St. Valentine’s Day should remind us all of the love we need to give and receive in life. The love the saint embraced and that motivated his service to others was God’s love, a love the Bible describes as unconditional and everlasting.

But how easy it is to miss God’s love, especially by being angry at God. Recently, a former colleague of mine died as an avowed atheist who rejected God because of the death of his beloved father and sister, and finally of his own illness.

This is a familiar reaction, but why do we get mad at God? It usually happens when we or someone we love experiences a tragedy or loss. Or a relationship or situation doesn’t go the way we thought it should. Or because of all the injustice and suffering in the world. The list is endless, and our reaction is to lay all the evils of the world at God’s feet. 

But the Bible explains that in His love for us, God created the world perfect and people perfectly free. Things fell apart when mankind decided to make his way apart from God. This led to all kinds of natural and moral evils we face today AND to the mistake of holding God responsible for the poor choices of human beings.

The story is told of three prisoners in Auschwitz who put God on trial for the unspeakable torture millions of people experienced at the hands of the Nazis. They were angry at God and thought that finding him guilty of crimes against humanity was justice. Clearly, they had the wrong defendant; it should have been Hitler and his thugs on trial. But God was blamed instead, a course of action psychology calls “displaced aggression.”

Like these wounded and broken souls, we too can decide to get even with God by no longer believing in Him, as if boycotting God is deserved comeuppance. A.W. Tozer shows the futility of such action when he states, “To believe in God adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.” Blaming God neither invalidates his existence nor his nature.

And what is his nature? 1 John 1:5 says, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” God is all-good, meaning he also hates evil. And God is love (1 John 4:8), meaning He is the source of all unconditional and lasting love. 

In our pain, we have every right to be angry, but to be angry at God, in my opinion, will only make matters worse because our hostility can prevent us from experiencing the healing, comfort and direction that flows from a loving God. And He often uses His people, like St. Valentine, to demonstrate that love to us. Should we cry out to God about our anguish? Absolutely. Should we air our complaints to God about how frustrating it is to live in an imperfect world? For sure. God understands every emotion we feel.

God didn’t cause human suffering, but as the all-powerful, all-loving and all-good Creator, He promises to restore this imperfect world one day and right all wrongs. In the meantime, instead of shaking our fist at God, let us hold His hand to guide us through the hard times. And most importantly, let us follow the example of St. Valentine and embrace and be motivated by the unconditional and everlasting love of God.

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This article first appeared in the February 2023 issue of “STROLL in The Canyons” magazine.