God in the hands of angry sinners

By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist Monday, September 07, 2026

The most famous sermon ever preached by one of the most esteemed theologians has never come across more like a sharp stick in the eye than today.

Jonathan Edwards let loose Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God on July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut. It’s said that the congregation became so loud with crying out that Edwards had to stop before finishing the sermon.

I have a feeling that would happen today, too, just not for the same reason.

Edwards, who by all accounts was a very meek and kind person, delivers so much offense in that sermon that it’s easy to believe most people today would walk out in the middle of it. And Edwards, in his message, tells us why that is.

“Almost every natural man that hears of Hell flatters himself that he shall escape it.” Sounds about right, wouldn’t you agree?

Oh sure, some flippantly say that they’re going to Hell with no emotion, but swing open the door to that eternal horror and see if they don’t run for the hills.

But Edward’s sermon gets worse from there.  

His message is the polar opposite of the “God accepts you just as you are” mindset that’s present in church assemblies today. For example:

“The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are 10,000 times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”

Remember what I was saying about a sharp stick in the eye?

Now, Edwards doesn’t leave his listener in a state of despair and goes on to speak about God’s proactive love and salvation: “Many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in are now in a happy state with their hearts filled with love to Him who has loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.”

So, the Gospel is aptly applied at the end, but Edwards isn’t going to tell you how to be saved until he answers the important question of: saved from what?

The problem today is that we are put off by the idea of any harshness coming from God, let alone the eternal kind. And if any trouble does come calling, we reverse Edward’s sermon, putting God in the hands of angry sinners.

I know because I’ve done it myself far too often.

The spiritual gear shift that changes everything

I’ve written before about losing my first wife at a very young age to cancer, and how awful that process was for her. Not only were my hands angry for God back then, but they can still get that way over it today.

When I found out that the great C. S. Lewis lost his wife, Joy, to the same disease and wrote a book about it (A Grief Observed), I thought, who better to help me get over this, and so I immediately bought and read the book.

I hated it. I hated it so much that I threw it into the corner of my bedroom where I left it for months.

At the time, I didn’t think it supplied me with the answers I was looking for. Turns out, it did, but I wasn’t mature or willing enough to accept them.

Part of me still isn’t today.

But if you’re able to take in Lewis’ core positions, it will give you the spiritual gear shift needed to face trials the way the Bible asks us to.

Lewis begins by admitting that there is no experiential difference for us in supposing that God is either good or bad when we’re in the midst of trials. He puts it like this:

“The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed — might grow tired of his vile sport — might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.”

Here’s the answer (if we can accept it) to why, sometimes, in the midst of trials, we feel the way the prophet Jeremiah did when he complained to God: “You have covered Yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through” (Lam. 3:44). The good surgeon is still working on us even if we don’t feel it.

Lewis’ statements dovetail well with what David wrote: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me” (Psalm 119:71, 75).  

Lewis then echoes how we feel more times than not during God’s operation on our lives: “But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”

And as for the “tortures,” I particularly like how Lewis poo-poos the idea we shouldn’t fear them: “What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?”

‘Nuff said.

It’s been a long time since I said goodbye to my first wife, and even though I know what Lewis says is true, I still struggle to “consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1:2). Put another way, it’s much easier to write about these things than to live it. I still can, too easily, put God back into my angry hands when a new life pain surfaces.

But I will say this: when one does come along, I’ve altered my entreaties to Him from just asking for relief to be more in line with the chorus of MercyMe’s song Even If:

I know You're able
And I know You can
Save through the fire
With Your mighty hand
But even if You don't
My hope is You alone 

You and I can grieve and cry out in our pain. But we must ultimately place our hope somewhere beyond the trial itself. The question is not whether the fire will come, or even whether God will remove it. The question is whether, in the fire, we will still believe that God is worthy of our trust.

Following David, we can say that His judgments are righteous and that even His affliction is faithful. And like Paul, we can look beyond our present suffering to an eternal weight of glory. Like the three Hebrew men standing before the furnace, we can say: God is able to save us, but even if He does not, we will not turn away.

Again, easy to write, hard to live.

For now, just give these things some thought. And if they’re too hard to accept right now, and you want to, metaphorically speaking, toss my article into the corner of your bedroom like I did Lewis’ book long ago, I completely understand.