Anger

James 1:19-20 NIV

 My dear brothers, take note of this: 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.

Do You Ever Get “Too” Angry?

A few years ago I was driving and someone without warning cut in front of me and nearly hit my car, and flew ahead of me, switched lanes again and then had to screech to a stop when the signal light turned red.  I was steamed.  I think I would have been sickly happy if the guy’s tires had blown out and he had flipped his car a thousand times because he would have “deserved it.”  At least that is how my anger perceived things at that moment.  Ironically, the two of us ended up side by side at the stop light and I had my opportunity to flash the guy my great wrath.  I turned my head as I pulled beside the guy and stared disdainfully at him, hoping he would look back and catch my ire.  Oh boy, he sure did.  The other driver turned to me and we locked eyes and he felt the fullness of my rage.  Then he did something that caught me off-guard.  He gave me the one fingered hand-signal of contempt and made motions that he was ready to fight me on the side of the road.  I was not ready for that.  I sized him up and felt pretty confident that I could handle myself ok with him but was I really going to let my anger take me that far?

Is anger helpful to us?  Does it make us better people, more capable of getting our work done, better able to parent our kids, give us what we need to be good husbands and wives?  Has anger saved marriages or enhanced friendships?  Should we be grateful for our anger and proud of the times we lost our tempers?  We all have known people who had “bad” tempers and most of these people we try to avoid but some we can’t because they are a part of our families or authorities at work or school.  Perhaps there is a “Tempers Anonymous” somewhere that has already been organized for those who get mad easily.   Maybe we know someone who should register with the group.  Should we be concerned about anger and those times when we lose our temper?  How should we evaluate our own anger?

Anger is one of the rawest of all emotions and is mentioned often in the Bible.  I remember how surprised I was to discover that God Himself gets angry.  Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses… (Exodus 4: 14 NIV)  The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:7 NIV)  Even Jesus, “meek and mild” flashed a temper.  He (Jesus) looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. (Mark 3:5 NIV)  Anger is a part of our divine nature, not something to be thought of as a curse but rather one of the ways we see God in us.  Yet anger, like every other part of the human personality has been warped by sin and we have lost its holiness. 

We see the very first flash of human anger described in the ancient book of Genesis.  The third person of recorded history, Cain became angry when his brother Abel was honored by God for the quality of his offering.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. (Genesis 4:3-5 NIV)  This anger of Cain’s is important to study because it provides a glimpse into the immediate effect of sin upon one part of our divine nature.  Most of us have learned to control our anger because we have grown accustomed to the sin damaged personalities we possess.  We are sophisticated in our approach to our lusts and rebellion.  Cain was not.  He was a novice to the damage his own sin was doing to his personality.  Like a baby just learning to walk, Cain had not adjusted to being a sinful person and when faced with for perhaps the first time God’s unwillingness to accept his bad behavior, something many of us would just slough off and perhaps ignore, Cain became unglued.   Anger, which God built in Cain for his protection against sin and temptation, became his undoing when it teamed up with sin.

God warned Cain about his warped anger.  Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV)  This is a most interesting set of statements God makes to Cain and it gives us much to consider when it comes to anger.  First, the anger at its pioneer stage as a union with sin was linked to something specific.  Cain was angry that his offering to God was not accepted.  Abel and what Abel did was not the reason Cain was mad.  Cain was angry because his sacrifice was insufficient.  We almost never consider this when it comes to our own anger.  Nearly always we decide that we are angry because someone else did something or thinks something or won’t do something.  We are wrong here though.  Our anger starts with us and what we have done, what we have thought or with what we have not done. 

Now, those of us familiar with what happened next understand God’s warning about sin crouching at his door.  At this point Cain had sin merely at his door; it had not come inside his house.  His anger was not the sin but it was the warning bell of sin. We all, including Cain, can be angry and not sin.  The Apostle Paul, who was an expert on anger, knew that was so.  "In your anger do not sin":  (Ephesians 4:26 NIV) But Paul was quoting a slightly longer statement found in an older book than his, the Psalms.  In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. (Psalm 4:4 NIV)  Anger is the alarm that something is not right with us and if the alarm is to do us any good, we must get away and silently figure out what sin is crouching at our door.  For Cain, it was murder.  He was about to murder his brother Abel.  For me, it could be greed or selfishness or rebellion.  For you it could be lust or idolatry.  For someone else it might be stubborn pride or a lack of gratitude.  We all have our sins that come crouching at our door.  We should never be surprised by them.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our anger but for the wrong reasons.  Cain clearly wasn’t but we have been humbled by anger.  When it is public and we yell at someone or snarl or pound our fist in anger, we can be humiliated by our anger.  Our mistake is that we think it is the anger that is embarrassing when it isn’t.  It is the sin that we have let get too close to us that should make us red in the face.  Although it may not be clear to the waiter or our husband or the kid who ran into our car, it is to God and it should be to us.  Anger has sounded the alarm.  We have sin at our door.  We have either done something that has corrupted us or we are about to do something that will soon corrupt us.  We must never think that the other person has angered us or the trying circumstance has angered us.  It is the sin within us that has stimulated our anger and we must be silent and consider what sin it is that we have.

I had a friend who had a huge problem with anger and he used to get mad at me quite often.  I could always tell when his anger was starting to rise because his neck and cheeks would become red and although he might be smiling, I knew he was furious about something.  I had a warning sign that this man was angry.  Well, we have a warning sign about sin.  It is our anger.  When we become angry, we must, if we are to live closely with Christ and have His power guiding us rather than our sin, get off to ourselves and consider what sin has been exposed by our anger.  Then with the cruelty and compassion of a surgeon, cut it out.  Confess it and cut it out.  We should never take too seriously someone else’s anger but always with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice take seriously our own.  We never know how far the sin our anger uncovers will take us.  For Cain it was the destruction of his family line for they never recovered from his sin.  We though can chart a different course.  We can be holy.  And, if Jesus is being forthright with us (see Luke 19:17), we could be kings.