Putting anger in its Christian setting

As a devout Christian believer, I am speaking up for anger and for the appropriate use of a God-given emotion that suffers from a not-so-good reputation. Indeed, I believe anger needs to take its place with the other human, God-given, emotion capacities such as love, joy, compassion, fear and awe. Healthy anger is simply that surge of energy that a human being experiences when danger, real or perceived, is confronted. Without anger-energy human beings would be vulnerable to all sorts of real dangers. In my understanding human beings could not survive without anger generated energy. At times we all need to have healthy anger as a resource at our disposal. To deny anger-energy is dangerous. However, to use undisciplined misdirected anger-energy can result in destruction of all parties to an anger episode, even to those who are completely innocent.

To be emotionally healthy, anger needs to be disciplined by compassionate love. In my Biblical, theological understanding, love and anger are necessary partners. Anger-energy can appropriately defend and preserve. Anger-energy, however, is often misdirected and can harm or even destroy innocent people and damage unrelated things and objects. Anger-energy can also be turned inward and be destructive to mental and physical health. “Eating your own anger” can be very dangerous.

When I was a child, I was taught by both family and church that God is love. I embraced that understanding and have never been tempted to turn away from that God of love. To embrace the proper use of anger, a person forever must turn from the idea that love and anger are opposites. The opposite of Biblical love is indifference. We need to be reminded that in the story of the Good Samaritan, religious people did nothing wrong except pass by on the other side of the road. The core meaning of Christian ethics is that anger and love walk hand in hand. They are action emotions that call for active participation in the events of life.

The story of Jesus cleansing the Temple is found in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Scholars, who specialize in the study of the historical Jesus and the synoptic stories, all agree. This is an incident that really happened. Details are missing, but there is little doubt that Jesus initiated a disruptive incident in the court yard of the Jerusalem temple. It was an incident that shows the anger of Jesus at its best. For Jesus, the Temple and its entire compound was a holy place. Money changers had made the compound a place of business transactions. The result, intended or not, excluded poor people from Temple worship. Jesus was angry. Jesus dramatically upset the whole system. Jesus overturned the transaction tables and shooed out those who were operating them. According to the gospel reports, it was the key incident that drove Temple officials to “get rid of this guy.” They facilitated the Roman crucifixion of the trouble maker. They saw him as an insurrectionist.

The Jerusalem incident took place about 70 miles south of Galilee where Jesus grew up did the bulk of his teaching and where he became known as a “home grown” rabbi. He was not a rabbi with formal training. He taught in an area that was poor beyond description. The people with whom Jesus grew up were victims of economic, social, and religious bullying. The area was the seed-bed of the emerging zealot movement. Their rural poverty lived in the shadow of cities of wealth and prosperity. Zealots were understandably angry. The typical man carried a large knife and advocated violent overthrow of Roman dominance and Jewish complicity. Some have suggested that Jesus was himself a part of the early zealot movement. In a sense he was.

JESUS WAS JUST AS ANGRY AS THE ANGRIEST ZEALOT.

Jesus was angry about the economic imperialism of Roman rulers that left common people poor and hungry. I first became aware of this dynamic when I read William Herzog’s book “Parables as Subversive Speech.” Its subtitle is “Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed.”

I read Herzog’s book and then understood how involved Jesus was in economic injustice. Jesus was angry about economic injustice and spoke truth to power.

Jesus was also angry at the way the Temple hierarchy ran the religious system. He went 70 miles south with a few followers. He created a disturbance in the Jerusalem temple yard that led to his cruel death. People who claim to be Jesus followers and who do not recognize the proper use of anger and exercise it, just do not “get it.”

Jesus parted company from the zealots. His advice to the zealots was simple. “Put up your knives!” Jesus’ anger was tempered and guided by love. Jesus’ anger was directed into non-violent action. Paul was just as pointed. “Be angry but do not sin.” In my own life time, Martin Luther King Jr. best displayed the Jesus way. He protested, he spoke out, he took non-violent action by long marches.

Just now I am reading Jim Wallis’s latest book, “Christ in Crisis.” It is Wallis’s call for Christians to embrace our angry Lord Jesus, who disciplined his anger with love. It is a must read for every believer.

The end

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister’, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. He is Pastor Emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.