Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Righteous Anger
Todd at MMI asks:
The first answer to Todd's question lies in self-examination. Humility is the key. If we seek first to be humble and yet anger remains, then there is likely some reflection of God's justice in your anger. That is easy to say and so hard to do. Setting aside our pride is perhaps the hardest thing that any of us is ever called to do.
The second answer is to always express love before anger. God reaches out first with the redemptive hand and then only when rejected does His anger come forth. And here again, humility remains a key. It is quite possible to express inordinate self-righteousness while reaching out "a redemptive hand." Such is self defeating.
But when love, offered in true humility has been offered and rejected, and the unGodly behavior continues - then indeed anger is a just an appropriate response. But even then that anger must not be given full reign - it must remain tempered by the desire for redemption and an avoidance of condemnation.
If all these condition are met, there remain strategic questions. How best to express the anger - and when? There are questions of building allies - for only Christ could trust His righteousness enough to act on anger alone. I personally seek to use such questions in a way that removes the violence from the anger. I think that even when He did turn over the tables, Christ used violence demonstratively, not expressively. It was an attention gathering device, not and expression of His desire to cause harm.
These are incomplete answers to Todd's inquiry. Dealing with anger is a work in progress for me, but it is what I have learned so far.
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Truth be told. Ted Haggard makes me angry. So do Ingrid, Ken, KJV man, Mike Murdoch and a slew of others. In fact, many (if not most) Christians make me angry at times. And I'm sure I spread a lot of those feelings in others. But when is it time to show some righteous anger, and when should you just shut up? That's a fine line for me.Nothing upsets me more than people harming God's name by acting unGodly, in God's name. There are those that would tell us anger is sin - I could not disagree more. Unjust anger is sin, and most anger is probably unjust, springing from our own pride instead of a sense of God's justice. But as Christ demonstrated when he turned over the moneychanger's tables - there is just anger and it is appropriate to express it.
The first answer to Todd's question lies in self-examination. Humility is the key. If we seek first to be humble and yet anger remains, then there is likely some reflection of God's justice in your anger. That is easy to say and so hard to do. Setting aside our pride is perhaps the hardest thing that any of us is ever called to do.
The second answer is to always express love before anger. God reaches out first with the redemptive hand and then only when rejected does His anger come forth. And here again, humility remains a key. It is quite possible to express inordinate self-righteousness while reaching out "a redemptive hand." Such is self defeating.
But when love, offered in true humility has been offered and rejected, and the unGodly behavior continues - then indeed anger is a just an appropriate response. But even then that anger must not be given full reign - it must remain tempered by the desire for redemption and an avoidance of condemnation.
If all these condition are met, there remain strategic questions. How best to express the anger - and when? There are questions of building allies - for only Christ could trust His righteousness enough to act on anger alone. I personally seek to use such questions in a way that removes the violence from the anger. I think that even when He did turn over the tables, Christ used violence demonstratively, not expressively. It was an attention gathering device, not and expression of His desire to cause harm.
These are incomplete answers to Todd's inquiry. Dealing with anger is a work in progress for me, but it is what I have learned so far.
Technorati Tags:anger, righteousness, love, redemption
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