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When Anger is Right and Needful

 

This post is a portion from an “Ask Pastor John” podcast where John Piper speaks to the issue of righteous, godly anger. In a previous blog that you can read here, I tried to think through the dangers of anger and how to manage it. To bring in more balance, this list from Piper is exceptionally insightful about the place that godly anger should have in our lives. We are to be reflectors of God and some of that must be the anger that God has toward sin. Denying this or keeping this from view does not allow the world to see and appreciate the totality of God’s holy nature concerning all the issues of life in this broken world. You can read or listen to the whole podcast here, but below are the key questions that Piper puts forward.

1. Might this appropriate anger not show people how to be angry who have only had hurtful experiences of anger? It may be that our friends have never seen well managed anger — anger that is real, well grounded, yet not out of control and, therefore, not about to hurt somebody. This may be a great gift to them and a great revelation to them. If the only anger they know is the explosive beat-your-wife-up anger, your demonstration of another kind could be a sweet gift.

2. Might our anger show that good and controlled and righteous anger can rise from a concern for others and not just be owing to our own private lives being frustrated? Most people feel anger when their personal plans are messed up by other people, and showing a measured anger over someone else being hurt, not me, may model for them something true that they have never seen before.

3. Might your anger possibly show that there is an anger that goes hand in hand with love for those who we are angry at? My guess is that most people have never seen this or experienced it, anger at someone combined with love for someone — that is, combined with the desire that they not be ruined. In other words, yes, brought to justice, but then find mercy from God and become our brother or our sister and spend eternity with us.

4. Might our anger reveal the truth that righteous anger can coexist with sorrow and a broken heart? I am thinking now of sorrow over the victims or even the perpetrators. This is not exactly the same as saying that love can coexist with anger. My point here is to show the unusual emotional experience of anger and pity coexisting. I think most people experience or see anger that consumes almost all other good emotions. It just devours them like a monster so that the only thing that happens in the home is anger. You don’t get anger coexisting with tenderhearted pity. That is just unheard of. But could we model that? Can we reveal that greater truth?

5. Might our anger reveal the amazing truth that anger does not have to dominate or control the whole of life? I think most people experience anger in such a way that infects almost everything they do. It sweeps through their day and affects all of their relationships negatively. Could we reveal something different and show that there is a way to experience anger in a focused, limited way so that other parts of our lives aren’t overflowing with anger? For instance, when we get home, can we play with our kids? Can we really play with our kids in a carefree abandon with joy so that we don’t take anything away from what they need, even though we have just seen something we hate on the news?

6. Might not our expression of anger over an injustice — let’s just say abortion in this case — might not our expression of anger over abortion point to the goodness and the justice of God, whose prerogatives in the womb are being assaulted so that the anger doesn’t flow just from people being hurt, but from God being dishonored? My guess is that most people have never seen anything like that. They don’t have any categories for that kind of anger. In other words, our anger may bear witness to the character of God who has created these little ones in his image and is knitting them together in the mother’s womb and when the lacerations and the chopping begins from the abortionist, it is not just the babies that are being shredded, but God is being assaulted as his knitting needles are pitched aside and his hands are being thrust back from what he has been doing there.

7. Might not our anger over an injustice possibly expose the indifference of our friends who feel nothing? This might make them defensive. It might make them angry, yes. But it also may have a convicting effect when they realize, “You really care,” while they are all wrapped up in their video games. And God might be pleased to hear them say, “I think my life is pretty superficial. I don’t really care about what is going on in the abortion clinics.”

8. Finally, if we really have the mind of Christ in our anger, might not our anger be a witness to the fact that the justice and compassion that Christians feel is not just limited to abortion? We should express anger — appropriate, well grounded, limited, controlled, real anger — not just over the horror of abortion, but for the poor in countries where corruption in leaders lines the pockets of the rich, but leaves the poor with no powers of productivity or angry at police corruption when you see a man shot in the back by police when he is running away or a woman tasered to death while handcuffed and shackled in prison or any number of injustices in the world. If we show a suitable and suitably expressed anger, maybe we will be bearing witness to the fullness of God’s concerns rather than show a narrow partisan kind of anger.

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