Don’t Let Anger Rattle Around in Your Soul
James 1:19-21
February 13, 2005
One of the things that I regret about the way I reared my children is that I think I raised my voice too often. As I reflect back, I understand now that on those occasions when I had reached the limit of my patience with them, I wasn’t often creative enough or sensible enough or rational enough to find ways of discipline that didn’t involve a lot of yelling.
I remember one incident in particular. Matthew must have been about four years old. We were living at Goblesville about six miles north of Huntington. He and I were home alone together. He had done something to set me off. I can’t remember what it was. But I do remember that he was sitting on the couch in the living room and I was pacing back and forth in front of him, shouting like a mad man. I had completely lost it. He had come to my last nerve and ripped it to shreds.
I can still see him. He had on blue shorts and a stripped t-shirt. I can see him sitting there with sort of a confused look on his face because he couldn’t quite figure out what had gotten into me.
In the middle of my tirade, when I had stopped to take a breath, he looked up at me and said, “Dad, I love you.”
I was devastated. Those four words from my son stopped me in my tracks and made me face up to the fact that I had lost control. My anger had passed into very dangerous territory.
To tell you the end of the story, I sat down on the couch, took him up on my lap, told him I was sorry and that I loved him too. I still remember and regret that incident. I continue to be ashamed of my behavior that day.
What makes you angry? What sets you off? What makes your blood boil? What causes you to act crazy? What is it that triggers your ire? What makes you lose your head?
As I was writing this paragraph, somebody did something to really honk me off. I had to sit and stew for awhile until I figured out how to handle it. I needed to take the time to cool off a little because my first reaction was not going to be pretty.
Now I do believe that there is such a thing as righteous indignation. I do think that there are things that ought to make us angry. In fact, the thing that set me off was, in my opinion, a legitimate anger-producer. It involved the church not acting like the church.
As I read the gospel, Jesus came as the Anointed One to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). Any time the church is not respectful of one of the least of these, one of the outcast, one of the poor and oppressed as named in Matthew 25, I’m going to call you on it. I would expect the same thing from you if you caught me in unacceptable behavior.
You remember one occasion of the righteous anger of Jesus. It is told there in the second chapter of the gospel of John. He was in Jerusalem and, as was his custom, went up to the Temple. There he found the moneychangers. They were selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifice - at a handsome profit. Jesus was furious at this abuse of the house of God and so he made a whip of chords, over-turned their tables, and drove them from the premises. He brought his moral force, his moral power to bear on the situation. He wouldn’t stand for the exploitation of the Temple that he had witnessed. He had righteousness on his side.
My point here is that not all anger is wrong. Not all anger is sinful. Not all anger is misplaced. Paul wrote to the Ephesians and cautioned them to “be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26).
How do you become angry without sinning? It is not becoming angry because someone insulted you or wounded your pride. You become angry without sinning when your anger is directed against acts that violate the gospel, that go against the grain of Christian compassion, which affronts God, which hurts God’s people.
We should be angry at the story that broke several months ago, if it is found to be true, in which some houses in Fort Wayne have been vastly over-appraised and then sold to poor families at inflated prices. We should be angry at the greed of a few corporate executives who, in ravaging their companies for their own personal profit, sour the reputations of all of corporate America. We should be angry at civil servants who misuse our tax dollars in bloated defense budgets or swollen entitlement programs or costly bailouts…wherever waste and fraud can be found.
Among other things, we should be angry that in our nation, racism is still a problem. We should be angry because there are still hungry children in this incredibly rich and blessed nation. In each church that I have served, I have had many dedicated and loving public school teachers who go extra miles to provide their students with a superior education. We should be angry with those few who give the rest of the educational system a bad reputation. There are any number of things that call for our moral outrage and our righteous indignation.
But let’s be honest for a minute, can we? Maybe I’m speaking for myself here, but I have a feeling that most of our anger does not fall into the category of righteous indignation. I would venture to guess that in the vast majority of cases of our anger, it is the result of having our own self-interest violated in some way or another.
Most of our anger is aimed at piddling little things: like being cut off in traffic; like having your child spill milk on your new suit; like your wife not feeding the dog; like when your teenager backs over a mailbox in your car; like when your college-aged student wastes tuition money on miscellaneous and unnecessary stuff; like when the cat gets hair all over your black pants.
The New Testament letter of James is actually more of a sermon than a letter. In it, the author is intent on reminding Christians how they ought to live once they have claimed Jesus as Lord of their life. He writes this in 1:19-21.
You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
I like the way that this passage is rendered in “The Message.”
Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
James is being very blunt with his readers. He is speaking to people who are part of the church; people who believe in the divinity of Jesus; people who have given their lives to him; people who are claiming the name Christian; people who ought to know these things already.
These are people who have said that they believe that the Word of God has been implanted in their hearts. If that is so James says, then they will realize that anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Anger does not cultivate a proper environment in which the word of God can grow and mature. Anger blocks out the movement of God. Anger closes and hardens your heart so that, pretty soon, nothing else can take root. If you are spending so much time and energy on your anger, it is impossible to be attentive to the Word.
So what do we do about it? What do we do when we become angry? What happens when we lead with our anger instead of relegating it to the garbage dump?
Maxie Dunnam and his daughter Kimberly have offered some steps to take when we find that we are in danger of being overcome with anger (“The Workbook on the 7 Deadly Sins” 1997. Maxie Dunnam and Kimberly Dunnam Reisman. Nashville: Upper Room Books). They say that we need to quit hanging on to our anger. We need to quit keeping lists of the ways that we have been injured by others.
We will never be able to rise above our anger if we continue to dwell on it, continue to let it eat away at us; continue to catalogue the ways that we have been hurt. Carry a grudge for a while and you soon discover that it has become quite a heavy burden. When we rehearse and replay the injustices which have been done to us, we continue to live in the past. The grudge never heals if we keep picking at it.
Some years ago, I spent some time in a very difficult appointment. Not too long ago, I was talking to a friend about what had happened there. I was replaying the anger I felt at having been pretty badly mistreated. He said something very wise to me - advice which I still forget sometimes, but which I do my best to remember and believe. He said, “They have forgotten all about it. Why haven’t you? They are not being hurt by your anger, but your life is being controlled by it.”
We need to let go of our anger. If we don’t, it will surely trigger bitterness and resentment. The writer of the letter to the Ephesians say it like this: …do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26). If we can’t put our anger behind us or leave that heavy baggage in the past, we will always remain mired in it.
Finally, realize that forgiveness and anger cannot occupy the same space in our hearts. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: So when you are offering your gift at the alter, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
When Peter asked Jesus how many times he was obligated to forgive someone who had offended him, he was told: seventy times seven times (Matthew 18:22). Don’t we, as God’s people who have had our sins forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, have an obligation to imitate God’s forgiveness in our actions toward our brothers and sisters?
This has been the third sermon in the series on the seven deadly sins. If I were to ask you if you have any anger rattling around in your soul, what would you tell me? This week, I would invite you to examine your life and do your best to discern the anger places. Remember that if your anger is other than truly righteous, it is slowly destroying you, slowly eating away at your faith. It is a growing cancerous impediment which stands in the way of your enjoyment of the salvation that has been offered by Christ.
So name your anger, put it away, seek forgiveness, and begin living as you profess. Begin living as those who have been themselves forgiven. Begin living within the implanted Word that has the power to save your soul.
