Never Angry

I'm not exactly sure where this is coming from, but there seems to be a large portion of Christianity that feels that Anger is a sin. (Like, black and white.... Adultery is a sin; anger is a sin.) I feel like it has to be connected to the idea that God is only love, and that the God of the OT is somehow different than the God of the NT.

For whatever reason, anger is viewed to be inescapably bad. All the time. Never discipline your children when you're angry. Never respond in anger. Never do anything when you're angry. Always, always, always let go of your anger before you do anything. Somehow, it is always bad for us to be angry. It is always shameful to experience anger. And it is especially wrong to express it. 

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That idea is so far removed from the picture we have of Who God is, I don't understand how Christians can believe that. When I express that concern - that we are trying to be something God is so not - their response is usually something along the lines of, "Yeah, but that's God; He's perfect." As if to say that because we can't be perfectly angry, therefore we should NEVER be angry.

I can't be perfectly righteous, either. Should I forget that whole idea? I can't be perfectly just or perfectly loving or perfectly anything. But we still try to bring out the good parts of those attributes and we fight against the wicked tendencies within us.

This comes up most (in my experience) when it comes down to how to raise your kids. Some of this I understand is straight-up fear of CPS (which I fight with a fair portion of the time). If someone hears that you spanked your kid while you were angry, they're automatically going to be thinking "beating" instead of discipline. That's the world we live in.

That doesn't justify doing things in a way that's not Biblical. There seems to be this idea that you cannot love someone/something and be angry with it at the same time. That's not true in the least. Getting angry at a friend who gets wasted every weekend isn't a lack of love; it's actually a sign of love. You want something better for them. You want them not to actively destroy themselves. That's not mean or bad or unkind. That's an outpouring of LOVE.

Getting angry with people isn't bad of itself. And most people can understand it on that level - but then you say "Getting angry with your kids isn't bad" and they get very nervous. When my parents got angry with me because I did stupid things, all it did was reinforce that they loved me. They were trying to protect me, and when you see something you care about endangered, the natural (proper) response is anger. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If they had never gotten angry with me, all that would have meant was that I wasn't worth enough to them for them to get angry about it.

Someone at our Bible Study wondered aloud the other night why there seemed to be so many more suicides today. I honestly think it's because anger is so repressed today. The people who would use it right are afraid to use it at all, which leaves the people who are too selfish to avoid using it, who are naturally going to misuse it. Anger is a extraordinary tool that too many people are ignoring or actively avoiding instead of trying to use it well. My dad had the easiest way to change my life when I was little. It didn't work for my mom (sorry, Mom), but all my dad had to do for me to NEVER, EVER do something again? Get angry with me. He didn't need to yell, threaten, discipline, spank - nothing. He just had to be upset with me and I was done. My world was wrong, and I couldn't stand it.

The things we want to protect are the things that, when threatened, will make us angry. We're supposed to get angry when someone hurts people we love. GOD gets angry when people hurt His kids. Why? Because He loves His kids! How angry He gets is directly related to how much He loves us. You cannot love something and never get angry when its mistreated. So when Joash is born, if Evelynn dares to hit him, she's going to feel some anger despite the fact that I love that little girl so fiercely.

Getting angry isn't wrong. Be angry and sin not (Eph. 4).

Getting angry because someone hurt my pride, because something didn't go my way, because of ME - that's when anger is just wrong. When my anger is about ME - because someone was an affront to ME, not to God, not to the people I love. When anger is selfish, then it's wrong. But anger is good. We can know that because God gets angry. Getting angry with your kids over sin isn't a bad thing; it shows them the seriousness of sin and it shows them how much God means to you. Getting angry because they're making your life harder, that's wrong.