Anger
Anger soaks up a lot of our attention, whether it’s our own or someone else’s. Much of the news offered by the various media has an anger component at one level or another. Academics study it. Psychologists deal with its fallout. It fuels conflicts from wars to domestic violence. Talk show hosts intentionally stir it up. Time and resources are spent expressing it and protecting ourselves from it.
Speaking only for my own Western culture, we justify our own anger by calling it frustration, annoyance, irritation, indignation (sometimes even “righteous indignation”) and condemn that of others as overdone, ridiculous, unnecessary, dangerous, frightening or other words meant to convey that they should settle down and be reasonable and we can become quite angry about it when they don’t.
We accept that anger has some real benefits. It lets others know how passionate we are about things. It motivates us to do things which otherwise might go undone. And when we let it get just to the edge of “out of control” it is an effective tool for controlling, manipulating, and, when necessary, intimidating.
We’ve all seen anger work. Some of us have become quite adept at using it, others of us have simply observed how effective it can be in the lives of others. But I’m going to argue that it has far more disadvantages than benefits. That is more harmful than helpful. That rather than embracing our anger, we should remove it from our relational toolbox.
Before moving on, I want you to notice that I chose those words carefully. I did not say that we should not “experience anger,” or “get angry.” At one level, anger is an involuntary response which rises up unbidden in the face of real or threatened loss or injustice. You can’t not have angry responses any more than you can choose to not feel sorrow, joy, compassion, disappointment, elation, love, passion or other emotional responses to the circumstances and people we encounter in life.
However, if you really want to improve your life, you’ll take the Bible’s advice on anger. It is remarkably consistent, considering that it was written over a long period of time, by dozens of different human authors in vastly different circumstances. In general, Psalm 37:8 sums it up in these words: “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.” For those who like to emphasize the New Testament, look at Ephesians 4:31: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”
Taken together, along with many other passages, these summarize God’s intention for us regarding anger. While we cannot prevent an angry response from rising up within us, we should not cooperate with it, allow it to shape how we think and what we do. When I looked closely at what the Bible says about anger, I was a little disturbed, because even in the culture of the church, we tend to respect angry people. “Righteous indignation” is seen as a virtue and those who express it well often carry the day. The problem is that righteous indignation is often nothing more than regular indignation about something that is personally irritating, dressed up with a Bible verse or two.
I can’t deal with all of the questions which are likely to arise at this point. (And I know there are lots of questions, because they came to my mind when I started looking into this.) However, there are two key ones that I’ll mention here.
Q. If anger is bad and to be avoided, why is it that God is often shown as angry at both evil and evil-doers? Shouldn’t we be angry at the same things God is?
A. People who adopt God’s values, will indeed experience the emotion of anger about the same things God does. However, when it comes to acting out of that anger, we need to remember that God is God and we are not. Remember that an angry emotional response is often involuntary, but we can control whether or not we act out of that. Because God is who He is, He is well within His right to act out of His anger. We, fallen human beings, do not have that right. I have not found any Bible passages which put human anger in a consistently positive light.
Q. What about Ephesians 4:26 which says: “Be angry, and do not sin”? That sounds like a command to me.
A. Grammatically, this is an imperative, but I invite you to ask yourself, is Paul’s intent here to incite us to anger or to avoid sin when we have an angry response to someone. I suggest the latter. The New International Version translates this imperative statement: “In your anger, do not sin” and I think this gets at what Paul had in mind, especially given that the rest of the passage (also a command) is to get rid of those angry feelings before the day ends and we find ourselves giving the devil a foothold in our life. If you see this verse as a simple command to be angry, you’ve got to deal with the contradiction issue because there are many more verses which command us to not be angry.
A short comment like this can’t be an in-depth theological treatise, but it can get you thinking. If your life is not working and you are always angry at this, that or the other, consider the possibility that there is a connection. God’s way is always best, you can never go wrong by taking it.
