Day Nine

Day Nine // March 6 // Losing It (Anger)

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” – Mark Twain –

The fetid rot of anger is nothing new. The Old Testament restricted the end of violence: “Thou shalt not kill;” and the New Testament restricted its beginning: “Thou shalt not get angry.” In the Sermon on the Mount, we hear Jesus’ admonition, “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Jesus knew that anger is a spiritual poison that wreaks great damage – and deceptively so.

In fact, it’s been said that of all human sins, anger is quite possibly the most enjoyable. “To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontation

to come; to savor the last toothsome morsel of both pain you are giving and the pain you are getting back, in many ways it is a feast for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton of the feast is you,” the theologian taught.

Does this mean that there is never a proper time to be angry? Scripture is clear. There is a time to be angry: but at the right thing, at the right time and for the right reason. It’s a righteous anger, then, that must compel us. The Apostle Paul writes: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). When the weak suffer at the hands of the strong, anger should swell. When children die for want of water and their parents die from lack of bread, we should fume. When evil gains yet another stronghold, we should mount up with righteous fury. For without anger, the moneychangers would still be in the Temple. Without anger, slavery would still exist, and women would be prohibited to vote. Not all anger is sinful, but some is. When we brood and hold onto slights, we create a climate that can destroy our souls. Mark Twain once said, “I never killed anyone, but I sometimes read the obituaries with great pleasure.”

We need a sense of honesty about our anger. Is our anger motivated for others? Is it the clarion call to right a wrong? Or is our anger more serving to us? Is it more about our concerns rather than God’s? One commentator wrote, “There are many who try to justify their anger as ‘righteous indignation.’ On closer

inspection, however, such righteous indignation turns out to be only hate with a halo. They hide malice under a zeal for orthodoxy. Their intention is not to correct an offense, but to punish an offender.”

We cannot understand the looming events of Holy Week without sensing the seething anger of the powerful, ruling elite against Jesus. If Jesus was right, then they were wrong. The chief priest Caiaphas said, “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50). The brooding anger that had been building for years would end up fashioning the nails that would hold Jesus to the cross… and the rot of anger still threatens to hold us bound, as well.