In Defense of Anger

As the West spirals further into chaos and depravity, righteous men are continually given new provocations to anger. After all, what we’re experiencing isn’t just a matter of unfortunate circumstance, but deliberate attacks on our faith, our people, our civilization, and even our children by men and women who actively hate us. When a pervert attempts to groom his child, surely a father ought to get angry. When foreigners try to take away the country his fathers gave him and give it to strangers, surely a man ought to get angry. When his brothers and sisters abandon Christ’s teachings for the Spirit of the Age’s, surely a Christian ought to get angry.

As Christians, we have a surfeit of evidence that anger can indeed be righteous. Scripture tells us that God is both slow to anger and that His wrath is quickly kindled depending on the circumstance, but both acknowledge the reality of holy anger. And Jesus Christ, the only perfect and sinless man, felt and even acted in anger on several occasions towards money-changers and Pharisees. To call anger inherently sinful is therefore an explicit denial of God’s Word and condemnation of His character.

Most Christians will agree with this in principle. They will acknowledge that anger can, theoretically, be righteous. However, they will quickly point out that while God’s holy anger proceeds from His perfect justice, the same cannot be said of sinful men. Our sense of justice is corrupted by our sinful nature, and so any consequent anger will be sinful as well. When we rationalize our own sins rather than confess and repent of them, we suppress the truth in unrighteousness and thereby distort our moral judgments. What’s more, we are prone to sins like pride and envy which produce the kinds of anger which are in direct opposition to true righteousness. Add to all this the fact that we are simply fallible and therefore that our judgments may be in error due to ignorance or mistakes. All of this is true, and it is entirely necessary for Christians to understand this sinful weakness in our nature.

Burying Our Anger

Unfortunately, these truths are often immediately followed by a vile and pernicious lie: “Therefore, a Christian should strive to avoid anger.” For the shallow-minded, it seems to follow quite logically. If your anger is inevitably going to be sinful, you should do whatever you can to rid yourself of anger. You may not be able to avoid feeling angry sometimes, but you should certainly ignore it or suppress it instead of acting on it until your emotions catch up to the forgiveness God has commanded you to offer. In this view, as a Christian grows in holiness (if they even acknowledge that possibility), he’ll also find himself being less angry and more tranquil regardless of provocation.

One can recognize the error in such instruction quite easily by applying the same reasoning to the parts of our psyche which tend to oppose anger. For example, by nature, our tranquility is no less sinful than our wrath. Our judgment is still corrupted by our suppression of truth in unrighteousness, so we are liable to say “peace, peace” where there is no peace. We are prone to sins like sloth and gluttony which produce the kinds of languid calm which are in direct opposition to true righteousness. And, of course, we remain fallible beings and can therefore mistakenly think everything is fine even as it all burns down around us.

Our feelings of tranquility, peace, and calm are no less subject to concupiscence than anger is. And yet, you’ll seldom find pastors advising Christians to strive against peace or tranquility. We aren’t taught to suppress it or to rouse ourselves to anger whenever we find ourselves feeling calm so that our feelings can catch up with our zeal. Neither will most Christians ever hear warnings against such vulnerabilities in our fallen nature.

Why not? Well, it has nothing to do with Scripture. As we’ve already seen, the Bible does not condemn anger in itself, and it gives us examples of false peace. Rather, we have been burdened with the false presumption that when it comes to sin, doing nothing is safer than doing something. Whereas anger demands action, tranquility easily contents itself with inaction. Accordingly, we routinely cast suspicion on the former and baptize the latter.

Sanctifying Our Emotions

But playing it safe in this way offers only the illusion of security. For one thing, our safety before Almighty God rests completely in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ which we receive by faith alone. No amount of moral reform will help us there, and so we are free to take godly risks. But more to my current point, destroying one God-given emotion while allowing sin to freely reign in a competing one will never lead to virtue. The Christian’s need to do good works will be stymied until every aspect of our nature is brought into submission to God’s Word.

The only way in which we can mortify the flesh and bring it into submission is to judge our every impulse according to God’s Word. That doesn’t mean trying to trade one feeling for another, but disciplining both. Like sexual desire, anger needs to be shaped and directed rather than discarded.

If you want to know whether your anger is appropriate, you need to ask yourself who told you to be offended. Are you upset over what God has established as valuable or over a mere shibboleth of modern culture? Is it your business–a matter which affects those whom God has given into your care–or are you merely being a busybody? Is your anger motivating you towards truly good works or disrupting your efforts by muddling your thinking? You’ll never be able to answer such questions without a steady diet of God’s Word to inform your conscience. But if you won’t both restrain your anger when it rages against God and let it burn when it produces righteous zeal, then you’re only letting Satan teach you to pick it up and put it away as his pleasure.

The same is true of your calm and tranquility. Are you being lazy and neglecting your responsibilities or are you content that you’ve done your work well and are leaving the consequences to God? Do you abstain from a conflict because its not important in the grand scheme of things or because you don’t really care about something God Himself has commended to us? God’s Word will inform you of your responsibilities and give you wisdom to discern when stepping back is the right move. The world’s discipline, however, will sideline you from the great battles of our time while you concern yourself with minutia.

Anger According to the Law

Unfortunately, this is not what modern Christians are taught to do. On one hand, our antinomians wholeheartedly despise striving to conform our behavior to God’s Law. They would accuse me of legalism for even suggesting this approach. And under their wicked tutelage, many Christians are starved of God’s Law and have no sound basis for discerning good from evil when it comes to anger or anything else. Even their God-given impulse to do good works and love as He loved us is subverted by accusations of self-righteousness whenever they actually try to drown their sinful nature.

On the other hand, Christians have allowed the world to redefine love for us. Instead of God’s assurance that love is the fulfilling of the law, the world tells us that love is found in obsequiousness. We’ve been discipled to think that rather than requiring us to be good, kind, gentle, and respectful, love demands only a vague niceness. But the merely nice cannot stand the conflict that righteous anger brings. Those pastors and teachers who have fallen into this trap rigorously police their sheep according to tone instead of truth. And because anger offends niceness more than any other tone, that’s what we’re told to stop feeling.

Christian love must avoid both of these pitfalls lest we strangle it before it reaches our neighbors. We live in a fallen and often perilous world where the good things God has given us are under constant threat. Where danger abounds, true love must become fierce. A well-disciplined anger will always be a part of that. As Paul wrote, “Be angry, and do not sin.”

To reclaim a godly ferocity and shake off our worldly torpor, we must reject the false teachings that surround us and return to Scripture–especially to those parts of it which the world hates. And whether we’re sinfully angry or sinfully sedated against things that should make us angry, we must seek God’s grace for our sins and the power of His Spirit to turn away from them. May God thereby discipline our anger and use it for His glory.