Forgiving God?
Self-brain surgery® when you're angry at God
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🧠 Paid Subscribers: Scroll to the bottom for this week’s video self-brain surgery training. I give you an operation to take this week’s letter into daily practice!
Hey friend,
This week’s focus is on a situation you’ve likely found yourself in before. I started thinking about it because a reader wrote in with a devastatingly honest statement:
“I’m struggling with how to forgive God.”
I’m empathetic to her struggle because I found myself in the same situation after our son Mitch was killed. I was angry, and I felt that God had wronged us by allowing that kind of loss and suffering into our lives.
Maybe you’ve felt it too. Have you gone through something you blamed God for? Have you struggled with a sense that God has wronged you, failed you, or let you down in some way?
If so, this week’s self-brain surgery will help you. It’s what I had to do when I realized that both the loss of my son and my response to it were playing a role in my inability to heal. That’s when I realized that the path forward would require me to change the only part of that equation it was possible to change.
Two Questions Suffering Raises
When we encounter painful circumstances, we naturally wonder why? and what next?
Answering these questions in a way that promotes healing and hope requires that we get four things right:
1. We need good theology about God’s role and position in our suffering
2. We need a good understanding of what suffering means and what it’s for
3. We need our minds giving the proper instructions to our brains
4. We need our brains making helpful automations and not harmful ones
Where We’re Going This Week
In today’s bonus video for the paid subscribers, we look at how solidifying our theology around God’s relationship to our suffering helps us grapple with why? and what next?
On tomorrow’s podcast episode, we go deep to discover some surprising things (neurologically and theologically) about suffering.
And then on Friday Self-Brain Surgery® on YouTube, we will learn how to get our minds and brain in the proper position to help us walk through suffering in a healthy way.
For now, I want to share one thing I learned as I grappled with being angry with God over my son’s death, managing the doubt and toxic thinking my brain was flooding me with, and trying to find a path forward for my family and me in those dark days.
My (and your) Conundrum
I realized that if I felt a need to forgive God for what happened to Mitch, it meant that I believed God was capable of either doing something wrong, or that he was incapable of preventing something terrible from happening. In both cases, the only conclusion I could draw was that God could not be trusted to protect me or my loved ones from future trouble since he couldn’t protect us from losing Mitch.
This conclusion created a real problem for me, because I also knew in the depth of my soul that God was the only possible help for the pain I was in and the only hope I had for healing in the future.
Do you see the problem here?
Remember that your brain is always listening to your thoughts, and that your brain forms itself in response to your repeated thoughts, self-talk, and beliefs. It automates your responses and patterns based on what you’re paying attention to.
Your brain can’t simultaneously automate trust and openness toward God while also running the program that says He’s untrustworthy. The conflict keeps the threat systems activated and healing on hold.
So, if you’re simultaneously telling your brain that you need God’s help to heal and move forward in your life AND you’re believing that God is inherently untrustworthy provide such help, the cognitive dissonance you create will keep you stuck.
If you believe God has done something for which you need to forgive him, then you can’t really believe what the Bible says in Hebrews 7:26- that God is “holy, blameless, and undefiled.” If you think he’s the cause of your deep pain, then you don’t actually believe that he will offer mercy and grace to help you in your time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).
I had to decide what I believed. Did I trust my feelings and thoughts that were so dark and jumbled by my son’s death? Or did I trust my past experiences with God’s presence in my pain and the things the Bible revealed about him, his character, and his role in suffering?
That’s when I realized something critical: Just because I FELT like I needed to forgive God did not mean that God actually needed to be forgiven.
Read that again.
Was Mitch’s death God’s doing, or was it the result of the brokenness, sin, and evil that God hates and is already working to ultimately defeat?
That’s what I had to square up, because I knew I needed to trust God’s help in my life if I was going to survive. I had to change perspectives, decide what I believed, and lean on God for the help that only he could provide. That’s when I began to heal.
Practical Exercise: Self-brain surgery for Why? and What now?
If you’ve ever felt like you needed to forgive God, try this:
Name it honestly. Write down the situation that made you feel God wronged you or let you down.
Check your thoughts against truth. Read Hebrews 7:26 and Hebrews 4:14-16 slowly. Ask: “If God is truly holy, blameless, and undefiled, and if He invites me to come boldly for mercy and grace in my time of need, does He actually need my forgiveness?”
Do the thought biopsy. Write the sentence: “Just because I feel like God needs to be forgiven doesn’t mean He actually does.” Now write what this situation actually reveals about your pain and your need, rather than about God’s character.
Give your brain new instructions (the key step). Speak or write this declaration: “God does not need my forgiveness. He is holy, good, and trustworthy. My pain and questions are real, but they do not change who He is. Brain, I am directing you to stop running the old program of distrust and threat toward God. I choose to bring my pain to Him instead of holding it against Him.”
Start the new automation today. When the old thought or feeling returns (“God let me down…”), immediately say the declaration from step 4 out loud or in your mind. Then do one small act of turning toward God (a short prayer, opening your Bible to one of these verses, or simply saying “I need Your help with this”).
Do this for the next few days. You’re not denying your pain, you’re refusing to let a false belief about God keep your brain stuck in a loop that blocks the very help you need.
Watch the paid subscriber video, tomorrow’s podcast, and Fridays SBS video to go deeper.
Have a very self-brain surgery day!
You can get the training you need to master self-brain surgery in my new book. You can go even deeper in The School of Self-Brain Surgery.
The good news is, you can start today.
Be sure to check out the archive of previous posts if you missed last week’s letter.
Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),
Lee
II Timothy 1:7, “For you were not given a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind.”
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA
Disclaimer: This letter is for informational purposes only. It contains general information, drawn from my experience, research, and best practices. It is not health care advice, and is not intended to replace the counsel of your health care provider. Consult your provider before starting any new treatments or making changes to your health routine. This message does not constitute a doctor-patient relationship between us.
