I've been thinking a bit about anger over the past few days. Mainly, when is anger a legitimate reaction, or as I have been asked several times over the past few years, "When does anger become 'righteous' anger"?
I agree very much with what Neil Anderson says in the Freedom in Christ course that anger is generally a response that we have to a blocked goal. For example, when our goal is to get to a meeting on time, if we find ourselves in a traffic jam then anger is the typical reaction. Anderson follows up, rightly I believe, by suggesting that we should only have goals that are within our control. Getting to a meeting on time is not always in our control (such as with the traffic jam example), so we are asking for trouble if we make that our goal. Anderson suggests that if our goals are things that are within our power to make happen then anger will be a decreasing influence in our life, because we'll find ourselves facing fewer blocked goals. This makes good sense and I've found it very helpful.
However, what I've then been forced to consider is whether anger is always a result of a blocked goal. If it is, then surely anger is always wrong, and doesn't it therefore become 'sin'? In Ephesians 4:26 Paul draws a distinction between anger and sin by quoting Psalm 4 and writing "In your anger do not sin". Following this, sin is not anger, but something that might be born our of anger. This distinction makes me unable to accept the suggestion that anger is always wrong.
But if anger isn't always wrong, then under what circumstances is it right? I'm not happy with the manufactured distinction between 'regular anger' and 'righteous anger', but it does acknowledge this tricky question.
Some people point at the cleansing of the Temple as a time when Jesus exercised anger, but I've been reading the Gospels on this matter and I'm not convinced this was something that Jesus did in anger. John's account makes specific reference to an Old Testament verse - "Zeal for my father's house will consume me" - and zeal is a different thing to anger. Jesus's passion for the honour of God's name does not necessarily equate to anger. A bouncer can throw someone out of a nightclub without having to be angry. Instead I wonder if our attribution of anger to Jesus here is because he's acting in an 'angry' way and so we make the necessary assumption, perhaps because we're used to flamboyant actions being an expression of emotion rather than being a considered choice. But equally, it's hard to read Matthew 23 and not imagine Jesus being at least a tiny bit annoyed.
Perhaps it's as simple as asking what is causing our anger? Anger over a missed meeting is a different thing, surely, to anger over an injustice done to a friend. Perhaps it comes down to whether or not we're angry in our own defence, or whether or not we're angry in defence of others or God? Or perhaps anger is just the emotional response to a situation, and then we have a choice to make about how to respond: "Self-control" or "Lack of Self-Control"? The latter leads to sin, and the former may lead to the cleansing of a Temple and the restoration of God's honour.
Just some thoughts, which I'm still processing.
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Since having kids I've certainly found plenty of opportunities to get angry! In my experience, though, anger normally leads to a lack of self-control - I blow up, yell, or do any number of other things which are unhelpful, unproductive, and, well, sinful. Unless the thing I've gotten angry over is sinful itself (eg, I cheated on my taxes and got caught), the emotion of anger is not wrong in itself. Being late to a meeting because of a pile of circumstances outside our control is frustrating! But how I express that anger is where the sin comes in. In the end, it's the self-control (or lack of it) that usually lets me down...
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