DAY 331 - The Christian Response to Anger

Isaiah 48:9 (NRSV) ⁹ For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, so that I may not cut you off.

Ephesians 4:25-27, 29, 31-32 (NRSV) 25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Mark 3:5 (NRSV) He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Let’s look at what Paul says about anger and how to handle it. There may be some surprises. First, he says be angry which stands in direct contradiction to what many of us think is the Christian belief about anger. God Himself gets angry. Jesus got angry as seen in the passage from Mark. We feel what we feel.

The second part of Paul’s statement is crucial, for that is where is tells us what we should do with our angry feelings - Be angry but do not sin. It is ok to feel angry, but it is wrong to express angry feelings in such a way that we hurt or harm other people. It is a sin to unload our anger on another human being, whether we unload with an outburst of temper or fighting or whether we unload it in subtle and sophisticated ways like sly and cutting remarks, snide criticism, jokes that drip with the poison of anger, or cool and polite rudeness.

Paul also says do not let the sun go down on our anger and do not harbor angry feelings where they are nursed and grow sour. That’s when the devil has the chance to work on us. As we continue to store hot angry feelings it is hard to show loving feelings.

We seem caught. If we express our angry feelings we hurt others; if we repress them, we hurt ourselves.  It is ok to feel angry, but what do we do with our feelings of anger? The answer lies in looking to Jesus as our example, for He is the way God resolved His anger toward you and me. Jesus is the expression of God’s judgment and love at the same time. As we live in Him and continue to look to Him we can discover ways of expressing anger that are not destructive to ourselves or to other people and that will, in fact, be constructive. Jesus has promised we shall receive power, and that includes the power to deal with and to constructively express our angry feelings. When we join our lives to Christ we begin a pilgrimage. Part of that pilgrimage is discovering healthy, constructive ways of expressing our angry feelings.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 16, 1975

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)