Anger

“Men are often accustomed to plead zeal…for the honor of God, as the cause of their indignation, when it is only their own private interest that is concerned…It is remarkable how forward men are to appear, as if they were zealous for God…in cases wherein their interest has been touched, and to make pretense of this in injuring others or complaining of them”

-Jonathan Edwards, 18th c*

Alexander Strauch shares this Jonathan Edwards quote in his own book about handling church conflict (my current reading). I’m stunned at how much the Bible has to say about anger; first, how ubiquitous anger is to the human experience, and second, how destructive it is to people and their relationships to God and to others. Just think of all of the Old Testament stories where anger drives lying, murdering, etc. ruining families, faith, and all of the rest. That’s why the Proverbs have so much to say about the foolishness of giving vent to one’s anger (29:11) and how hot tempered men stir up trouble (15:18); Proverbs even says to stay away from folks given to anger (22:24-25). Why? Because it will influence you, too. 

Because Jesus intends to produce in us a new creation, the New Testament is full of treatment about leaving anger behind. “Fits of anger” (Gal.5:20) are works of the sinful flesh, not God; how we practice anger will be controlled by our pre-Christ fallen flesh, and thus Christians are to entirely put away anger (Eph.4:31, Col.3:8). We are to be “slow to anger,” for “the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God (Jms.1:19). This makes sense: we walk in God’s love, and “love is not easily angered” (1Cor.13:5). “Be angry and do not sin” (Eph.4:26, cf. Ps.4:4), insinuates that anger will boil up sometimes, but we are to catch it before it boils over, not allowing ourselves to sin. Since Jesus is not, by nature, angry, we, who are called to reflect him by imitation (Rom.13:14) are called to put on his peace, long-sufferingness, and gentleness.

The Edwards quote is particularly striking, because it is driven by a seasoned pastoral wisdom. Edwards astutely notes something that often characterizes church folks: They often, by practicing “righteous indignation” (so-called), though pursuing some good, are not driven by their zeal for the good, but by a commitment to their own desires and wants. They’ll (read: “We’ll”: me too) argue strongly, logically, and even consistently for why they must be so impassioned and insistent on getting what they’re sticking their neck out for. But they’re driven by selfish motivation, not by God’s zeal—the desire, perhaps, to control or analyze or argue or whatever. “I’m standing up because this is wrong,” or “I’ve always been a person who will speak up when I think I need to.” But selfish ambition—getting their way—drives the anger that drives their actions, seen in how they engage the issue with words and attitudes that hardly distinguish them from worldly people. 

So is anger sinful? Not necessarily—notice in Eph.4:26 that sin is isolated from anger: “Be angry and do not sin.” It’s as though one can have anger but not in a sinful way. Nevertheless, it is within just a few verses that we are told to “put away all anger” from us (4:31). This seems to suggest that there is a fatal flaw in our fallen hearts that causes us to not possess anger correctly, like God does (Ps.7:11).** Put another way, anger is not necessarily sinful; but since we are, we will make it sinful. Thus we are to put it away from us by rightly practicing our Christian faith: Looking to Jesus our perfect example and savior; recognizing the wrongness of our practice of what might even be good things (like anger); and repenting of the act of anger, including cutting off whatever might lend itself to our giving into it (Mt.5:29-30). 

For help, I couldn’t recommend enough Strauch’s If You Bite and Devour One Another, ch.4. In it Strauch, probably evangelicalism’s foremost expert on biblical church leadership, gives the way forward to deal with anger. If we don’t deal with our anger the devil will get a foothold and exploit it: “Be angry and do not sin…give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph.4:26-27); catch the anger before it boils over, or else it will. And the devil will be close. 

------

*from Charity and Its Fruits, 1852, Banner of Truth reprint, 198; quoted in Alexander Strauch, If You Bite and Devour Each Other, 53fn2

**but note that God doesn’t have anger as an attribute but as a response: his holiness responding to sin is, properly, his anger. See Matthew Barrett et.al. Proclaiming the Triune God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Life of the Church, 37, for the case that since we need sin in order to understand the wrath of God, his wrath cannot properly be an attribute of God. His attributes are what he is eternally; since sin is not eternal in the way that God is (for sin didn’t occur until the devil fell and then humanity fell), God’s response to it isn’t eternal like his attributes are. But that which drives his just-wrath response to sin—holiness—is an attribute of God.