The last school year was terrible for my daughter. In 4th grade, school began to be unbearable. At least once a week, she was coming to me explaining that her teacher yelled at the class and made them feel like trash.
I didn’t know how to respond. I agonized over it. My daughter is highly sensitive. We knew this before 4th grade. So was the teacher really that bad? Was she yelling or just talking firmly? We all had teachers we didn’t like at one point or another in our education. Maybe this was her unlucky year. But still, every single week I was hearing my daughter, with tears in her eyes, tell me she was suffering.
For better or worse, we muddled through the year. I don’t think children should be saved from all their problems, and God knows I have yelled at my own students more than once. I thought that my daughter’s personality and the teacher’s personality just didn’t fit together. She would meet difficult people her whole life. If she didn’t learn how to deal with firm teachers now, what would happen when life smacked her in the face in more difficult classes – or worse, out in the real world?
So she persevered, and we looked with hope to the next year – this year – 5th grade. This year was going to be different. I had met with the school counselor who had a program of her own for my daughter. The administration was on the same page about how to support her. She was put into the perfect class for her. She had support. It was going to be great.
And then three weeks in, I started hearing all the same complaints. The teacher yelled too much. She expected too much of the students. This made my daughter feel like she was a terrible person. Same tears. Same agonizing conversations. Same meeting with the counselor, her teacher, the administration. It was a repeat.
Then a couple days ago, we were having our nightly conversation, and I was trying to reason with her. The conversation went something like this:
Her: “The teacher makes me feel horrible. She still yells at the class.”
Me: “Why does she yell at the class?”
Her: “Some of the students aren’t doing their work when she tells them to. So she yells at them. But I was doing my work!”
Me: “So she wasn’t really talking to you. She was talking to the rest of the class.”
Her: “Yes, but it feels like she was yelling at me.”
Me: “But honey, I yell all the time at home. If you guys are late to get in the car for school, I get on your case about it. I rush you out the door. I certainly yell at your brothers if they are doing something terrible or stupid. But you don’t seem to be bothered by me.”
Her: “Well, you’re different. I’ve known you for so long. I know you love me.”
It’s All About Relationship
It was at that point that I began to realize what was going on. Within the broader framework of our relationship, my getting angry every now and then could be contextualized. In my daughter’s mind, my outbursts were tempered by the moments we just sat and talked about nothing in particular, our fro-yo outings, our game nights, and all the other little moments that added up to one big “I love you, I like you, I want you here” from me to her.
But she didn’t have that with her teacher. All she knew of her teacher was that she was a taskmaster trying to get students to learn what they needed to learn. It wasn’t her teacher’s fault. That was her job. But there was no foundation of friendship or relationship between her and her teacher that came even close – or could come close in so short a time – to the relationship I have with her.
All of this made me think of how people view the God of the Bible. For me, it is not difficult to see how God is love. I can’t count the moments I have felt despair about myself, my circumstances, or my inability to give the people I love what they need to be whole and healthy, only to feel the comfort of the Holy Spirit reminding me that I am not alone. Just last Sunday, I felt spoiled at Mass listening to the beautiful harmonies woven together by our choir, reveling in the truth that God’s mercy is everlasting.
So when I read about his wrath, his anger towards sinners, it isn’t difficult for me to see in him a scorned lover. To see in this his dedication not only to love but also to justice. I will scold or discipline even my own child if they attempt to hurt another.
But for so many people, maybe most, all they know is God the tyrant. All they see is his wrath. And maybe it isn’t because they are evil themselves or stubbornly sinful. Maybe all they have been exposed to is the mass media caricature of the church. They don’t know any actual Christians. Or the ones they know have such watered-down spiritual lives, they blend in with everybody else.
Or maybe they have had exposure to the church or to Christians, and the experience left a bitter taste. All they were told were rules. All they felt was legalism.
I hope, I pray, that when people see me or talk to me, I am one more link in the chain of God’s love for them. Ever since the pandemic, I have turned much more inward. I don’t make eye-contact as much. And my work schedule is so exhausting, I barely want to talk to anyone by the end of the day. But God forbid I am the reason someone decides Christianity is a waste of time and God is a grumpy old troll.
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Catholic Anonymous 
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