No wonder people are angry

⁸But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
⁹you whom I took from the ends of the earth,
and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, "You are my servant,
I have chosen you and not cast you off";

Hold the phone. God just called Israel his friend? God has been, at best, their adversary the past 350 years. About a hundred years ago God sent Assyria to destroy, pillage, rape, and murder Israel because of their wickedness. the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah have been belittled, ridiculed, and tormented because they've been commissioned to tell Judah their fate will be the same, and that fate its coming quickly. God will send his servant Babylon to humiliate Judah's King, burn down God's temple, and export legions of Israelites to a foreign land. Yet God uses the word friend.

And it's no wonder many people today are angry at God for such-and-such a reason. People have been fed a narrow-minded and incomplete Gospel saying God is unconditional love and nothing else. This as their shallow foundation of doctrine they simply can't fit the idea of the Lord "sending them off to Babylon" with all its hardships and despair into their paradigm of God. God winnows and sifts them for their own good, then extends a hand of friendship to them, to which they respond "No! We've already tried that solution and it didn't provide what we were looking for!" And they miss out of the full picture of Love God offers us. A love so deep he drags us into a deeper and fuller view of His glory, where we learn how much more honorable He is, and we begin to take a greater delight in that glory.