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

Anger can be right or wrong. When anger is levied because my personal rights have been violated, though, it is almost always if not always wrong. It is my way of saying that I don’t trust God to judge correctly or in my favor. Sometimes it reveals a heart that desires the fruit of anger—that desires to remain in bitterness, cynicism, and depression. You might think that no one in his right mind could crave these things. But I’ve even found myself desiring to quarrel lately. Desiring it! James 4 asks:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Why do I want to pick a fight? I want to pick a fight because I believe that my needs (really, my desires or what I think that I deserve) are not being met, and I want to tear down others who have what I want. I covet and cannot obtain. The last verse in the passage cuts to the core: you don’t have these things because you will spend them on your passions. Oh Lord, you know.

But this recent quarrelsomeness did not spontaneously materialize. It, instead, developed as an extension and expansion of a form of anger that I've been entertaining for some time now—namely, complaining. Ed Welch writes:

Grumbling or complaining fits within the larger category of anger because it is a judgment. The grumbler has declared something to be wrong, be it a person, the weather, or the expensive car repair…but grumbling is more about us than it is about other people or our circumstances.

I had never considered complaining as a form of anger until I read Welch’s argument. His words force me to take stock of what is truly happening when I complain, even if the things I say are true. What do those things say or suggest about God and his provision? Do they evidence a heart of faith or fear?

Ephesians 4 instructs us to put off the old self that has been corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in our minds, and to put on the new self. I think that part of what we put away here are things like complaining, sarcasm, and gossip. Verse 25 says, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” These things may not always be falsehood, but they are certainly types of speech that deny that we are members one of another. A couple of verses later, Paul exhorts the Ephesians to “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Here we have the fuller guideline, which includes an exhortation to speak in a way that evidences and imparts grace.

You know, if I could practice this command for just a week--to speak only words that edify and give grace--I suspect that this anger would be largely quieted within me. By the power of God, who works in me both to will and to do his good pleasure, I will fight to obey in this area.