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" There&amp;#039;s a new entry to the growing literary genre of Books-with-curse-words-in-the-Title (e.g. Go the F*ck to Sleep, Sh*t My Dad Says, Social Media is Bullsh*t, etc.). This one, though, I believe is the first to be found in the theology section.  Ian Punnett\u2014a Minneapolis-based Episcopal pastor and radio host\u2014has come out with How To Pray When You&amp;#039;re Pissed At God: Or Anyone Else for that Matter. (Admittedly the P word is only PG-13. But still. For a pastor, that&amp;#039;s a big deal). Title aside\u2014and the title is significant, as it got the book banned from Christian radio\u2014How to Pray is actually a heavyweight (but funny) look at the meaning of evil, and the importance of righteous anger in our lives\u2014and the Bible&amp;#039;s use of naughty words. Punnett gives us many sample prayers, including &amp;quot;An Angry Prayer for the Victim of Corporate Greed&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;An Angry Prayer for Those Who Are Cut Off in Traffic.&amp;quot; As the author of my own book on religion\u2014The Year of Living Biblically\u2014my Esquire editors commanded me to go forth and interview him.  ESQUIRE.COM: I love the book. Naturally, you will be smote for writing it. Or at least afflicted with boils. But it was a fascinating and thought-provoking read.  IAN PUNNETT: Thank you.  ESQ: I like your section about how many of the biblical characters were angry at God, so this type of prayer has a long tradition. Who was the angriest of them all?  IP: Whoever wrote Psalm 109 was all in. He was calling out God for not killing this guy&amp;#039;s enemy.  ESQ: Can you give us a taste of what he wanted to happen to his enemy?  IP: He says: &amp;quot;May his children be orphans and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit... May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor anyone to pity his orphaned children.&amp;quot; ESQ: That&amp;#039;s some serious anger. IP: It&amp;#039;s not just sick, it&amp;#039;s Kevin Spacey-in-the-movie-Seven-sick. Compared to the psalmist of good ol&amp;#039; #109, the angriest thought I&amp;#039;ve ever had sounds like a Taylor Swift lyric. ESQ: In one of your prayers seeking relief from evil people (drug dealers, murderers, etc.) you say &amp;quot;So get off your ass, Lord.&amp;quot; Did just a little part of you think you&amp;#039;d get stricken with leprosy for that? IP: Does that mean I&amp;#039;d get to live out my days at that beachside leper colony in Hawaii? Cool!  ESQ: But really, I&amp;#039;m guessing you think spicy language has its place. You argue that the Bible&amp;#039;s original Hebrew was not G-rated. It&amp;#039;s more HBO-ish than that. You say the Hebrew word shagall is approximately the same meaning as the f-word. If you&amp;#039;re right, what do you think was going on? Were the writers of the Bible trying to reach the followers by getting some street cred? IP: I think if God wanted street cred, he would have said, shagall, thrown down his mic and walked off the stage and gone back to His trailer. The way the prophet Jeremiah uses it, it has all the street cred of my dad saying the f-word after dropping a hammer on his foot. Still, our lesson from Jeremiah is we should all feel empowered to speak freely in prayer, to say exactly what we&amp;#039;re thinking until we feel better. ESQ: Do you use curse words in your sermons? IP: I haven&amp;#039;t yet felt the need to curse anybody in a sermon yet but it could happen any day now. Yeah, I&amp;#039;m talking to you, whoever keeps parking in the &amp;quot;Deacons Only&amp;quot; space at church. ESQ: Does any of the negative reaction to the book make you pissed off? IP: It&amp;#039;s true that the book was banned by the Evangelical Christian Salem Radio Networks, but at least these Salem people didn&amp;#039;t burn the book at the stake. Even they see value in helping people get past their anger with God, I think. But that&amp;#039;s been about it so far. From every other quarter, the response has been really positive, but then again, I haven&amp;#039;t gone out of my way to look for reviews. Know something I don&amp;#039;t? ESQ: If you talk to them, you can always point out that the King James Bible uses the word &amp;quot;piss&amp;quot; several times. IP: Yes, there&amp;#039;s some irony in complaints from some Christians about the title being vulgar when the Hebrew equivalent is in the Bible itself\u2014and I&amp;#039;m not even using it in that context. ESQ: I remember this one passage in 1 Kings 16:11: &amp;quot;He left not one that pisseth against the wall.&amp;quot; Any idea what that means? IP: &amp;quot;One that pisseth against the wall&amp;quot; is a 17th Century English translation of a poetic Hebrew term for &amp;quot;man.&amp;quot; Most modern translations just shorten the phrase to mean &amp;quot;All the men were killed&amp;quot; so that it&amp;#039;s not misconstrued. It&amp;#039;s not about a death penalty for public urination. ESQ: I know the proverbs say, &amp;quot;Be slow to anger.&amp;quot; Do you agree? IP: It&amp;#039;s the only way to be. Actually, the Book of Proverbs, being &amp;quot;slow to anger&amp;quot; is repeated many times with different things attached to it. For example, &amp;quot;Those who are slow to anger have great wisdom&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;A hot tempered man stirs up strife but he who is slow to anger calms the dispute.&amp;quot; Being slow to anger, quick to forgive doesn&amp;#039;t mean you&amp;#039;re a doormat, it just means you&amp;#039;re secure in being a gentleman and you have your priorities straight. ESQ: You make a distinction between good anger and bad anger. How do you make yourself be angry in a good way? IP: I think there has been an overemphasis in our culture on &amp;quot;If I feel it, it&amp;#039;s legitimate.&amp;quot; Just look at your average reality show. When we feel anger building, we should be suspicious as to what the effects of this anger will be on others if we express it. If it&amp;#039;s good anger, it will bring about more justice, correct a wrong, assert a healthy line of self-protection, that kind of thing. Good anger was the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama. Bad anger was the police department unleashing the hounds. ESQ: I try to have good anger, but most of my anger is about trivial stuff, like a $3 ATM fee. Sometimes I think repression is the best solution. What&amp;#039;s your take on repression? IP: Repression sucks. If you are feeling disrespected to the point of anger, but you hold it back while you process through it and you stop feeling it, that&amp;#039;s probably not repression. True repression never releases anger, it just bottles it. Repression is as pointless as a lid on a boiling pot. What people need is a way to turn down the heat. ESQ: Did you ever read Marcus Borg? He wrote a book called Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. And he talks about two strains of thinking in the Bible: In the Proverbs, it says that if you follow God&amp;#039;s law and behave ethically, you will be rewarded with bountiful crops and a happy life. But in Ecclesiastes, it says that the world doesn&amp;#039;t work like that. The race does not always go to the swift. Life is unfair. The best we can do is work hard, enjoy a good meal, act ethically and cross our fingers (I&amp;#039;m paraphrasing). Your book made me think of the latter. What do you think? IP: The Bible is full of tensions like that, so why do we have to choose? Like the country song says, &amp;quot;Sometimes you&amp;#039;re the windshield, sometimes you&amp;#039;re the bug.&amp;quot; This book is for when you&amp;#039;re the bug. ESQ: I&amp;#039;m an agnostic. Though, as my pastor friend calls it, I&amp;#039;m a &amp;quot;reverent agnostic.&amp;quot; But if God exists, here&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m most angry about. Why all the mystery? Why not just explain what the hell is going on? How about a little transparency? More and more businesses are adopting transparency, why not the universe? If I want mystery, I&amp;#039;ll read a David Baldacci novel. IP: For those that want proof, God will always be a mystery. If God could be empirically proven, who would need faith? That said, I rarely think of God in terms of a noun anyway. It makes much more sense to understand God as a verb. In the Bible, when Moses asks for the Lord&amp;#039;s name, God says, &amp;quot;I am that I am.&amp;quot; To know God in our lives, we have to create God-action. To me, that&amp;#039;s why so many people commented that God was present in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing when so many rushed into the blood and debris to help. At every turn, God calls us to action in the Bible. ESQ: I like your section on the psychological benefits of prayer. Even I, an agnostic, like to do something that approximates prayers of thanksgiving. Helps me become slightly less self-absorbed. IP: I think Atheists and agnostics would benefit from something that approximates prayer, and I did my best to address that in How to Pray When You&amp;#039;re Pissed at God. In its proper state, prayer for me is always about getting outside of myself and helping me become God&amp;#039;s eyes and hands. When anger, fear, resentments and frustrations disrupt that ability get outside of oneself, I believe the Bible calls us to be painfully truthful in our prayers, holding nothing back until we can get it all out of our system\u2014without fear of being smote.  RELATED: &amp;quot;How to Deal with Anger, from the Angriest Place in America&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/how-to/a22454/pray-pissed-at-god/>