Anger: A Question of Right and Wrong? (Part I)

After 28 years of living with this heart in this body, I am still astonished by my own anger. Standard-equipped with southern gentility and sweetness, I act like a girl who can’t get mad. I've always felt affirmed when people say, “I just can’t imagine you getting angry!” Actually, I don’t just feel affirmed; that sounds too innocent. What I really feel is righteous. Self-righteous.

Unfortunately, my anger is of the depressive type—the type that is colder and more subtle and usually manifests itself as jealousy, sarcasm, whining, gossip, self-pity. Anger has always been a stealth sin for me. I saw bitterness and depression and cynicism—but these things didn’t even suggest anger to me. What I did see, over time, was that I was constantly perceiving myself to be sinned against and responding accordingly. I admitted to being “judgmental,” even, but not to being angry. But the demand for compensation was killing me (Job 5:2). Was the problem with other people? With my analysis? Or with my response?

Ed Welch contends that anger is the most common co-conspirator with depression. He offers the following advice:

Anger is frequently revealed by depression. The wisest way to approach this subject is to assume that you are angry. Anger is as basic to our condition as bipedal locomotion and opposable thumbs. If you are a person with a mind and emotions, you will find anger.

He suggests several questions to consider when searching for your anger. The most helpful one for me is “What do I think I deserve that I haven’t received?” Be it a talent, a spouse or child, a job, or reciprocity in a relationship—there is typically some lurking thing that I believe has been withheld from me. And someone always has to pay. We can only respond to being wronged with anger or mercy, and it's usually clear which one we have chosen. It sounds like, at the very least, I have a response problem.

The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Anger is a work of the flesh (Gal 5:20) and a characteristic of fools in proverbs. At its core, it is a judgment about right and wrong—and judgment is a tricky thing. There are times when anger is objectively the right emotion to experience; we should feel angry in the face of real injustice. What we must learn to distrust, though, is our assessments about justice and injustice. It is the nature of anger to believe that the judgments it makes are right. Welch writes:

Look at yourself earlier, longer, and harder than you do other people. This is hard at any time, but anger makes it even more difficult because there really may have been an injustice. With anger, finger-pointing is natural. We are absolutely persuaded that what happened was wrong and we are right. But think about the nature of anger. Anger always thinks it is right, but it is almost always wrong.

It's probably also fair to assume, then, that I have an assessment problem in addition to the response one. So, while anger is typically about a question of right or wrong, its judgments and responses must themselves be challenged by biblical standards.