I AM NOT SURE what event in Becky’s decline enraged me more at God. Perhaps it was when I first visited her in a behavioral health unit. Maybe it was an incident that took place shortly after that. Becky had been transferred to another hospital and had been there for only a day or two. I called and asked how she was. “Oh, fine. She is resting after her first ECT.”

I screamed into the phone, “What? I did not give permission for that!”

My startled outrage seemed too explosive to be housed in my body. I roared, snorted, lashed out at two innocent objects in the house, and stormed off to the hospital. A bit of sanity slipped into my consciousness, and I stopped by a good friend’s house on the way to the hospital. After more yelling, crying, and lamenting the day of my birth (like Job), I settled down a bit and did what I had to do.

ECT means electroconvulsive therapy. It is used to treat extreme depression. Becky and I had been briefed about this a few days earlier by a neurologist who droned on and on with almost no awareness that two shattered souls sat near him. I listened intently, but came to no decision on the treatment, which is nothing like what I saw in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, forty years ago. It does not jolt patients into seizures and is very effective. It was right for Becky. But I did not give permission for it.

Livid is too tame a word for how I felt. I called three different doctors as soon as I could about this. They all concurred that ECT was a good idea. I then gave permission for continued treatment. I stopped yelling. I didn’t sue anyone. The ECT did help Becky come out of depression. It did nothing to abate her dementia. In fact, it revealed it. If Becky had depression mimicking dementia (which was her earlier diagnosis), the lifting of depression would have restored her cognitive abilities. But it did not.

Part of coming out of my rage was pragmatic, not devotional. I had to decide what to do for the sake of my wife. I had to think clearly. But I did not think dearly of God. Didn’t he know I was already overloaded with fear, pain, and sorrow? Didn’t he care about my wife, who had been his redeemed child for so long?

I hated God and told him so, repeatedly. I hated myself for doing it, but I did it. But, pragmatically speaking, I needed God’s help more than at any other time in my fifty-seven years on earth. I knew rage was of the flesh, not of the Spirit. I never questioned God’s existence, only his goodness. I was bordering on misotheism—the “hatred of God.” Or maybe I had taken a guest pass into that thought-world. It seemed right, but felt awful. God must have been hearing me, but was not answering—not from a whirlwind or from anywhere else. However, I knew in my bones that God—this mysterious, seemingly heartless God—was my God and that he was my only hope. “I will be with [you] in trouble,” says he (Psalm 91:15).

I was no model of sanctity while thrashing about in this cauldron of white hot chaos. There was no “peace that passes understanding.” What passed understanding was the meaning of these uncharted events. I had let them steal most all of my affection for God. I had lost much of my fear of him as well. I was insolent before the Almighty. My foundations were shaken, but my responsibilities were intensified. The one thing I could not do was ignore God. I am a God-haunted man who knows God and is known by God.

Yet I have a young and brilliant friend who hates God and has no love for him whatsoever. He was raised by godly parents, whose hearts now break for him. I have spoken to and corresponded with this troubled soul. He wrote me one letter (not an email) that was six pages long, typed and single-spaced. He would like to condemn God to hell for the way his family suffered in serving God. I cannot crack his hatred with reason. I wait and pray, and understand some of his rage.

Martin Luther offers me some solace for my tempestuous emotions. A man of courage, intellect, and deep piety, the Reformer was sometimes tempestuous. He reportedly said, “Love God? Sometimes I hate him!” Hating God (episodically) may have its benefits. But, please understand, I do not advise it. Nevertheless, you realize there is a God to be angry with, a God you cannot ignore. And you know God is not ignoring you. Your heart is revealed. No cover-up is possible. When you accuse God, your mood utterly differs from when you love God and sense his love. That sheer juxtaposition of moods may alert you to the fix you are in and drive you back to God in love. I assure you that love is better than hate.

Academics come up with strange and fascinating topics for study. In Hating God, Bernard Schweizer named and defined a new religion—or anti-religion—called misotheism. Schweizer defines it as “simply put, misotheism is a response to suffering, injustice, and disorder in a troubled world. Misotheists feel that that humanity is the subject of divine carelessness or sadism, and question God’s love for humanity.”1

Theism, whether Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, confesses a belief in God and accepts (sometimes kicking and screaming) God’s authority and prerogatives. Atheism denies the existence of God and tries to live in the aftermath. However, many atheists seem to be proclaiming, “There is no God, and I hate him.”

Misotheism denies both theism and atheism. Instead, it accepts the existence of God, but refuses to love, like, or especially worship God. Beyond that, misotheists hate God, just as misanthropes hate humanity and misogynists hate women. Misotheists shout, “There is a God, and I hate him.” Many of us are temporary or part-time misotheists. We move from disappointment to irritation to anger and even to outrage at God. I have been guilty of moving past lament and into a noisy (but not dangerous) rage. But these outbursts may escalate beyond short episodes. Sometime after Becky’s diagnosis, I handwrote a card to a longtime friend. In it I wrote, “God is cruel, and Ecclesiastes has the courage to admit it.” Of course, what prompted this was the ordeal my wife and I were enduring.

As an amateur expert on Ecclesiastes, I thought I was justified in this judgment. Does not the Preacher observe that the unfairness and cruel disappointments of life happen on God’s watch?

“God has made the one as well as the other”—days of joy and days of torment, hours that fly by in joy and hours that crawl along in pain. The Preacher sees God in all events, but he does not turn on God “when times are bad.”

After his first round of undeserved suffering, Job agreed with the Preacher, but somehow praised God nonetheless:

After Job endured his sickness along with the long-winded bad theology of his friends, and after he had made his case against God, God reveals himself and utters a long and irrefutable soliloquy on his supremacy over the animal kingdom. After this drama of divine scolding, Job responds:

Job was humbled. Not all are.

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov does not despise himself. He despises God. In the section called “Rebellion,” Ivan cites case after case of undeserved human suffering, especially that of children. This is painful to read and to include in this book, but I must, for honesty’s sake. Ivan, an irreligious man, confronts his Christian brother, Alyosha. Ivan speaks of

Ivan, it turns out, is not an atheist. Nor is he a theist. He hates the God who is there and rebels against him. He is a misotheist, and...