Righteous Anger

Most of us have been taught that we should not get angry, and many of us get good at pretending we do not feel it. Anger can be a sin, but it is not always wrong. Mark tells us that Jesus got angry when he saw the hardness of heart of the Pharisees (Mark 3:5). His was righteous anger. It prompted him to heal a man with a withered arm.

Righteous anger is an appropriate response if when evil has done harm or someone is being unfairly attacked, because it invigorates us to respond at a time when we could be overwhelmed. Righteous anger inspired the prophets to speak boldly for God when the truth was being ignored by his people.

Unfortunately, righteous anger is a gift that can easily be misused. If a follower of Jesus has not been taught how to channel righteous anger with grace, they can easily slip into hard anger and speak harshly. This response will aggravate a precarious situation.

Unrighteous anger and malice grieve the Holy Spirit. We must be careful to avoid them when dealing with people who are different from us. The fruit of the spirit include patience, gentleness and kindness (Gal 5:22). They will flow if we are full of the Holy Spirit.

If Christians have not learnt how to speak with grace and truth when righteous anger stirs, they will tend to suppress it, but pretending we are not angry is not the same as having a spirit of grace and peace. The problem is that this bottled-up anger will eventually explode at a time when they do not expect it. They will tend to overact to a trivial event with an angry or harsh response.

Letting their anger explode does not help because it makes it seem like a person who cares intensely is the one with a problem. Uncontrolled anger does harm, because it lets the person who is doing evil off the hook. In contrast, righteous anger exercised with grace supports the truth.