Choklit Blog #32: Anger

       Most people get angry at some point in their life. A lot of people see anger as a bad thing. They think it’s wrong to get angry, because anger is a negative emotion. A lot of Christians think that anger is an un-Christian attitude, and they should stay away from it. Romans 1:18 says “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” The word “wrath” is (according to my computer’s dictionary) defined as “extreme anger.” So basically what that verse is saying is that wickedness makes God extremely angry. Now skip ahead a few books to 1 Peter. Chapter one, verse fifteen says “But just as he who called you [God] is holy, so be holy in all you do.” But wait... didn’t I just say that God gets EXTREMELY ANGRY? Yep. Guess what. Anger isn’t a sin.


       The problem is what anger leads to. There are right ways to deal with anger, and there are wrong ways to deal with anger. First let’s look at the wrong way. According to Galatians 5:19-20, throwing a fit is not the right solution to anger. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Wow. Now that we’ve cleared that up...

Ephesians 4:26-27 shows us some pretty helpful information on how to properly deal with anger. “‘In your anger do not sin’^[*]: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Don’t sin! Don’t go beat someone up just because you’re mad. Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry. This could be taken two different ways; you could take it to literally mean “resolve all your problems before the day ends”, or you could take it figuratively. Or you could take it both ways. The literal meaning is pretty obvious. If your brother drives you to school every morning and today you were 15 minutes late for class because your brother wasn’t ready to go in time, don’t go to bed that night thinking about how you can get back at him, or how angry you are that he made you late for class. Resolve the issue as soon as possible.

The figurative meaning isn’t that hard to figure out either. “The sun [going] down” here could symbolize the end of your life. Either death or the end of the world. Jesus even uses similar symbolism in John 11:11 when he tells his disciples that Lazarus is dead. He tells them that Lazarus has “fallen asleep” and that He is going to “wake him up” (raise him from the dead). Job also uses sleep to refer to death: “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed? For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest” (Job 3:11-13). The end of the day, the sun going down, is normally when people go to sleep... and the end of a person’s life is normally when they die. Unless of course they don’t die, because they live until Jesus comes back to earth... “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). And it still ends with the night.

Now you may be wondering whether you need to deal with your anger before the end of each day, or just sometime before the end of your life. The answer is both. There are two different types of anger; we’ll call them short-term anger and long-term anger. Short-term anger occurs when something happens that makes you angry. Someone insults you, you make a stupid mistake, you lose something important. Then there’s long-term anger; anger at something that’s ongoing. For example, the fact that there are hungry people in third-world countries makes you angry. That will always make you angry... not always as in every second of the day, but whenever you think about the starving people out there, you’ll get mad. It’s not something that can just be resolved easily. Short-term anger is the type of anger that needs to be resolved before the day is over; long-term anger is the type of anger that needs to be dealt with before your life is over.

So how do you deal with this anger? Psalm 4:4-5 says “In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. Selah. Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.” You have to make sacrifices. You may have to sacrifice your dignity and forgive someone who hurt you, or sacrifice your time and money to fight world hunger, but in order to get rid of your anger the right way, you have to be willing to make sacrifices. If people were intended to just dream away their anger, what would be the point of it? Anger motivates people to do things; without negative emotion, no one would ever have a reason to do anything useful. But if people aren’t willing to sacrifice their own comfort, they’ll never do anything useful anyway, and they’ll stay angry.

You should never go to bed at night angry for a reason that could have been resolved already, and if you do, it’s your responsibility to immediately forgive the person who caused your anger (even if that person is yourself). And when you’re a hundred years old lying on your death bed, you shouldn’t be thinking “Gosh, I wish I had done something to help those hungry children. I hope someone will someday.” You should be able to look back over your life and think of how glad you are that you did what you could to help fix the things in the world that God gave you an anger -- a passion -- for.

[*]Psalm 4:4