Healing Life's Hurts (eBook)

Chapter 2

Defining Anger

What is anger?

Despite the bad press anger has received, it is actually our friend, not our enemy. Anger is not bad or even neutral, but good. Anger is a gift from God (Judges 14:19). Anger enables us to defend ourselves against danger (Genesis 31:36). In fact, God himself gets angry when his children are hurt by others or diminished in any way. We refer to this as vicarious anger (Exodus 15:6–8). God’s anger is expressed against sin, the devil and any enemy of ours. God is angry whenever his enemies try to hurt any of his children. God’s expression of anger against our sin occurs because he knows how destructive sin is to his children. (Sin is defined as not living up to God’s standard of holiness or perfection, which the Bible sets as the benchmark.) Sin is not only wrong, it also hurts us and destroys us. Because sin is destructive, it calls forth anger from God (1 Kings 11:9). If we are sinning against others, we often feel God’s anger toward us for our destructive acts.

Parents certainly can understand God’s perspective. Don’t you as parents find anger rising if someone tries to harm your children? We may even experience greater anger when our children are attacked than when we ourselves are attacked. I remember when our oldest son Sam, who was about nine at the time, was playing in the playground behind our house. I walked out the back gate with my father-in-law, who was visiting, to see Sam. Walking past the trees that hid the play structure, I noticed an older boy sitting on the apparatus, spitting on Sam’s head. Fortunately, my father-in-law was there to restrain me when immediate anger gripped me. I was ready to release unrestrained anger at this bully for the way he was treating my son.

The anger we feel when our children are under attack is from God, and is designed to protect us and our families from danger. Without anger to protect us, we would be hurt many times over and would have no means to defend ourselves. A person without the capacity to express or use anger to defend himself is victimized repeatedly.

Anger is from God

All human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We carry the likeness of God in our genes, albeit imperfectly because of the Fall. Within each of us is a built-in sense of justice and righteousness. We are keenly aware of someone violating our rights or treating us unfairly. The Creator himself has established these inherent rights in us. They express his design for our socialization and well-being. These rights include the right to justice, the right to dignity and honour, the right to meaningful purpose, and the right to act responsibly. When our rights have been violated, anger from God stirs an ‘anger energy’ in us to right the wrong. This authority to correct the wrong and defend the right is established by God in every human being.

In 2 Samuel 12, King David was confronted by the prophet Nathan about his sin against Uriah and Bathsheba. Nathan wisely told David a story about a rich man who took advantage of a poor man by slaughtering his one and only pet lamb for a supper for himself and his travelling guest. Verses 5–6 say, ‘David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”’ Even though it was David who had sinned against God, the inherent sense of righteousness in David evoked his angry response when he heard this story from Nathan the prophet.

This same authority is given to parents to train, discipline and, when needed, punish their children. God defines the boundaries of right and wrong. God passes on his authority to parents, the church and the government to teach and maintain right and wrong. These boundaries, established by God’s Word, help protect you and me from infringement on our rights. Proverbs 15:31–33 says, ‘He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding. The fear of the Lord teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honour.’

Anger is good

We know anger is good is because God himself expresses anger, yet he has no evil in him. He cannot be the sinless God of the Bible and have evil in himself. Because God is perfect in his holiness, the anger coming from God must be holy and right. We much prefer to think of God as ‘love’. He is love, of course. However, God’s anger in Scripture is expressed as much as his love. Anger and love are not mutually exclusive. We know we can be angry with the person we love the most. God expresses both anger and love toward his children, and both expressions are good.

We can see this in Psalm 90:11–14: ‘Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Relent, O Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.’ In Jeremiah 30:24 we also see the Lord using his anger to accomplish his loving purposes for his people, even when we don’t understand it: ‘The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come you will understand this.’ God always uses his anger to benefit his divine purposes.

God commands us to be angry

There is another reason why the Bible teaches that anger is good. Anger is good because God commands us to get angry, yet not sin in the expression of anger. Ephesians 4:26 tells us: ‘Be angry and yet do not sin’ (NASB). The Greek text is written in the present tense and the imperative mood. (The present tense in Greek means continuous action; the imperative mood is the voice of command.) This verse is a command to be obeyed continuously. Literally translated, it would read like this: ‘I command you to be continuously angry [as needed] and yet continuously not to sin in your anger.’ Why would God command us to be angry? Because he knows that we need anger to do what is right, and especially to stand against the enemy. Scripture never tells us to repress, suppress, deny or bury anger. Scripture demands that we use anger properly to accomplish God’s purposes on the earth. We have been trained throughout our lives that anger is wrong. And we have been told to stop being angry, or even worse, to be ashamed of anger. Therefore, we automatically repress or bury many of our angry feelings. We simply do not understand God’s purpose for anger.

God also commands us to forgive

The Bible also makes it clear that when our ‘rights’ have been violated and someone hurts us, we must also work through a process of forgiveness. Jesus said in Matthew 5:23–24: ‘Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.’ When we forgive our offender, we participate in Christ’s redemptive process. We also verify that the offender’s needs (from which the hurt derived) are important too. So, in forgiveness, we not only identify and accept our response to the hurt, but also we actively participate with Jesus in the redemptive healing of the person who caused the hurt. The Bible teaches a radical view of forgiveness. Matthew 6:14–15 says: ‘For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.’

Forgiveness is not only for our well-being, but also for the healing of the nations. Only when we grasp the enormity of the debt from which we have been forgiven by God, can we become aware of how much and how often we wrong God and others. Christ’s forgiveness is not just prescriptive, it is redemptive. He does not merely say, ‘I forgive you’, but he commits himself to our ongoing development. We are commanded to forgive in the same manner. We will have much more to say about forgiveness later in the book, but for now this helps establish the crucial nature of forgiveness in the Bible’s discussion of anger and rights.

In order to further understand the Bible’s view of anger, we need to get a clear definition of what anger actually is.

A definition of anger: A physiological response to danger

At its most basic level, anger can be defined as ‘energy in our bodies designed to protect us from danger’. Here is how I arrived at this definition of anger. One day, when I was searching the Scriptures for answers for dealing with anger in relationships, I read this phrase a number of times: ‘he burned with anger’. As I read the story in 1 Samuel 11:1–6, I saw something for the first time: