Does your anger control you?
Anger itself isn't a sin, but it always leads to action. How can you take charge of your anger before it leads you to do something sinful?
You can be sure of this: The LORD set apart the godly for himself. The LORD will answer when I call to him. Don’t sin by letting anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent. (Psalm 4:3-4)
What makes you angry?
There’s a lot to be angry about in the world right now. My own laundry list of problems could keep us here all day, and that doesn’t even take into account all of the legitimate reasons all of you reading this have to be angry.
The world is broken. People are cruel. The enemy uses people to hurt each other. Innocents get caught in the crossfire. Wicked, selfish people project their own failures on those who are noble in order to ruin their reputations. Self-righteous manipulators bask in success while the ones who do real hard work go unnoticed and forgotten. The list goes on and on and on.
What do you do with anger when you feel it? This isn’t a trick question. It’s a real thought I’ve had throughout most of my life. Most people don’t believe this, but anger is my default emotion. I respond to brokenness and sin and fear and hurt with anger, but my anger doesn’t look like what people expect. It’s a quite, internal anger that simmers away deep in my heart, and it’s almost impossible to purge. I carried unresolved anger around in my heart for decades before I realized what it was.
Anger is a challenge because by itself it isn’t a sin. That’s something we all need to understand very clearly. Just because you feel anger doesn’t automatically make it a sin. Anger is a secondary emotion. It is a natural response to injustice or hurt feelings or fear. The problem with anger is that it leads us to action, and actions taken in anger are often sinful.
Anger is insidious and can take control of our hearts and minds before we even realize it, so we must be wise when we experience it. Otherwise, we will hand over our agency to an emotion that is just as broken as the world around us.
Before we deal with our anger, we must recognize one very important truth: God is in control.
God made you. He designed every part of you, from the tiniest hair on your head to the innermost depths of your soul. He made you for a purpose, intended you to function within His master plan for the universe. When Scripture tells us that He set you apart for Him, that’s what He means. He’s got a plan and a purpose for your life, and when we need Him, we can call on Him and He will answer.
Make all of that the bedrock of your decision making paradigm before you do anything else, because that foundation affects how you handle the troubles life throws at you. Life isn’t perfect, and it won’t ever be, but God is in control and is big enough to take the worst circumstances and turn them into something beautiful that brings Him glory.
With that truth in mind, what makes you angry? What are you angry about right now? What has your blood pressure skyrocketing? I would venture to guess that we all have something that is making our speech a little bit salty today.
If you are angry at injustice, good. If you are angry at how sin has wrecked something God made, good. God is angry about those things too. It’s okay to be angry. Hey, it’s godly to be angry about sin.
But what are you doing to DO about it? That’s the real question. That’s where the rubber meets the road here. It’s one thing to say you believe that God is good and that God is big enough to work things out and that God has a plan, but are you going to live like you believe it? Can you live like that’s the truth when you’re so angry you can’t see straight?
That’s the hard part. That’s the aspect of following Jesus that makes this life so difficult. Our anger is valid. The rage we feel when God is disrespected, when innocent people suffer, when noble leaders are torn down by lesser men is legitimate, but God has not called us to be vigilantes. He has not called us to be fixers. He has not called us to be character assassins. And He will not bless us if we use the weapons of our enemy in an attempt to make things right.
We know from James 1:20 that when we act in anger, we don’t produce God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness only comes from acting in faith, in humility, and in love.
That doesn’t mean we can’t stand up for ourselves, but we should find a way to do with compassion. That doesn’t mean we can’t say no, but we must find a way to say it in kindness. That doesn’t mean we compromise what’s true, but we can stand our ground in love.
Be angry. It’s okay. I am too. About a lot of things. But I know God too well to believe He isn’t already working things out. My job is to take the next right step, to praise Him for what He is going to do, and to stay rooted in the love He has shown me so that I know how to love others—including those who make me angry.
Questions for Reflection
When you experience anger, what is the primary emotion that causes it most often?
Why do you think human anger doesn’t produce God’s righteousness?
How is one way you can bring your legitimate anger under God’s command?