Being Angry Is Okay
by Dr. David Rogne
a sermon based on James 1:17- 27

The passengers in the back seat of Steve Dalton’s car were aware that he had been driving for a long time and that he was becoming irritable as he drove through the night.  They heard him flicking the switch on his high beams to signal approaching cars to lower their headlights.  As an oncoming car approached, he signaled to the driver to lower his beams.  Nothing happened.  The last thing the passengers remember is Steve Dalton screaming in anger, "I'll teach that guy to lower his lights."  Steve pulled into the oncoming lane and collided with a car coming toward him, killing himself and the occupants of the other car.  It's crazy, isn't it, to get so angry at such a modest oversight that one is willing to kill himself and others to express his anger?

Indeed, one psychologist has called anger a temporary insanity, because it puts a person temporarily out of control, and that is being crazy.  The problem is as old as the race.  In anger, Cain rose up and killed his brother, Abel.   In anger, Saul repeatedly sought to take the life of his son-in-law, David.  In anger, Haman, the Persian, sought to destroy the Jews in Persia in the days of Esther.  In anger, the people of Nazareth sought to throw Jesus over a cliff.

It is understandable, then, that the Bible should come face-to-face with this sometimes-destructive impulse and prescribe ways for us to deal with it such as we have heard in the Scripture reading this morning.  I think that there are some things we can learn about anger from the Bible and from the experiences of others, which can help us to respond more creatively to anger-producing situations.

The first thing we need to be aware of is that anger is natural.  The Bible doesn't require us never to be angry.  Paul says, "Be angry, but do not sin."  (Ephesians 4:26) Apparently, he felt it was possible to separate the feeling from the action.  Indeed, in the Bible there are 365 references to God being angry, yet we call God righteous.  Often, God's anger is closely related to God's love.  When that love is rejected by the hardness of human hearts, it is said that God becomes angry, but his anger is limited by his love.  Our capacity to become angry is something we share with the Creator.  Anger itself, then, is neither right nor wrong -- it is an emotion, and emotions are neither right nor wrong.  What is right or wrong is the behavior that flows from the emotion.

As long as we live in this world we will be subjected to things that make us angry.  Individuals, for example make us angry.  They allow their dogs to bark at night, and to relieve themselves in our yards.  Their children write with crayon of our sidewalk.  They drive too slowly, or too fast, signal improperly or not at all, change lanes recklessly and nose into the parking space we intended to take.  They don't take care of their yards, they call late at night and then discover that they have a wrong number.

Sometimes our anger is directed against God.  It doesn't start out that way.  It may start with the death of a loved one, the loss of a home by natural disaster, physical incapacity or unemployment.  Usually, the primary feelings are pain, sorrow and grief, but these can easily turned to anger when perceived as injustice or a lack of caring in the universe.  Anger seeks a target, and God becomes the target.  One scientist has called animals "irritable protoplasm" -- and it seems that humans have more sources of irritation than the rest of the animal kingdom.  It comes naturally to us to be angry, for we have the capacity for high expectations, and when those expectations are thwarted, it has the potential to anger us.

The second thing I want to say is that the problem with anger is not that we possess the capacity for it, but that we express it wrongly.  One of the destructive ways of expressing anger is rage.  Rage is a violent, explosive, outward manifestation of anger.  It is generally directed at others: it seeks to do wrong, to destroy people, to defend itself; it is a self-centered.  Instead of building bridges, it destroys them.

Ralph was driving home through heavy traffic.  Stop and go.  Stop and go.  "After everything that has gone wrong today, I don't deserve this," he thought irritably.  He got home a half-hour late, went through the minimal courtesies with his wife, stalked into the living room, picked up the paper and started to read.  When his wife called him to dinner he didn't respond.  When she touched the top of the paper and said, "Dinner is ready," Ralph jumped up, crumpled the newspaper, threw it on the floor, kicked it, and walked into the dining area yelling, "Get off my back."  Dinner was ruined, and so was the evening.

Another destructive way of expressing anger is resentment.  Christians are particularly vulnerable to this because many have the mistaken notion that our faith discourages the expression of strong feelings.  We are taught to be all things to all people, which is interpreted to mean "have no strong feelings," and "give in to whatever makes anyone else happy."  To be Christian is construed by some to mean being a doormat and thanking others for wiping their feet.  Even if we were to believe that, we wouldn't get away with it.  For we experience anger whenever our dignity is offended, and if that anger is unexpressed, it will produce problems inside of us.

Someone has suggested that suppressing anger is like stuffing tennis balls into a trunk.  At first they fit easily, but eventually the trunk gets full.  As we squeeze more tennis balls in, it gets harder to close the lid.  We pile them up and press hard on the lid  to keep it shut.  But every time we open the lid to stuff more in, a few spill out.  It takes more and more energy to keep the lid down, because the balls push back as though to force their way out.  In suppressing expression of our anger, we often have to turn off the expressions of joy and love as well, because these, too, are emotions, and they are in the same box of feelings with our anger.

Sally had been at home preparing dinner while Ralf was fighting the traffic.  She looked forward to his arrival, as she prepared something that he especially enjoyed, but it needed to be served at the peak of readiness.  As he became later, she had to put dinner back in the oven.  She remembered that he had been late last night too, but this time he had phoned only an hour before to say that he would be home on time.  By the time he arrived, she noticed that the salad had gone limp and the mashed potatoes were drying out.  When he came to the table angry, she wanted to tell him how sick she was of his being late and coming in complaining.  And she wanted to cry -- to grieve aloud over a ruined dinner.  But she didn't let herself do any of these things.  That night, trying to sleep, Sally pictured herself shoving a bowl of cold mashed potatoes into Ralph's face.  In the darkness, Ralph whispered, "I'm sorry," but Sally pretended she was asleep.  The next evening Ralph was home one time, but the mashed potatoes were cold.  Resentment smolders within.  If rage blows up bridges, resentment hides behind barriers.

The third thing I want to say is that there are more creative ways of dealing with our anger.  One of these is to let our anger take the form of indignation, which is a righteous anger over injustice.  Surely God wants us to be stirred to action.  Indignation is one of the energizing, activating emotions God has given us.  We are God's body on earth.  Our indignation is given to us to fire up our engines and to run our bodies for God's service.  Rage seeks to do wrong; resentment seeks to hide wrong; indignation seeks to correct wrong.  Rage and resentment seek to destroy people; indignation seeks to destroy evil.  Rage and resentment seek vengeance; indignation seeks justice.  Rage is guided by selfishness, resentment is guided by cowardice, indignation is guided by mercy.  Rage defends itself, resentment defends the status quo, indignation defends the other person.  Rage uses open warfare, resentment uses guerrilla tactics, indignation is an honest and fearless defender of truth.

Indignation is constructive.  There are some things that will never be changed for good until somebody gets angry and acts with control and wisdom.  English prisons were vermin-infested hellholes until John Howard got angry.  Slavery was a festering wound on the human family until people like William Lloyd Garrison came along.  He said, "I saw in the sorrowful face of a slave, the shadowed face of God" Garrison was angry to the core, but he expressed his anger is indignation as he said through clenched teeth, "I will not equivocate.  I will not excuse.  I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard."  We may think of Florence Nightingale as a lantern-carrying, white-robed angel of mercy, but the truth is that she was a white-hot, stubborn, high tempered woman who heard the clear call of God to do something about the military hospitals of her day, so she bullied and fought to get decent treatment for the sick and wounded.  Indignation is the Christian’s  proper response to evil in society.

If the offense we confront is more personal, there are still several things we can do to move our expressions of anger from rage of resentment to indignation.  In the Scripture that we read this morning, the apostle James says, "Be slow to anger."  What he is saying is that we can exercise control over the response we will make.  It may not develop all at once, but it can grow.  I have seen people walk away from an ugly scene.  They have measured the issues and said, "It isn't worth it to get angry about this."  They decided not to waste their time being angry over trivia.

Controlling our anger begins by deciding that we want to control it.  If we were throwing a temper tantrum and someone from CBS were to walk up with a camera to put us on film, we would probably shape up.  The idea of counting to ten, counting cars or trees or flowers on the wall paper helps us to lengthen the interval before we respond and shows us that we can keep control.  Such tactics don't resolve the situation, but they keep us from making it worse until we can decide more cooling how to respond.

Another thing that James suggests is that we be quick to listen.  It is possible that when we think we have been offended, we are really mistaken.  It is so easy in a mobile society to misunderstand one another.  One fine spring day a man was driving carefully along a country road.  Suddenly, from around the curve ahead, a car came lurching toward him in his lane.  He hit the brakes hard, and as the oncoming car swerved past him, the woman driver screamed at him, "Pig!  Pig!)  Furious, he shouted back at her, "Sow!  Sow!"  Pleased with his quick response, he drove around the curve and ran smack into a pig.  We need to be slow to anger and quick to listen.  Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian leader and teacher of nonviolence, had a motto on his wall which read: "When you are in the right, you can afford to keep your temper; When you are in the wrong, you can't afford to lose it."  It is better to listen carefully than to respond too soon.  Listening to others may help us to decide whether we are in the right or in the wrong.

A final thing James suggests is that we be slow to speak.  It is important to exercise control over the tongue, especially in the presence of anger.  In another place he reminds us how a small bit is used to guide a large horse.  He reminds us how a small rudder is used to steer a large ship.  He further suggests how small a fire it takes to set a whole forest aflame.  So it is with the tongue, he says.  Small as it is, when it is out of control because of anger, it can destroy, not only the possessor and his influence, but the lives of countless others as well.  (James: 3-5)  A man with his eyes swollen and his face bandaged, was asked by a friend what the trouble was.  "Oh nothing," he said, "except that a party last night, I was standing up and talking when I should have been sitting down listening."  He would have been better off if he had listened to the advice of James: "Be quick to listen and slow to speak."  James closes the portion of Scripture we read today with a solemn observation: "If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues and deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless."

What has been said thus far does not tell us everything we need to know about anger, but it is a beginning.  We have learned that anger is natural, that we can express our anger destructively or creatively, and that we have the capacity to choose our expression.  If we go away today aware only of that much, our religion will not be worthless.  We will have discovered what Paul said earlier: "Be angry, but do not sin."