Making Peace with Anger

This past weekend I had the privilege of preaching, and I felt led to preach on a topic that God was working on in my own life: anger.

I’m used to being pretty transparent with my flaws, but this is one I actually feel pretty self-conscious about. Feeling “irritated” or “impatient” is a more polite way to describe it. We can all relate to that. That’s still respectable. But if someone says they have an anger problem, something immediately feels unsafe. We instinctively associate it with violence.

I don’t think of myself as a violent person, but when anger starts affecting your actions, that’s the general direction, isn’t it? It’s a humbling thing to admit.

I’ve known I’ve wrestled with anger in my heart since I was young. I remember feeling convicted about having a temper as a kid, even though I was a generally joyful person. I went through a phase where the anger died down on the outside, but I was depressed on the inside. They say depression is anger turned inward, and I think there may be something to that.

After that depressed phase was over, I noticed the anger slowly starting to come back. As I reflect on it now, it typically came from one of two places: either 1) you’re getting in my way and I’m frustrated, or 2) you’re doing it wrong and I’m judging you.

None of this is good, of course. It may be the shadow side of a good desire, but there’s nothing good about it. It’s not Christ-honoring. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit. Love, peace, and joy are, too. Setting my sights on something good without producing the fruit of the Spirit is clearly flawed from the outset.

So I’ve known I needed to do something with it for a long time. I always had other priorities, but I have been able to pick up a few insights along the way. I became more aware of passive aggression and anger that I had stuffed down over the years when I should have sought resolution. I learned that I had a tendency to interpret things more negatively than warranted, and to withdraw from conflict instead of working through it. Those were helpful.

In an intro to biblical counseling class I took in seminary, I learned that anger is fundamentally rooted in our sense of justice, and the question to ask when I feel angry is what my expectations are and whether or not they are warranted. This was helpful, too.

I also found I was naturally less prone to anger when I stopped striving for my goals. After I dropped out of my doctoral program, I resolved to simply try to be a man of wisdom and character. Go for quality over a certain outcome. This was a very spiritually healthy period in my life, and it ended when I started setting goals again. Goals have a way of turning some people into obstacles, which is not at all how I want to see them.

So now that I am taking a break from work and trying to build something new, one thing God laid on my heart was to finally address this anger issue.

When I was a young man, I was told either in a sermon or some other context that anger was actually ok. The Bible says “be angry and do not sin,” which means it’s ok to be angry as long as you don’t sin. From that point on, I made no effort to restrain my anger. My only desire was to purify it. Let’s get good at this!

And let me pause again and say that while it may sound as though I’ve been living with this on a daily basis, I don’t. I really am a joyful person, and I would hope that those who know me best could attest to that. I’m describing a tendency to flare up too easily, not a constant burn. I don’t know that that’s actually any better, but it seems better to me somehow. In my mind it’s the difference between being emotionally immature (me) and being dangerous (someone else). But it’s possible that’s just denial.

Now, this desire to purify my anger mixed with the growing awareness I had of its sources and problems led me to a place where I was angry about better things, but not in a better way. What I mean by this is I was getting better at justifying my anger, to myself, to God, and to anyone close enough to know it existed. Because remember, this is mostly in my inner judgments, not the kinds of things that you would notice expressed in the office or at home. I’m not lashing out out there, but I am swift and decisive in my judgments in my heart. And if my judgments are more accurate, that’s the goal, right?

Perhaps at this point you are screaming NO! Perhaps all along this line of thinking has been intuitively uncomfortable to you. Maybe you have a disposition that sees this for what it is. I know some of you don’t. I know some of you can relate. But what comes next is a swift and decisive NO! from the Bible.

I don’t normally preach topical sermons, but I wanted a biblical theology of anger before I chose the passage that I thought would best speak to it. I may share more of the details in the future, and the sermon audio will be available shortly, but for the sake of this post, I will summarize briefly my findings.

1. Anger truly is not bad in and of itself. God is described as angry sometimes. It can indeed be a right response to a wrong in the world.
2. Anger in the hands of mortal man tends toward evil quickly. So quickly, in fact, that the Bible repeatedly says stay away. Don’t be angry. Don’t associate with an angry man. Anger is a work of the flesh. Anger does not accomplish the righteousness of God. Let it be put away from you ASAP. This is the overwhelming majority of the counsel the Bible gives on this subject.
3. God’s advice for how to deal with anger first of all is to ponder in your heart, put your faith in God, and let it go. Whatever injustice you sense is seen by God. He cares. He knows. He is able to make it right, and too good to let it slide. And frankly, He will deal with it much better than you ever could.
4. Ultimately, Jesus commands that we pursue reconciliation. Anger creates/reveals a breach in the relationship, and it should drive us to heal that breach.
5. Man is never commended for fueling anger, holding on to anger, expressing anger, acting in anger, etc.

So my takeaway is this: I am no longer trying to figure out how to justify anger. I don’t want to unlock the secret of righteous anger. I am ready to let it go.

And one reason that’s not so easy is that anger feels powerful. It can be especially intoxicating to someone who is constantly being interrupted and talked over. I’m not an alpha male and I have never desired to be. (I have no shame in saying it even though you may feel bad for me. I’ll save that for another post.) So in a world where people often assume you must be weak, and where following Christ seems to lead toward meekness, humility, service, and other apparently disempowering postures and activities, the thought of righteous anger seems like a way out. It feels like a way to be strong and Christlike at once. It’s a way to justify taking the reins from someone else, a way to justify asserting yourself so that you can make things right. You can have a sidearm holstered while you carry around your towel and basin of water.

Yeah, I’m here to serve. And you’d better not give me any grief about it.

So when I say that I am giving up trying to purify a righteous anger, part of what I mean is that I’m giving up a claim to power. I’m putting an end to that conversation in my heart where I tell myself they are the problem and I am the solution. I may have gotten better at identifying problems over the years, but anger is no part of the solution. And even in typing these words, I become more aware of the arrogance hiding just beneath the surface. Anger hides that. It misdirects attention.

So in letting go of anger, I’m being confronted with new issues like this. Wow, beneath that “righteous” anger was no small trace of self-righteousness. Beneath that “righteous” anger was a numbness to the astounding mercy God has shown me. Beneath that “righteous” anger was a lack of faith and trust in God’s sovereignty. I suspect there’s more to come.

If social media is any indication, there are a lot of angry people out there. And there’s a chance that my words here have offended you. Maybe your anger is better, purer, more justified. Maybe I’ve communicated something that seems dismissive of your real hurts. You have a right to feel angry. I’m not trying to challenge that. But based on what I see in Scripture and what I have experienced in my own life, that right has an expiration date measured in hours and minutes rather than days, months, or years. What you do with your anger is between you and God. But I know what I have to do. And even though I haven’t been on this path long, it already feels so good to walk away from the heat. I never learned how to “be angry” to the glory of God, but I can already see “let it be put away from you” bearing fruit.