Angry

Be angry and do not sin.

- Ephesians 4:26 (ESV)

I can twist those six words into a pretty good rage apologetic. They don’t say not to be angry. I just need to convince myself it’s something I’m entitled to be angry about (always is). Then, if I can tap into people’s empathy, it’s not hard to get a pass on however I choose to act on those feelings. The boundaries of “sin” become very narrow. After all, I’m allowed to be angry. You can’t possibly be upset with me for kicking the dog. It peed on the floor & made me late for my kidney donation! 

Now, read Psalm 4:4, which is what Paul’s actually quoting:

Be angry, and do not sin;
ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.
Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.”

- Psalm 4:4-5 (ESV)

Pondering, being silent, making sacrifices… those things don’t mesh with how I’ve used that Ephesians verse. In fact, they don’t mesh with how I’ve related to anger at all. 

Pressure Cookers

We live in a world that treats human emotion like a pressure cooker. Releasing that pent up anger is not only OK, but healthy. You can hear it in the way we talk. We love a good “vent session” and tell each other to go “blow off some steam;” do what it takes to “get it out of your system.”

Modern psychotherapy is coming around to the fact that catharsis doesn’t actually work. It only feeds the problem, and belongs in the same dumpster as lobotomies and the unquestionable safety of the COVID vaccine. But the modern zeitgeist still lags behind. You can’t really blame anyone for it. Reducing such a complex thing down to basic physics makes it feel easier to manage. Still, you can see how the presuppositions we map from one sphere to another might backfire. “Better out than in” is a good precept for a sneeze, but not a car tire.

Flipping Tables

If you bring up anger in a group of believers, it won’t take long for table-flippin’ Jesus to come up. Someone will make sure to remind you that even Jesus got angry, proving it’s not inherently sinful. It can be useful, even, if it’s targeted at injustice. 

On its own, I don’t think that’s a “wrong” thing to say. But it also seems like a truncated view of how Scripture wants imperfect sinners to engage with anger. A lot of time is spent painting it as something we should resist or escape, never wield.

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

- Psalm 37:8 (ESV)

God’s own character is frequently said to be “slow to anger”, and humans are told to do the same. Proverbs will not hush up about it. 

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.

- Proverbs 14:29 (ESV)

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

- Proverbs 16:32 (ESV)

Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

- Proverbs 19:11 (ESV)

James straight-up says “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20 ESV). So, even if it isn’t sinful per se, and even if our Lord Himself exhibits it, there must be something in our nature that precludes us from leveraging it well. Either that, or the anger we’re usually dealing with isn’t the righteous kind we ought to link arms with and make an ally. 

As I was thinking through this, Stephen Mansfield spoke at Ramsey’s weekly devotional on the topic of anger (there are no coincidences). He dug into the story of Jonah, particularly the part where the people of Nineveh repent and God chooses to spare them from destruction. This really pisses him off: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry” (Jonah 4:1). 

A bit later, a worm has just destroyed the tree giving him shade in the scorching sun. His anger only grows and God confronts him.

But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and I perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?

- Jonah 4:9-11 (ESV)

The Assyrians are documented as one of the cruelest civilizations in history (impaling people, flaying them, chopping heads off, etc.). Jonah’s anger sure seems “righteous” in the sense that it’s hungry for justice. But interestingly, it’s not shared by the author of righteousness itself. 

Major red flag. If you feel rage toward the same thing God feels compassion, there is no room for quibbling over whether you have a “right” to sit there and burn in it. In Jonah’s case, I think he was more interested in vengeance than justice. My own life has made it clear that those are very hard things to distinguish when an emotion is given the final judgement call. 

Flamethrowers

Anger by itself promises certain perks that make it very attractive. I know the lure, and it’s only made stronger if I let myself believe it’s just another tool at my disposal. I like the way anger makes me care less of what others think. I like the focus it brings, and the drive it ignites. It’s hard to turn down when given a chance to take it for a spin. 

I imagine an 8-year-old boy feels the same way when he’s asked if he wants to use a flamethrower to help clear out dry brush in a forest. You know he’s not saying ‘yes’ because he cares about preventing forest fires.

As long as we’re not the target, I think we like seeing it in others too. “Hol’ up, let him cook,” as they say, which roughly translates to “Look! Something either useful or entertaining is about to happen.”

Put It Off

If this is the scene in which Psalm 4 is read, no wonder it sticks out so much. The contrast is the point. Paul is invoking that verse to spur on Christ followers to “put off your old self” — to live differently from those who have “given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity.” He makes this same sort of plea a couple different times in his letters: 

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:20-24 (ESV)

To even *try* to rationalize anger as it relates to health, utility, justice, etc. is to miss the bottom line. Even if those rationalizations have weight, the cure will always end up being worse than the disease. Heeding those words necessarily means clashing with secular sensibilities, even if they feel like common sense. 

The world: vent, let it all out, get it out of your system.
The Word: ponder, hold it back, be silent.

The world: act on it, put it to use, let it fuel you.
The Word: put it away, surrender it. 

The world: it’s your right to burn with anger.
The Word: it’s of your flesh to burn with anger.  

I can already hear the objections in the minds of people who have good reason to feel angry. 

“You haven’t been wronged like I have.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to ____!”

That is true. I probably haven’t and I probably don’t. Reading junk like this may even make it feel worse. But take it from a guy who’s been living with this parasite most of his life: your circumstances make no difference in the face of words that will never pass away. 

I don’t know how to escape it. It doesn’t even feel possible much of the time. But going limp as it eats me alive isn’t an option I’m going to accept either.