesus] said . . ." Mark 3:5

In reflecting on this gospel reading in "Living Faith," James E. Adams writes that "divine anger flows inevitably from God's radical holiness and goodness in the face of evil, sin or any gross distortion of the good. God could not not be angry with evil, sin and gross distortion any more than water can flow uphill."

In the past, God's anger was a common theme of sermons - think Jonathan Edward's classic "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God" or more recently the hell, fire and brimstone sermons so common in the pre-Vatican II days (a few holdouts continued to give them even when I was a child in the 1980s). Today, it almost seems like sin is a dirty word. We speak of a God who loves us (and indeed he does) no matter what we do. That is a good thing. It is important to emphasize that God loves us and that we should follow his precepts because of that love and not because of a fear of punishment.

However, God has often been compared to a loving Father or Mother. What parent doesn't discipline her children when they have done wrong? I don't think that God actually sets out to make our lives miserable in some way, but I think that God does allow us to experience the consequences of our own poor choices. If we make bad decisions that are not in keeping with God commands, at some point we are going to be unhappy. God uses such consequences to force us to reevaluate our lives and return to God.

On the other hand, I also believe that there is nothing so bad in our lives that God can't bring something positive out of it if we approach God with a contrite heart and a willingness to do God's will.