This deadly cancer of anger from which so much harm grows: It makes us unlike ourselves, makes us like timber wolves or furies from Hell, drives us forth headlong upon the points of swords, makes us blindly run forth after other men's destruction as we hasten toward our own ruin.
~ Sir Thomas More
Ephesians 4
26"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27and do not give the devil a foothold.
There is not a one of us who doesn't get angry now and then. There are some persons more readily prone to anger than others but each of us can be angry under the right conditions or without the right self-control.
When Sir Thomas More cautions against that anger "from which so much harm grows", he's speaking of anger which is unchecked, destructive, and truly sinful. This is the anger to which Paul refers when he writes of not sinning in the midst of your anger. The New Testament as a whole tends to speak of two types of anger: that which boils up and quickly subsides and that which rages with antagonism toward the recipient of the anger. Obviously, it is anger which rages on and on and which feels nothing but hostility toward another person that is sinful anger. This kind of anger requires both our repentance and our honest seeking of God's help.
As I see it, there are four things we can do when we're seeking to handle our times of anger.
- Admit it. No need to pretend you didn't get angry; someone has probably noticed it. Admit it to the person or persons with whom you got angry if that will help the situation. At the very least, admit it to yourself and seek to move on.
- Apologize for it. An apology is always a healing tool. The words, "I'm sorry", are two of the most important words any of us can speak.
- Learn from it. We can learn something about ourselves and about how we handle certain circumstances.
- Seek God's help to discern if it was inappropriate anger or not.
Now there is, as you know, a kind of anger which is called "righteous indignation." Jesus exemplified this kind of anger as he dealt with the callousness of the Pharisees. Basically, this is anger at injustice, anger at great evil, anger at what is absolutely unacceptable. It is anger which convicts us and causes us to take action toward injustice and evil. It is anger which compels us to try and make things right in this world. You get the message, I think! There are those things about which faithful followers of Christ should be angry! However, if our anger doesn't lead us toward conviction and action, it is simply an emotional reaction to a world which we know to be imperfect.
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