Inside Out - Anger

Introduction

Over the last two weeks we’ve been looking at emotions, using the Pixar movie Inside Out and the five emotions it animates as a guide. Two weeks ago I looked at Sadness, last week Graham explored Fear, and today I’ll be talking about Anger. In the next two weeks we’ll look at Disgust and Joy.

So far we’ve looked at how emotions give us an immediate response to situations, and can help guide us through the world. Does this work with Anger, though?

First, let’s look at how Inside Out sees Anger.

Video

Play video [1 min]

My story

You’ll notice that in that clip, Lewis Black said that Anger, “is all about getting the job done.” Before we get into what the Bible says about the place of Anger, I want to share my own struggle with it.

Very early on in our marriage, I noticed that Mable and I have very different ways of both getting angry and dealing with or getting rid of our anger. Like my Dad, when I’m frustrated with something, I feel the need to “blow off steam,” so I get angry with whatever is frustrating me (I try to aim my anger at some inanimate thing, but I have to confess that sometimes I fail at that and aim it at other people) and blow off the steam verbally. “You stupid computer! How moronic is Microsoft!” That’s the sort of thing you might hear quite a bit if you sat next to me for a while. Once I’ve blown off this steam, I’m good, and I don’t have to worry about getting tempted to smash that stupid computer, or do something even more extreme.

The problem is that this anger-management technique interacts badly with Mable’s way of getting angry and dealing with it. Unlike me, Mable doesn’t get frustrated quickly and then blow it off quickly, she builds slowly and then simmers for a long time. The problem is that my letting off steam builds up her simmer. So I might be done with my steam release and be feeling happy and unburdened, but if Mable is around, she’s now simmering.

I’ll have more to say about this in a moment, but first lets look at what the Bible says about anger.

The Bible

The main Bible reading for today is from Matthew 5:21-26, and is taken from Jesus’ radical new moral requirements that he gives in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 4:21–24 NLT

21 A little farther up the shore he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called them to come, too. 22 They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind. 23 Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. 24 News about him spread as far as Syria, and people soon began bringing to him all who were sick. And whatever their sickness or disease, or if they were demon possessed or epileptic or paralyzed—he healed them all.

This is such a shocking take on anger that we rarely take it seriously. I have seen many Christians speak to each other in anger, and I have even done it myself. But how often have we thought seriously about Jesus’ claim that this is equivalent to murder. We always have excuses, such as “Yes, but they deserve it, they hurt me, or they hurt those poor defenseless ones.”

But does Jesus allow such justifications? In this section of his sermon, Jesus is taking past laws and giving his own, much stricter, spin on them. He points out that previously someone who committed murder would be “subject to judgement,” and then he takes it further and replaces murder in this formula with merely being angry with someone. Another way of saying this is simply “anger is an act of murder in the heart without the action of the hand.” There doesn’t seem to be much room for excuses, does there? And that is confirmed by the rest of this passage, which expresses the urgency of dealing with such a dangerous heart condition.

God’s Anger

Jesus’ Anger

But this leaves us with a puzzling question: if anger is so bad, why does Jesus himself get angry?

Jesus gets angry at the Pharisees when they want to prevent him healing on the Sabbath:

Mark 3:5 NLT

5 He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” So the man held out his hand, and it was restored!

He seems to get pretty angry with the money-changers and sacrifice sellers that he kicks out of the temple, too.

And Jesus is not unlike his Father in heaven in behaving this way. We encounter God’s wrath throughout the Bible. For example:

Judges 2:13–14 NLT

13 They abandoned the Lord to serve Baal and the images of Ashtoreth. 14 This made the Lord burn with anger against Israel, so he handed them over to raiders who stole their possessions. He turned them over to their enemies all around, and they were no longer able to resist them.

How come it’s OK for God to get angry?

The source of God’s anger

Perhaps if we can figure out what God is getting angry about, we might have a clue about how anger is supposed to work. Let’s take a look.

Now, I never knew this, but God doesn’t actually get angry at Adam and Eve when they rebel against him! He doesn’t get angry when Cain, consumed by his own anger, murders Abel! God floods the whole world in grief and regret, as we saw two weeks ago, not anger. He calmly disperses the idolatrous people from the tower of Babel. He burns Sodom and Gomorrah because of the great outcry against their grave sins, not out of anger. And so on. The Bible records thousands of years of outright rebellion against God’s love and care, but God never gets angry!

No, the first time that God gets angry in the recorded history of the world is when someone blocks his great plan of salvation. In fact, God’s anger is first kindled against Moses!

Exodus 4:13–14 NLT

13 But Moses again pleaded, “Lord, please! Send anyone else.” 14 Then the Lord became angry with Moses. “All right,” he said. “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he speaks well. And look! He is on his way to meet you now. He will be delighted to see you.

Does this tell us something about righteous anger?

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, has a profound insight about anger. He said, “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

The question, of course, is what is the right person, degree, time, purpose and way to be angry. Surely God defines what is right?

And yet the first Biblical record of God’s anger is directed against Moses! The second record of God’s anger is in Moses’ song of victory after Israel’s delivery through the Red Sea, and describes God’s wrath against Egypt (Ex. 15:7). And the third time we hear of God’s anger is in Israel’s social justice laws, warning against mistreating foreigners, widows or orphans:

Exodus 22:23–24 NLT

23 If you exploit them in any way and they cry out to me, then I will certainly hear their cry. 24 My anger will blaze against you, and I will kill you with the sword. Then your wives will be widows and your children fatherless.

There is a pattern here, and it continues throughout the rest of Scripture: God’s anger is directed at those who block his plan to bring human beings back into relationship with him. Much of the time, it is Israel itself who is blocking God’s plan! But when other nations threaten Israel’s existence, or lead it astray, God’s wrath is revealed against them, too.

This also explains Jesus anger. He doesn’t get angry at the Romans, much to the confusion of his followers. Instead he gets angry at the Jews who are blocking God’s work of redemption. Even Peter feels Jesus’ anger when he tries to block Jesus’ path to the cross, where he would die to give us all a way back to God:

Matthew 16:22–23 NLT

22 But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

In the New Testament as well as the Old, God always seems to be angry those who thwart his work to redeem all human beings. For example, in his letter to the Romans, Paul says of those who reject God’s saving work in their own lives:

Romans 2:5 NLT

5 But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

Summary of God’s Anger

OK, now let’s take a step back and see what we’ve learnt about God’s anger.

God doesn’t get angry at people rebelling against him. Rather, he gets angry at those preventing him from drawing people back into relationship. God’s righteous anger is, it seems, not simply directed at injustice or unfairness, it is directed at only those who obstruct his work of salvation for all people.

Let me say that again, because it is so unexpected, to me, at least: God’s righteous anger is directed only at the obstruction of his work of salvation for all people.

Human Anger

So that’s God’s anger. Let’s turn now to human anger.

Can we justify our anger over anything other than someone blocking God’s salvation? I don’t know! What does the Bible tell us?

Proverbs offers wisdom on how anger works in human life:

Proverbs 29:22 NLT

22 An angry person starts fights; a hot-tempered person commits all kinds of sin.

Remember that Jesus equated anger with murder.

And the apostle James exhorts his readers:

James 1:19–20 NLT

19 Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. 20 Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.

Why should we be slow to anger? Because human anger does not produce righteousness. As Proverbs says, it leads only to conflict and sin. As Jesus says, it’s equivalent to murder.

And yet I’m sure you’re all aware of a famous verse that many of us use to justify our anger. It’s in a section of Paul’s letter to Ephesus explaining how to live as a Christian. Here is the English Standard Version translation:

Ephesians 4:26–27 ESV

26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil.

And here is the same passage in the New Living Translation, the NLT:

Ephesians 4:26–27 NLT

26 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 for anger gives a foothold to the devil.

The NLT’s translation gives quite a different impression, doesn’t it? The ESV almost seems to be commanding anger, while the NLT is focused on the command to not sin.

The ESV’s sentence start, “be angry,” follows the Greek, but in Greek, such a structure often means “if you’re angry,” as it does here.

The point of this passage is for us to recognise that anger is a human emotion. And there are (very rare) occasions when it is warranted, such as when people are blocking God’s plan of salvation. For example, preventing someone from hearing the Gospel is cause for anger.

But, Paul says, even in this type of anger, we must be very aware that anger is deadly dangerous, because “anger gives a foothold to the devil.” In fact, Paul is so concerned about this danger, that four verses later, he writes,

Ephesians 4:31 NLT

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.

It seems then, that the Bible teaches that anger is such a dangerous emotion that we should do all we can to avoid it.

How our anger goes wrong

Let’s go back to my story about how my anger leads to Mable’s anger. I have always felt that it was OK to get angry as a result of frustrations, so long as I didn’t take it out on a person. And, to be honest, I wanted to believe that it was basically Mable’s problem that she got angry when I was just blowing off steam. But it’s pretty clear now, from God’s Word, that my anger is totally inappropriate. I’m not being slow to anger and my words and attitude are leading Mable into temptation. It is wrong to cause someone to stumble, and so, as Proverbs predicts, my anger has caused conflict and sin.

We see the same problem writ large in our world today.

If you have turned on your TV in the last couple of weeks, you will undoubtedly have seen destruction caused by rioters and looters in America. Greg Sheridan in the Australian newspaper explains the source of this violence:

“The ideology of “systemic racism” condemns the power structure. The problem becomes the system, not aspects of the system that need reform. Herein lies the essential problem — once you accept critical race theory — that racism is everywhere and permeates everything, you create an end-goal that will never be realised but delivers endless anger.” - Let’s never concede to the moral matrix of the Tribe PAUL KELLY The Australian 12:00AM JUNE 17, 2020

We see this “endless anger” at work also in France, this time caused by economic injustice. It is expressed in the violence accompanying the Yellow Vest protests that have wracked France for several years.

Now, there are genuine problems here. Evils that we should be deeply concerned about. The problem is that we choose to react to these genuine evils by getting angry, and that anger causes conflict and gives opportunity to the devil. It doesn’t solve the problems, but often just makes them worse.

An alternative to anger

What are we to do instead? What can replace anger?

We can’t ignore injustice, or racism, or oppression, or even frustration! We live in a world where the “system,” the world itself, really has been corrupted. How should we react to that?

Remember two weeks ago, we talked about sadness and grief. I quoted the apostle Paul then. He said,

Romans 8:20–22 ESV

20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

What if grief, “groaning together,” is the appropriate response to injustice? What if sorrow is the appropriate response to frustration?

After all, grief and sorrow do not leave us unmoved. No! They move us to heal, to repair, to fix what is deeply broken. While anger is highly likely to lead to the destruction of that which we value, sorrow can lead to hope.

If I take my frustrations, and, instead of angrily blowing off steam, I lament, is that better? It certainly won’t tempt Mable to get angry. How can you get angry with someone for being sad?

If a driver cuts me off and I am sad for them and their passengers instead of cursing them, isn’t that better? It even makes me more likely to drive safely, instead of driving dangerously in my anger.

If someone on social media is stupid or nasty or even both, isn’t it better for me to express gentle sadness rather than bitter anger?

If my child deliberately disobeys a direct and reasonable instruction, and I feel grief over their willful disobedience rather than flying into a rage, isn’t that better for them, for me, and for our relationship? Doesn’t it protect them from me lashing out in anger? Doesn’t it move them, through sympathy, to be more likely to obey?

It certainly is not good for us to respond to terrible things with apathy. Injustice, racism, rebellion, destruction, malice and so on: these must not leave us unmoved.

But what if grief is a better motive for change and healing than anger?

What if that is the message of the Bible on anger? What if God is asking us to grieve with him, and so to heal the world?

Let’s pray.