God himself feels genuine outrage and so should we, in the presence of pain, cruelty, violence, and injustice. By the absolute immutability of His character,

He is implacably opposed to evil and outraged by it.

“The Dust of Death,” Os Guinnes

This week I learned of a father who beat and repeatedly stabbed to death his second grade daughter and her best friend during a fit of rage. It seems the 8-year-old had taken money without permission from a family member and his wife had not punished her to his satisfaction. The girls were stalked and murdered near a community park as they rode their bikes together.

This crime creates a mental picture too horrible to contemplate and elicits in me feelings of sheer anger I do not like to tap into.

There is some comfort knowing that there are times when it is perfectly appropriate to be sickened and angered by such utter tragedy. As a Christian, I am promised that God’s spirit remains on the earth to indwell and serve mankind. This connection with God is one of the aspects of Christianity that I found extremely influential when I began to seriously consider spiritual matters at the tender young age of 14.

To know that God’s presence would move and work in me spoke strongly, for I realized that I would need His wisdom and courage throughout my life. While I value and work these days to create in my own children independence and dependability, I also acknowledge that I am far too tender hearted to face life on my own. I do not believe any of us can.

As I prayed for these two little girls this week and asked God to immobilize an appropriate social response, I began wondering how God responds to evil. Because I know Him to be forgiving and faithful and patient, I wondered what other aspects of His personality come into play when sheer evilness presents itself. A look into the Bible reveals something interesting. In fact, it is recorded that Jesus outlines seven ways mankind can anger God.

To find them for yourself you will want to look in the New Testament book of Matthew, chapter 23. The writer is the apostle Matthew, also known as Levi, the once- despised tax collector. He writes with the hope that he can persuade people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah — a heavenly king not the earthly one sought by so many — yet forecasted in the Old Testament.

What amazes me most is how applicable the information is to our lives today.

The first way to anger God is to deliberately prevent people from learning about Him. This speaks profoundly to freedom of information, religion and worship. To challenge ourselves and those around us to consider the spiritual aspects of life is a very high calling. Children usually hear it. We are best served by listening and following their natural openness.

Another way to anger God is to pull people away from Him and draw attention to ourselves. I am thinking of a number of famous Christian preachers who are guilty of this. They preferred to have people follow and idealize them all the while amassing great wealth — rather than humbly share God’s message of love and mercy and forgiveness.

The third way to grieve God involves people blindly leading those around them to follow manmade traditions instead of God’s promise of grace — God’s riches at Christ’s expense.

This ties directly with the fourth great heartbreak for God: Ignoring what is really important and involving yourself in every last detail. This reminds me of the person who obediently gives away 10 percent of his income but refuse to give one moment of his time to helping others. Or the person who focuses on minute details to the exclusion of relationships. Balance and integrity are key factors to living with God’s blessing.

Some people make the mistake of keeping up appearances while struggling with a corrupt private world. We must keep our houses in order or back down from high profile lives to do a bit of cleaning.

The sixth cause of heavenly anger involves pretending to have learned from past history and mistakes, but behaving as if you have never learned anything at all.

God does not present us with these scenarios to condemn us. I believe He promises a strong and consistent response because these choices profoundly hurt those with whom we live and work. He asks us to bring mercy, true love, and forgiveness into our daily lives and allow bad behaviors and attitudes to die so that we might really live.

Freeland writer Joan Bay Klope’s e-mail address is jbklope@hotmail.com.