The Sin of Anger and the Virtue of Righteous Indignation

As recent events have shown, American society is full of anger.  Election seasons have been full of angry rants, diatribes, and protests.  Anger over racial injustice and election results have led to angry, violent protests.  Many Americans on either side of the “culture wars” display extreme rage over the fact that anyone disagrees with them about various cultural issues.  American Christians are no exception to this.  Many American Christians publicly display strong anger at cultural movements or changes in laws that they disagree with.  Is such anger justified, or is it sinful?

The Sin of Anger

Anger is a natural human emotion, a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.  When we encounter something (or someone) we really dislike, anger spurs us to act to get rid of the thing we dislike.  Anger is one of the most powerful emotions human beings experience.  In our Fallen state, we often get angry at the wrong things, become disproportionately angry, and even completely lose control of our actions when anger takes over.  More often than not, our anger is disordered and sinful.  The Christian tradition has for this reason counted anger as one of the seven deadly sins.

Old Testament wisdom literature warns against excessive anger: “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered” (Prov 22:24).  “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools” (Eccles 7:9).  In the New Testament, the apostle Paul multiple times lists anger as a quality that Christians should rid themselves of (Eph 4:31, Col 3:8, 1 Tim 2:8).  Why?  Because, as James writes, “human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:20).  Anger pushes us to act irrationally, lash out, and even harm others.  For this reason, the apostle Paul teaches that love means being “not easily angered” (1 Cor 13:5).  

The strongest Scriptural prohibition of anger is Jesus’s teaching, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’  But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matt 5:21-22).  Here Jesus seems to equate simply being angry with someone as tantamount to murder.  Most likely, it is this teaching of Jesus that led the Christian tradition to rank anger as one of the seven deadly sins.  

Yet, Scripture does not completely rule out getting angry.  “In your anger do not sin,” writes the apostle Paul, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Eph 4:26-27).  Paul seems to recognize that it is inevitable that we will sometimes get angry, and that it is possible to be angry without sinning.  However, he sees being angry as a dangerous state that may give the Devil an opportunity to pull us into sin, and so urges us to make sure that, if we do get angry, we do not stay that way for long.  

Similar to how, in our Fallen state, being rich is spiritually dangerous, being angry is spiritually dangerous.  While not sinful in and of itself, being angry usually leads to sin, and so should be avoided as much as possible.  Thus, we should probably interpret Jesus’s teaching about anger as referring not to all anger, but as referring only to strong anger that causes us to desire to harm someone (“I was so angry I could have killed him!”).  

The Wrath of God and Righteous Indignation

There are literally hundreds of references to the wrath or anger of God in Scripture.  Clearly, Scripture teaches that God is a God of wrath, and this is true just as much in the New Testament as in the Old Testament.  Furthermore, Jesus Himself got angry on multiple occasions (Mark 3:5; Matt 21:12, 23:13-26; Luke 11:39-52; John 2:15).  If Christians are supposed to “participate in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and to be conformed to the image of Christ, does not this suggest that it is actually a good thing for us to get angry?

Several considerations should caution us against reaching such a conclusion.  First, though Scripture does frequently describe God being angry, it also repeatedly makes it clear that God is “slow to anger” (Exod 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3).^[1]The Hebrew expression for this is literally “long of nose.”  In Hebrew, anger is associated with the nose becoming red, and so being “long of nose” indicates that someone has a “long … Continue reading  God is patient and not easily angered, and Christians should be the same.  Second, God is omniscient and perfectly wise, so His anger is always justified.  In contrast, we often lack a perfect understanding of the situation we are in, and our anger is often based in selfish motives, even if only at a subconscious level.  Thus, our anger is often unjustified.  Third, God does not have emotions like we do.  He does not lose His temper and then lose control of His actions; He always acts in a righteous and just manner, even when He acts in anger.  In contrast, our emotions often make us lose control of our actions, and so anger can easily lead us to sin even in situations where our anger is justified.

Nevertheless, the fact that Jesus sometimes got angry does indicate that there is a place for righteous indignation within Christian ethics.  It is very significant, however, that not once did Jesus ever express anger at the evil, pagan Romans who were brutally oppressing God’s covenant people.  All of the recorded instances of Jesus’s anger were directed at the corrupt and hypocritical religious leaders of God’s covenant people.  

Following Jesus’s example, Christians should not become angry at the great evils they see perpetrated by non-Christians in American culture and government.  We cannot expect non-Christians to live like Christians; they do not know any better, and even if they did, they are incapable of living righteously, since, apart from Christ, they are still enslaved to sin.  If Christians are going to become angry, they should direct their anger at corrupt and hypocritical Christians within the Church.  Such anger must not lead us to hate, despise, or harm these Christians; rather, it must lead us to passionately work to reform the Church, so that God’s people can more effectively carry out the task of proclaiming the Gospel and advancing God’s Kingdom.

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