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IT
HAPPENED AGAIN. SOMETHING I’VE HEARD so often. A friend told me another Christian had advised her that
her angry feelings are sinful. Hearing that my friend had been
counseled this way made me feel, well . . . angry.
Now that I’ve made
this confession, I must hasten to say that I don’t think I
was sinning merely by feeling angry at that
moment—although the potential for saying or doing something
unkind was certainly there.
The assumption that
the feeling of anger is sinful is so deeply embedded in
Christian thinking that many never question it. It’s the
instinctive belief of many who haven’t looked carefully at
biblical teaching on anger. I don’t deny that some are able
to hold this belief without serious danger to their
well-being. And it restrains some from acting out their anger
in hurtful ways.
For many, the effect
is far less fortunate. Not a few Christians go through life
feeling guilty for each experience of angry feelings.
Take the case of
Christine. Several in her office tease her about being a
Christian. Two of her coworkers are particularly insensitive,
and crack jokes that Christine finds offensive. Since
Christine believes that a Christian shouldn’t experience
angry feelings—let alone express them—she bites her tongue
and tries to act pleasant whenever her office mates make fun
of her. Although she prays for charitable feelings toward
them, she still feels resentful. Then she gets angry at
herself for feeling bitter.
This vicious
emotional cycle exhausts Christine and intensifies the anger
she feels toward her associates. On several occasions, she has
erupted angrily at them. These outbursts have deepened her
self-disdain, and left her fellow employees even more
skeptical about her faith.
Ironically,
Christine’s assumption that feeling angry is off limits for
a Spirit-filled Christian is a major part of the problem. Her
constant self-judgment makes it difficult for her to face her
feelings honestly and control them. If Christine regarded
anger as normal and acceptable, she would be able to own her
feelings better, and to express them appropriately to her
coworkers before she lost control.
Missing
the Point
The belief that we
sin by feeling angry is usually derived from Jesus’ familiar
statement in the Sermon on the Mount:
“You
have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall
not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’
But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother
shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall
be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’
shall be liable to the hell of fire.” (Mt 5:21-22 RSV)
On the surface, Jesus
does seem to say that the emotion of anger is sinful in
itself—as condemnable as a murderous act that might spring
from it. In the same spirit, he seems to indict the feeling of
lust as tantamount to the sin of adultery, several verses
later (Mt 5:27-28).
When we look beyond
the Sermon on the Mount, however, we find other New Testament
passages which show that negative emotions can occur without
sin being present. Thus Paul declares, “Be angry but do not
sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26
RSV). Paul clearly indicates that we can feel angry without
sinning. How can this be?
The usual Christian
response is that we experience two types of anger:
“righteous indignation” and “sinful anger.” One is
directed at a noble cause, the other at a selfish one; one is
admirable, the other deplorable.
Scripture, though,
never makes this distinction, which ignores the nature of
human motivation. Pride and hurt feelings can run as deep in
righteous indignation as in any other type of anger. Anger is
the same emotion, whether evoked by a righteous concern or a
dishonorable one. I frankly wish we would throw the term
righteous indignation out of our Christian vocabulary; far too
much self-righteousness is encouraged by it.
But
how, then, does Paul’s counsel to be angry but not sin
reconcile with Jesus’ teaching on anger in the Sermon on the
Mount? Here it’s important to note what Jesus says and what
he doesn’t. He doesn’t say that the person who is angry is
being judged as sinning, but that he is “liable to
judgment.” Liable. He or she is at a highly
vulnerable point—a hair’s breadth, perhaps, from doing
something rash. But this is different from saying that this
person is sinning simply by feeling angry. This point
is well-captured by Vernon Grounds in his Emotional
Problems and the Gospel:
Does
our Lord mean that a mere feeling of anger is no different
from the actual crime of murder? He can scarcely mean . . .
that. No, He is reminding us, rather, of what can happen if an
angry feeling is allowed to fester in our minds. . . . He is
also counseling us to be on guard against the illusion that as
His disciples, we no longer have those drives and impulses
that can break out into violence.*
Jesus’ point, then,
isn’t that anger is a sinful emotion but a dangerous
one. When we examine the New Testament thoroughly on the
point, in fact, we never find it condemning any emotion as
sinful in itself. It’s always the action which proceeds from
an emotion that is judged sinful. Again, “Be angry but do
not sin.”
In this same spirit,
James speaks of sin occurring when lust has “conceived”
(Jas 1:15 KJV). And when Jesus declares in the Sermon on the
Mount that a man who “looks” upon a woman lustfully
commits adultery, he isn’t referring to the mere feeling of
sexual desire but to an intentional look. This is clear
in the Greek, where the emphasis is upon the action of
looking; sin occurs when I choose to nurture the feeling of
lust, not merely through the emotion itself.
Accepting
the Feeling
The point is more
than an academic or semantic one. If we believe that the
feeling of anger is sinful, we’ll be inclined to judge
ourselves unfairly whenever we feel angry. We’ll assume God
is displeased with us, and we may find it harder to approach
him for help. We’ll be likely to repress the feeling of
anger, with all the psychological backlash that can result,
and we’ll be sitting ducks for the sort of emotional cycle
Christine experiences.
If we can accept our
feelings of anger as normal, human, and not condemned by God,
then we’ll find it easier to own these emotions, work
through them and move beyond them. Here Scripture gives us not
only a doctrinal basis for accepting our feelings but
extensive examples as well. Many of the most impressive
personalities in Scripture are shown displaying angry feelings
without incurring God’s displeasure. Consider how often
David expresses anger in the midst of his most exalted
statements of praise in the Psalms.
Or consider the
encounter Jesus himself had with the fig tree (Mk 11:12-14,
11:20-21). Mark tells us that Jesus, being hungry, was annoyed
because a certain fig tree had no fruit, even though there was
a perfectly good reason for its barrenness: it wasn’t the
season of figs! Yet Jesus cursed the fig tree. Though many
look for a higher spiritual meaning in this incident, the fact
remains that Jesus went through a very real human emotional
response in this case. We should take encouragement from this
passage, for it gives us a basis for accepting the feelings of
irritation we experience in aggravating incidents of daily
life, such as getting stuck in traffic, or finding that an
important file has been deleted on our computer at work.
I don’t mean that
merely accepting our feelings of anger guarantees we’ll end
up expressing them sensitively. We face a significant further
challenge in learning to share our negative feelings in a way
that’s considerate to other people—that strengthens our
bond with them rather than destroys it. Learning to give
“I” messages rather than “you” messages, and to
carefully think though the effect of what we say on others
before we speak, can make an enormous difference.
Still, accepting our
anger is a critical first step toward being able to share it
in a constructive manner. When we feel guilty for being angry,
we’re more inclined to ignore our anger and let it fester.
Outbursts are much more likely, which embarrass those around
us and ourselves. Anger controls us before we have the chance
to control it through a sensitive response.
Constructive
Motivation from Anger
There is also a
positive, even essential, side to anger. I doubt that we ever
accomplish anything fruitful when anger isn’t part of our
motivation, on a certain level at least. My desire to write an
article or book is fueled in part by discontent over how I
believe an issue has been mistreated, and the unfortunate
effect misconceptions have had on others. If you or I do
anything to help someone else, or to improve our own life,
it’s because we’re frustrated that certain needs (theirs
or ours) are not being properly met. The anger we experience
in such cases isn’t hostility or outrage, but an energizing
force that moves us to act constructively. It may be more of
an underlying drive than an emotion on our “front burner.”
Still, it’s a significant factor in our motivation.
I would like to hear
more emphasis in Christian teaching upon this positive role of
anger in motivating us (but without terming it righteous
indignation).
Which brings me to a
final point. If we can understand which situations cause us
personally to feel this energizing sort of anger, we will gain
a treasured insight into how God has fashioned our life. When
our annoyance over a problem that we or others are facing is
matched with the talent to remedy it, we have the potential to
take one of the most redemptive steps we possibly can with our
life. We each will do well to look carefully at how God may be
inspiring us and guiding us through certain frustration that
we feel.
Anger
is not a sinful emotion but a human one. Dangerous? Yes, in
the same way that energy itself is dangerous. But like any
energy source, it can be channeled in a positive or harmful
direction. Much of the key to dealing effectively with anger
is learning to harness it and direct it in ways that glorify
Christ and reflect his best intentions for our life.
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