It is ubiquitous in our lives whether we deal with a stubborn child or co-worker, traffic or burnt food, abortion or war. It is in our DNA to react to something, and that reaction we call anger. But anger is not just any normal reaction; “Anger is the way we react when something we think important is not the way it’s supposed to be.” The Bible is a response book to either man’s anger or God’s anger, and, stay with me here– there is no need for a coin toss to figure out who is righteous and who most often is not. God is infinitely righteous, and his anger is fleeting, but his favor lasts forever. So every time we look at the world, we should be grateful that God is spectacularly unfair: he does not deal with us according to our sins. He would crush us at the first sounds of our frustration and complaints about the weather if he did.
But God is merciful.
Our definition of anger above assumes that we will be angry at some time or another. Why? Because after the Fall, we are in constant opposition to things, ideas, people, and actions. When we see something that is not the way it should be, we tend to react emotionally. We do not always respond in visible anger; sometimes, we store it in the bottom of our hearts, and sometimes we hide it under a bushel until we let it shine. But anger is a human emotion that is always present. Anger rises from the heart because our hearts daily seek to oppose something. Like the poor, anger will always be with us, and we are poorer because of it since our anger often looks like a Liam Neeson movie. We express anger out of revenge rather than a genuine desire for biblical justice. Unrighteous anger is justice gone wild.
Now, why is it that we have an angry nature within us? The answer is because we are created to broadcast our values to the world. So, tonight, before bed, as you pick up your pen to write on your dear journal, ask yourself, “What is it that made me most angry today?” And the answer to that question will reveal what you most treasure in life. The world shall know us by our fruit, and often our fruit is a pile of disconnected words used to hurt others. There is righteous anger at sin, and there is anger used to manipulate or hurt the other. But, more often, we choose to broadcast our unrighteous anger.
I am focusing on the negative dimension of anger since it is the most common human experience. We get irritable in the twinkling of an eye; we argue because deep inside, we like conflict; even the person who says they don’t like conflict finds an appetite for it. Think about it: if you see a moral wrong and don’t confront that moral wrong, you are saying that that moral wrong is not worth investing in face-to-face. To be passive towards a moral evil is to be against that thing one way or the other; to avoid the moral wrong because you are the avoid-the-conflict type is to oppose the moral good. There is no escape. There is no neutrality. And when that anger—active or passive–is not dealt with for a long time, we call that bitterness. Bitterness is the accumulation of anger undealt through time.
Well, now that I have accused you all of being angry humans, let’s talk for a moment on the solution to our unrighteous anger problem in a couple of practical thoughts:
First and foremost, we don’t need help from unrighteous anger; we need to be rescued from the domain of unrighteous anger. God does not throw us a lifeboat in the sea of rage; he puts categories in our hearts and minds to deal more effectively with anger. Nevertheless, anger will always be with us, so the question is, “How do I control it in this sin-stricken world?”
In Paul’s writings, when he mentions unrighteous anger, the primary contrasting virtues are love, faith, and service to others. In other words, when Paul criticizes anger, it is in the context of our inability to see someone else’s world. We rather self-love, self-trust, and self-serve. The implication is that we often sin in our anger when we focus too much on ourselves and how we would like the world to be according to our own eyes.
If the only kind of discourse I enjoy is where I am the center of attention, then I am the one who has the right to be angry at as many things as I want. Most often, we use anger as the rationale to speak viciously at everyone and everything. In our case, we put a nice name to it, “righteous anger,” which covers a multitude of sins, at least in our minds, but ultimately we can use a biblical phrase to excuse our unrighteous anger. “Look, man, I got angry because I just love you so much and do not want for you to get hurt.” “I told you ‘I hate you’ because I want you to do better next time.” However we phrase it, that is not righteous anger; it is anger with no adjective, and if you want anger with an adjective, make it “self-righteous anger.” We need to pray that God rescues us from the domain of anger.
Finally, if unrighteous anger is how we react when something we think important is not as it should be, we need to know what things should be and what things should not be. We need to reshape how we view things because, at this point in history, virtually nothing is as it should be, which means that our reasons for anger multiply by the second. However, we know one thing: God is as he should, and his mercies multiply by the second.
It is not our sense of justice that is wrong; it is our sense of proportion. When our children disobey, we think that yelling is God’s solution to the problem, when asking how his day was can get us farther than we realize. When our best friend betrays us, we think ruining his reputation is how to put the stars in perfect alignment. But we are all deceived. If anger is continuously in our hearts, it is because our desires have gone mad. Prayer with other saints, acts of service, selflessness, encouragement to others serves as God’s antidote to see the needs of others above our own and to rely on the Gospel to change our hearts one word at a time, one vicious thought at a time, and one frustration at a time.
