WHEN TO BE ANGRY

Is it ever appropriate to feel angry? Jesus felt angry when he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. His critics were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. Jesus was deeply distressed at the hardness of their hearts. (Mark 3:1-6)

Theologian Vernon Grounds (1914-2010) commented that his anger was

“a burning indignation in the presence of calloused indifference and ungodly insensitivity which claimed, hypocritically, to represent God. Jesus became angry here, as he did also when he drove the money-changers out of the temple. God hates some things. Jesus hates some things. David offers a prayer of judgment on evil men: “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them, I count them as my enemies.” (Psalm 139:21,22). As Ecclesiastes 3:8 tells it, there is a time to hate as well as time to love.” (Emotional Problems and the Gospel, pp.59ff.)

Anger, therefore, is sometimes necessary and justified. Anger is sometimes right. There is an urgent need among followers of Jesus to be able to express anger in an appropriate way. When God’s moral standards are mocked, and God’s name blasphemed, and people are treated badly, uncritical tolerance is just another form of denial and cowardice.

It is appropriate to feel angry when God’s truth and love is trashed. It is appropriate to feel angry about injustice, greed, lust, cruelty, arrogance, hypocrisy and falsehood. Failure to feel anger would be to be unconcerned, to not care, to not want to be involved. Evil has to be fought, and fighting requires passion. Evil has to be fought with the passion that a doctor fights disease. Evil has to be fought with the passion of the crusader against corruption and treason in government. Jesus fought evil with all the energy and passion he could summon.

Jewish humorist, screenwriter and political scientist, Dr. Leo Rosten (1908-1997) once wrote:

I, for one, hate fanatics (regardless of race, color, or creed) who are ready to kill me or you or our children in the detestable certainty that they are absolutely right.

I hate injustice, therefore I hate those who treat others unjustly (because of their color, or creed, or simply because they are powerless).

I hate those who teach others to hate those who disagree with them: I loathe demagogues.

I hate anyone who hates indiscriminately – without hard thought, for irrational reasons, or out of false principles. I think my hatreds are the result of careful thought, reason, and moral principle.

I received an email from a friend of mine who had been the victim of a man in authority who abused his power in such a way as to destroy my friend’s ability to find work in his field.  He wrote:

Do I hate X? Well, that’s a tough one to answer. I know that I think I hated him at one time. Now I simply loathe him. I know that I have a long, long way to go before I can find it in my heart to love him. I guess that more than anything, I pity him. He’s what one might refer to as a pathetic (Greek: pathos, sick) individual. So what does one do with those feelings of resentment? I have them, to be sure. Yes, I know what Jesus said and can attest to the fact that his words, though I believe them, and would like to live into them, are HARD words to hear and to appropriate into one’s life. Perhaps after X retires I will be able to get him out of my mind. Unfortunately, he is there, in my mind, often corrupting it and leading to thoughts that are not the most God-pleasing. They say that time heals all wounds. I am praying that the passage of time will do just that for me. Truth be known, the wound is indeed a deep and painful one.

Instead of God storing up his anger against our sins, which accumulate over a lifetime – imagine what our tally sheet would look like – every sin accounted for since our birth, none forgotten, or overlooked, God in Christ took them upon himself, bore the shame, disgrace and penalty for them, by suffering for us on the Cross. If God did that for us, how can we not forgive someone with whom we are angry because they have sinned against us? The image we must keep before our eyes is Jesus dying on the Cross for our sins, to avert the anger and judgment of God.

The anger we feel may be legitimate. But if it festers over time and turns to desire for revenge, it controls us, and the devil gets a foothold in us, and uses it to make us miserable.

Psychologist Archibald Hart writes that:

Forgiveness is the antidote for hurt anger. There is no other satisfactory solution to our urge to take revenge.

What is forgiveness? I would define forgiveness as follows: forgiveness is surrendering my right to hurt you back if you hurt me.

Print this in large letters and stick it on your bedroom mirror to remind you of it each day. I can confidently say that you will not be free of anger until you have learned how to put this into practice. I would go even further and say that under no circumstances should you confront someone else about your anger until you have first taken the step of forgiving and surrendering your right to hurt back. Your need for revenge will be too strong and will disrupt your attempt to get resolution.

Revenge also takes many subtle forms. You will only humiliate and embarrass the one who has hurt you if you don’t first forgive. Just asking someone to admit that they have hurt you and to apologize can be seen as a ‘hurting back’ maneuver. By insisting that the other person apologize, you can cause them the pain of humiliation.

Don’t get hung up on your enemy getting away with some advantage over you. Forgiveness is for your benefit, not your enemy’s. You are the one who is set free – set free from revenge and hatred.” (Unlocking the Mystery of Your Emotions, p.65f.)

It is appropriate to feel angry at injustice, but we must be careful that we do not let our anger control us. We must learn to control it. But how can we do that?

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

We can control our anger and hatred by praying specifically for the people who hate us and who might destroy us if possible. Suppose there is some individual we despise for perfectly good reasons. Maliciously he is out to get us. Hatefully he hurts us. Hatefully he embarrasses us and frustrates us. Whenever we think about him our blood pressure goes up. We therefore avoid him and put a lid on our seething resentment. Yet we keep on fantasizing a day when we can take our revenge and hurt him back.

“But this is not what Jesus teaches. He teaches, instead that we are to pray for an enemy like that. And what happens if we obey our Lord’s commandment, praying for an obnoxious person? Well, an individual may still hate us, but we can no longer view him as an enemy. We cannot prayerfully carry him into the presence of Jesus and still hate him. As we pray, we come to see him as a fellow sinner and a fellow-sufferer and a fellow-struggler. We begin to feel a genuine compassion for him. We cannot prayerfully carry him into the presence of Jesus and still refuse him forgiveness or be indifferent to his needs, his weaknesses, his longings. Neither can we be indifferent to our Savior’s desire that the obnoxious person as much as ourselves be happy and fulfilled in God’s fellowship. We cannot prayerfully carry him into the presence of Jesus without standing there ourselves, rebuked for our lack of understanding and sympathy. Thus prayer helps us view even a self-defined enemy as a person whom God loves and can enable us to love.” (Grounds, op.cit. p.63)

It was Jesus, on the Cross, who said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The only way we can do this is in the strength and love of Christ on the Cross.