On Christian Anger (Not the Angry Christian)

Then the LORD sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man…” (2 Samuel 12:1-7).

Allow me to confess a secret. When I’m tired, I enjoy reruns of King of the Hill. One of my favorite episodes is when Nancy Gribble, who has been having a thirteen year affair with John Redcorn, her American Indian ‘therapist,’ discovers love again with Dale, her credulous, long-cuckolded husband. After an evening of dinner, dancing, and wine, Dale and Nancy make love for the first time in awhile, but afterwards Nancy is plagued with feelings of guilt and betrayal for cheating on John Redcorn! Nancy struggles to come to terms with her renewed feelings for Dale and the end of her relationship with John. Nancy’s inverted feelings of guilt and betrayal is what is fascinating (and humorous) about this story: having sex with her own husband and abandoning her longtime paramour causes Nancy far more emotional trauma than the previous 4 seasons when she cheated on Dale with the rapacity of a wild goat.

The producers of King of the Hill hit upon a truth in this episode, which is that our passions (pathos) can mislead us if not checked by reason (logos) and a system of beliefs that shape our character (ethos). Such a lack of balance can be comedy with Nancy, but it can also be tragedy with Othello.

Nevertheless, our feelings are an important and often pleasurable part of ourselves, and we live in a culture where the suggestion of ‘denying our feelings’ is the only heresy. When it comes to our feelings, Christians should not be rationalists who hold our emotions in disdain, nor should we be sentimentalists who give (as many do) their feelings complete sovereignty. Instead, our feelings should be one of our tools to serve us in our mission as Christians. But how do we do this? Our opening reading from the Old Testament indicates one possibility.

The story of David, the king, Bathsheba, the wife Uriah, and Nathan the prophet, is the story of human feelings: erotic desire, envy, anxiety, treachery, and anger. Not all of these desires are viewed as bad in our contemporary society: indeed, our society and its obsession with ‘nondiscrimination’ (often to the point of discrimination) has made it ‘politically incorrect’ to scruple over any spoiled form of eroticism. When it comes to the emotion of ‘envy,’ which the Old Testament and the Ten Commandants expressly forbid, and which Aristotle called the most shameful feeling a human could ever have, our democratic institutions seem to encourage this form of personal resentment.

However, in this instance, David’s emotion of anger proves to be the most productive. On the one hand, there is a warning for us: beware of the measure of justice you pronounce on others. But on the other hand, the story Nathan tells, of the man with many lambs who steals a lamb from the poor man, awakens David from his moral stupor and unleashes his righteous fury, and through his anger David comes to the truth about himself. David realizes what he has done, what it will cost, and the price he will have to pay. And yet, this is the beginning of David’s repentance and his return to God’s favor, and David’s return to the truth began with his feelings of anger and indignation. But in our modern society, David’s anger might be the only emotion in this story that would not be commended. Our attitudes towards anger can be seen in our popular culture, such as in the Star Wars movies where the good Jedis are never to use anger, even to achieve a good end, or in our approved history lessons such as when we learn of Gandhi’s pacifism in the face of Nazi horror. In any case, the lesson is usually ineluctably clear:

(1) anger is always wrong, (2) it never leads to anything positive, and (3) there are no conditions where anger is excusable in any human being.

As with all human expressions of passion, our emotion of anger often sublimates itself in wrong and insalubrious ways. From the autumn outbursts of rage in our major cities such as New York City and Oakland, to the recent school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio, the results of unmanaged feelings have boiled over into a destructive rage that has created new difficulties and tensions for our society. Furthermore, few of us want to be around an angry Christian, an angry coworker, an angry voter, an angry student, or an angry relative: in other words, we try to avoid the company of people who live in a constant state of anger. We also worry for a spouse, a family member, a friend or loved one, or a fellow Christian who is too often given to feelings of anger. This concern, at times, is justified if the person who feels anger has a medical or psychological problem, or if his or her feelings can lead to more intense and vengeful states such as rage or wrath. Also, we must recognize that the passion of anger can be an outward sign of an inward sin such as pride, envy, resentment, or selfishness. Much has been written on this topic. But for Christians, can anger ever be a natural, and even a needed reaction, to the conditions we find in our world? When we are confronted with the sufferings and injustices of our friends and families, when we are severely overburdened in times of social or economic stress, or when we see or experience harsh pain or grief, is some form of anger appropriate? More than this, can anger even be useful and beneficial for a Christian? When first considering these questions, I searched some of the books and online writings that dealt with the topic of Christian anger. There were some fleeting references to ‘righteous anger,’ which is a reaction to external conditions in our world meant only for God and a few saintly people. Otherwise, anger is off limits for Christians. In a sense, the whole question of anger has been reduced to a dualism between righteous anger and the other sort of anger which is usually described as sinful and personal. One illustration of the modern fashion of Christian thought is Robert Jones’s book Uprooting Anger:

Anger is a universal problem, prevalent in every culture, experienced by every generation. No one is isolated from its presence or immune from its poison. It permeates each person and spoils our most intimate relationships. Anger is a given part of our fallen human fabric…Sadly this is true even in our Christian homes and churches (Jones 13).

Jones’s choice to describe anger in medical and pathogenic terms is typical: Jones could have treated the emotion of anger as a natural feeling that can be corrupted and turned into a destructive agent, but that is not what Jones does here. No, anger itself is a disease—a ‘poison’ as Jones calls it, and he implies that the emotion itself is a sin by calling it a ‘part of our fallen human fabric.’ As I said, Jones’ assessment is only a sample of the general tone on the topic of anger. Part of its success after the 1960s in redrawing our westernized lexicon was that the New Left has taught us to speak (and therefore, to think) about issues such as poverty, war, crime, and sexual violence as forms of cultural diseases rather than the effects of human choices or historical causes. Christian critics have not been immune from the new vernacular, and, as Jones illustrates for us, it has altered our thinking. While I agree with much that has already been said within the Christian communion, I also believe that some ideas about anger have taken root within the church that are not Christian, but come as a result of the influence of other faiths and cultures, a misreading of the scriptures, Freudian psychoanalytical and New Leftist theories, and social factors within the Church. What we have here, then, is a view that is not Christian itself, but is part of the trend towards private pietism that has been a trend in the Christian community since the early 20th century. Jones’s view that anger itself, rather than how we handle it, is a sin (and a shameful one at that) is not supported by the Holy Scriptures, though some interpretations of them may seem to support this view. For example, Saint James tells us that

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you (James 1:19-20, NIV).

In this passage, James paraphrases some of what the Psalms and Proverbs say about the passion of anger. It is easy to read over the verbal qualifiers here (‘slow to become angry’, ‘man’s anger’) and conclude that James is condemning all forms of anger. However, this is not true. First of all, while God is ‘slow to anger’ (Psalm 145:8), no one can deny that anger is an emotion that God reveals to us through the Scriptures. For example, Elijah tells Ahab that the king had ‘provoked’ God ‘to anger’ by leading Israel as a nation into terrible sin (1 Kings 21:20-22). One of the most amazing illustrations of God’s anger in the Old Testament is after God instructs Balaam to speak ‘only the world which I speak to you,’ Balaam then goes to the princes of Moab intending to say something else.

Then God’s anger was aroused because he went, and the Angel of the LORD took His stand in the way as an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him. Now the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand, and the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field…(Numbers 22:20-23).

God sending his holy messenger with a drawn sword to block Balaam can hardly be mistaken for an act of pious civil disobedience, but is an illustration of the measure of God’s extreme displeasure with Balaam’s choice to side with the princes of Moab rather than to obey Him and help God’s chosen people. Like a good earthly father who is rearing his so-far-uncomprehending toddler, God dramatically illustrates for us--as he does for Balaam--his pleasure and his outrage in our behavior so that we might know what is Holy and what is the right thing to do. When Jesus comes to the temple in Jerusalem, anyone expecting the Son of God to have a more moderating personally is going to be disappointed. On His arrival,

Jesus…began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple,

and Jesus accuses the temple elders of making this

‘house of prayer…a den of thieves (Mark 11:15-19).

Jesus increases his institutional unpopularity by overturning the tables of the money changers and drives their sheep and oxen out of the temple, using ‘a whip of chords’ according to Saint John (John 2:13-16). We must remember here that not only had the temple become a market as well as a symbol for a religious conformity that was devoid of any inward relationship with God, but that the temple itself had also become a record of debts and outstanding balances for the Jews of Jerusalem: it had become a place of financial imprisonment rather than a place of spiritual liberation. As N.T. Wright reminds us in Simply Jesus, the temple of God, which was supposed to be the one point of confluence between heaven and earth, had become a corrupt abyss of any holiness. And then along comes Jesus, who is to become the living temple for Jews and Gentiles, and far from being the pensive, stained glass Messiah that the western world has come to tolerate, Jesus becomes the human manifestation of the divine anger of God when He is confronted with how His temple is being misused. But the anger of Jesus also seems to stem from a divine vision that is so far beyond our sinful one: a vision of His creation as it was intended, without sin, which, when contrasted to the world human beings have corrupted, sparks a passion of divine anger. Though our God is ‘slow to anger’ and constantly restrains his powers, clearly His passion for creation and his compassion for His people move him in ways beyond a pliant state of quiet optimism. But as we move from infallible God and return to ourselves, what does this mean for our own anger? When we look across our cultural landscape and see our modern day temples—a world in trouble, institutions that have come to personify the very social evils they were designed to confront, etc.—what should our response be? When author Jerry Bridges discusses the issue of anger, in his book Respectable Sins, he argues that

[in] facing up to our anger, we need to realize that no one else causes us to be angry…the cause lies deep within us” (Bridges 122).

Of course, Bridges is sometimes right about anger. But in the case of Jesus, did the cause of his anger come within Him? When Christians are confronted with similar situations, does the cause of their anger always lie within them? This sounds like the dualism we discussed earlier, and I think it oversimplifies the issue. Perhaps another question should be asked. As we become more like Christ through worship and imitation, and as we come into closer communion with God by sharing His vision and writing his commandments in our hearts, can human beings begin to develop divine attributes? Our stories of sainthood are replete with examples of human beings who—whether from their kindness to their enemies, or their compassion for others, or from living lives that are joyously free from sinful desires—seem to belong to another kingdom altogether than the world they share with us. As Christians, we are called to adhere to a higher vision than that of the world around us. However, do those Christians who are further along ‘the way’ have a perspective on the world that is different than the rest of us? Do they share a perspective that is more inline with the vision of God than human beings? This question can only be explored here. I am not sure this question could be answered in a longer work, or even on this side of our sunset. However, the uniqueness of our human perspective is explored by John Poulakos in his rhetorical discussion in his essay “Towards a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric” (1983) where he attempts to recreate the nearly vanished philosophy of the Sophists. Poulakos argues that one of the rhetorical teachings of the Sophists was that after a speaker “captures the appropriate and places it temporally,” then he naturally “moves toward the suggestion of the possible.”

The starting point for the articulation of the possible is the ontological assumption that the main driving forces in man’s life are his desires, especially the desire to be other and to be elsewhere...Consideration of the possible affirms in man the desire to be at another place or at another time and takes him away from the world of actuality and transports him in that of potentiality (42-44).

Poulakos argues that each human individual is naturally drawn to desire ‘the possible.,’ and he draws on the work of French philosopher Georges Poulet, who argued in his book The Interior Distance (1959) that human beings find themselves

[in] Two realities which simultaneously exist at a distance and which reciprocally deny each other:

and these are

the reality in which one lives and that in which one does not live, the place in which one has situated one’s dream and the place where with horror one sees oneself surrendered to chance and ill luck (239).

If Poulakos and Poulet are correct, then we can conclude that God constructed us as creatures of the possible, and this is what makes us distinct from all of creation. Of course, like all of our other human attributes, it is easily corrupted--mistaking sex, money, trills, fun, relationships, or personal success as the potentiality that will complete us rather than a relationship with God. However, when God begins to allow us to see the possibilities for our world as He in his divine wisdom sees them, then what would happen if we were constantly forced to contrast God’s perfect and benevolent vision for creation and for all of His creatures with the ‘moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent’ in our present surroundings? Could we simultaneously gaze at two such conflicting visions without feelings of sadness or even anger? While God wants us to learn, as Moses had to, to control our anger so that it can be used for His purpose, I wonder if God has much use for Christians who can watch human beings destroy themselves, misuse His creation, violate His will, and remain ‘blithe and bonny.’ I believe the pathogenic approach to anger, while having some case-by-case therapeutic uses in some circumstances, has been deleterious to the Church universally and to Christian faith: not only does it create an impossible standard for faithful people who live and minister in our broken world, but this attitude has made the Church an impotent force in a world that is full of pain, sin, and suffering. Earlier I criticized much of modern Christian thought on anger for its tendency to divide all types of anger into two broad categories. As we saw with David’s anger that leads to a new awareness of his sin and renews his covenant with God, such a dualistic scheme will not work. But can our anger at times not only strengthen our relationship with Christ, but also give us greater resolve to bring God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”? I believe it can, and I pray to God that it will.