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the anger of man
Doesn’t work the righteousness of God. Said James, the brother of Jesus. The brother of Jesus: a man who grew up with Jesus as his brother. Imagine growing up with Jesus as your brother. Would it be easy? Your mother hid secrets in her heart about her firstborn son, your elder brother. He stays behind in the temple because he believes it to be his father’s house and sends the family into a worried frenzy. In Mark’s gospel the brothers of Jesus seek to do an intervention, thinking he’d gone mad. In John’s gospel one of the brothers of Jesus sarcastically urges him to go to Jerusalem where all the would-be prophets make a name for themselves. So perhaps by personal experience James understood that the anger of man doesn’t work the righteousness of God. Do we?
When we read in the Bible of God’s anger, do we trust our ability to identify with his anger? How do we know what anger feels like–is–except by our own experience of anger?
Given your experience of anger, do you trust your ability to understand God’s?
What makes you angry? Fear? The insults or insensitivities of others, perhaps. Sometimes I get angry just because I don’t get my own way.
Or think of it from the receiving side. How often do you trust that the anger of others toward you is justified? Does it seem sometimes to be less than pure? Does it seem often to be out of proportion? Does it sometimes baffle you?
Let us consider our anger in the pure light of God. Let us offer it up to God for inspection. As we await his verdict on our anger, are we confident?
So perhaps the anger of God is something that we should be careful about in this sense: We should be careful to think that we can understand his anger, or identify with it. We should be careful to assume that our anger and his are aligned.
Much of our anger may be the anger of man, not the anger of God. Our anger may be Republican anger, or Democratic anger. It may be the anger of the Libertarians. It may be the anger of the free market advocates or the anger of the socialists. It may be the anger of the N.R.A or the anger of the A.C.L.U. It may be the anger of Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken.
It may be the anger of our mothers and fathers manifesting in us by reflection or reaction.
It may be misguided anger. Perhaps we’re sad, but it’s easier to be mad.
I wonder if God’s anger is ultimately a reflection of his love. He pursues his harassed and enslaved children out of bondage in Egypt. He leads them with his love and follows them with his love. His love goes before them and makes a way through the Red Sea, parting the waters for them. His love follows them to protect them from their pursuers. All they had to do, the Egyptians, was stop. Stop chasing the children. But they didn’t stop. The waters overwhelmed them.
I don’t know. What would I know about the anger of God? Until I understand, deeply understand, painfully, by experience, that the anger of man cannot work the righteousness of God.
Tags: anger, brothers, Democrat, free market, james, Jesus, Republican, righteousness, socialist
August 27th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
.
“For the wrath of man shall praise You …” (Ps 76:10).
Ken, we’ve danced this watuzi before.
There is no difference between God’s love and God’s anger. None.
Yes, that’s just an assertion. An arrogant assertion. From an arrogant man. Me.
My purpose in making this arrogant assertion is not the purpose of making you accept the arrogant assertion (nor the arrogance of it) ipse dixit. Discount accordingly.
The purpose of making the assertion clearly as a proposition (and I hate propositional theology – so I’m a liar on top of being arrogant, as you can see) is the exact same purpose as the purpose of any science or theology writer who will run the risk of having his/her arrogance found out and on public display for all to see – for the sake of making a clear statement of any kind at all (rather than faith-mush-speak), on the theory that clarity can be tested. And arrogance can be discounted.
You do the discounts for my arrogance. I’ll do the arrogant clarity.
“For the wrath of man shall praise You ….” (Ps 76:10).
There is no difference between God’s love and God’s anger.
Arrogantly clear enough?
But the entry into the truth of this arrogant proposition is not in the truth of the assertion in Psalm 76:10, not alone.
Rather, it’s the truth of Ecclesiastes three. A time for everything.
Any time you reduce religion down to emotional control – control of emotions – you have become God by taking away an emotion that God will use, in time. An emotion that God will use in time, as in Ecclesiastes three time. A time for everything.
And if we’re going to do emotional control, then let’s do it right!
If preachers preach against anger as a moral judgment (a moral judgment against anger) on the theory that anger is an evil, and that lovey-dovey love is the only virtue in faith – then there’s a secondary question always lurking behind the moralistic sermons wherein preachers use the bully pulpit of passive-aggressive preaching to enforce an emotional control (emotional control against anger) by giving everyone in the pews an anger-ectomy – the deeper question for these preachers is whether the preacher preaching (the specific preacher, now) against anger is preaching against anger just because that preacher is scared “witless and s*****s” about anger, because the moralizing preacher really can’t handle anger – not even God’s anger – and especially not Ecclesiastes three anger – in his own life. So that this preacher preaches against anger out of fear (fear of anger). And is not preaching out of faith. So now we can have a preacher preaching out of fear and not out of faith – in order to foist passive aggressive emotional control on an emotion – anger – that he can’t handle. Because it looks real religious to condemn anger and valorize love. But it’s all just emotional control from the pulpit.
And it could be control over any emotion. With anger just the flavor of the day.
The super-passive-aggressive tactic used by hifalutin preachers of emotional control is the fancy tactic of saying that love is not an emotion! Except that 30 seconds later, that same preacher is dripping and oozing emotional puddles all over the church floor, telling us how joyful, peaceful, ecstatic, cosmic, surprising, God’s non-emotional love really is. The fruits of the Spirit are not emotional. Including love. Go figure.
Who is the liar, here?
When Jesus said, love God with “all” our heart (among the other three faculties), then Jesus did not mean for me to give myself an anger-ectomy first, sanitize myself of anger (because Jesus can’t handle my anger), and then bring “all” the rest of my sanitized emotions to Him. He means bring it “all!” Like, “ALL.”
Either come hard, or don’t come at all.
Now I know that Jesus is not big enough to handle MY anger, because in MY case, Jesus is a Milquetoast Wimp who never wrote the scripture for me, “For the wrath of man shall praise You ….” (Ps 76:10), nor the scripture, Ecclesiastes three, a time for everything. And Jesus surely isn’t Big Enough, in my case, to run Differential Diagnoses on me (never on me!) in order to see that my overlapping emotional expressions and overlapping emotional symptoms can mask each other – so that Jesus must cut away in me the anger that does not praise Him, while leaving the anger in me that does praise Him – not my Jesus. He is not Big Enough to do this internal surgery! Not on my anger. I need to do my own anger-ectomy before I come to Him. Because my Jesus has lost His surgical touch with me and cannot do this internal surgery – to make come true for me, the verse, “For the wrath of man shall praise You ….” (Ps 76:10). That text is for someone else. Because my anger is the one case that Jesus cannot differentially diagnose!
So, I need to save Jesus, from my anger. And not love Jesus with “all” my heart.
Oh wait, I lied again. It’s not that Jesus can’t. It’s that I don’t trust Him to ….. And since I don’t trust Jesus to do this differential internal surgery on me (because He’s Incompetent), then I need to repress my anger before Him. And since I need to repress my anger (instead of loving him with “all” my heart), then I need play out the religious lie – the lie, that I’m not an angry man.
So will you please play along with my religious fantasy that anger isn’t love. And that I’m not an angry man. Especially from your pulpit.
I sure wouldn’t want any of Jesus’s anger in me.
In short, when the scripture says for me to present my body as a living sacrifice, then I want to make sure that I never sacrifice my body to be filled with the kind of wrath that praises Jesus. Every other emotion, give me. All the lovey-dovey love. Give me that. I’m your vessel for that, Lord. I’ll give my body as a living sacrifice to You, so long as I can control the emotions You pour into your vessel.
And I need Ken’s help from the pulpit in regulating – controlling – just what emotions You pour into me.
I want to come back (if I’m still welcome after this!) and do something you did earlier – post a dream, and a vision, and a charismatic experience or two that I’ve had with Anger … And I may want to give some concrete examples from my real life clients (from whom I have standing permission) about Anger as Effective in concrete cases.
And that’s why we really fear anger. And why we must repress honest anger. Anger is Scary – because Anger is so damn Effective. The wrath of man shall praise Him – because that wrath is effective. It’s the effectiveness of anger that scares us. Not the mere emotion.
In that light, I want to post a joke by Carlin too.
Your’s in raging, maniacal LOVE!
Jim
August 27th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I have used the term ‘righteous anger’ to justify my anger.
Just yesterday, I was thinking of how stupid and ridiculous it was that some kids had travelled across the country to stand for a week in the rain just to be able to plunk down $250 for a pair of new limited edition sneakers that were being sold somewhere in Massachussetts. I thought: ‘what a waste of resouces and time just for a stupid pair of shoes’. These people need God.
I was then reminded of my recent expenditure of $800 to tow a non-running 1950 Dodge from PA to MI to add to my 4 car collection. Maybe I need God.
I like the conversation at the end of Job where after all his anger and frustration towards God, followed by God’s response, Job is reduced to ‘placing his hand over his mouth’ and shutting up.
Puts it in perspective.
I need to constantly remind myself of my infinite smallness, insignificance when compared to God. I am NOTHING, if I disappeared, I would not be missed beyond a few years by people and not at all by the ‘universe’.
For some reason, God allows and even encourages me to argue with Him, yell at Him, communicate with and for Him.
This line of communication with God I think puffs me up and I then develop this irrational idea that I can grasp and own His thoughts, views, anger, etc.
Ridiculous!
If I meditate about the contrast between the nothing that I am and the Creator and Sustainer of everything. (like a neutrino compared with the red giant star, Aldebaran), I realize how absurd it is to even imagine that my anger, thoughts, ideas and convictions can be compared to God’s.
I need to meditate more…
August 28th, 2009 at 1:30 am
How is anger expressed destructively?
1. Anger is very destructive if you allow yourself to blow up and vent your anger upon another person. Some people call this “letting off steam”, when in reality, it is the sinful use of anger and wrath to destroy or manipulate another person. The Scripture declares, “The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). David commands, “cease from anger and forsake wrath; Do not fret, it only causes harm” (Psalms 37:8). Solomon also declares, “A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back” (Prov. 29:11). The use of anger in this manner is clearly a violation of God’s commands, which ultimately hinders effective communication and relationship with others.
2. A second way anger is used destructively is to internalize or bury your anger inside. This action is just as wrong as blowing up and venting your anger. Paul taught in Ephesians 4:27, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.” This passage commands you not to allow your anger to boil within your heart even for one night. God wants you to deal with your anger and what is causing it, quickly, even before you go to sleep tonight. This is what God was trying to get Cain to do when he asked him, “Why are you angry” (Gen. 4:6)? God knew that Cain was very angry and wanted him to identify its cause in order to help him resolve it. Without taking this action, sin would ultimately control him and cause an inevitable blow up.
3. If your anger has caused you to sin, seek God’s forgiveness and the person’s you have offended by your anger. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9). If you are holding in anger and resentment, identify why you are angry and then take the appropriate biblical action.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:57 am
So can we then actually know the love of God as opposed to the love of man? They are both emotions of God. I’m just wondering.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Ken I agree…our anger is most of the time a response to a hurt or affront to us and is pretty primal (sinful if you will) in nature. Some huge percentage of time anger is just a prideful cover for fear or hurt.
I don’t know that righteous anger is such an elusive thing, though, but maybe I’m kidding myself. It seems to me like when I’ve measured myself and my heart alongside that of how I understand God’s own heart, there are times when a measured form of righteous anger is in line. Specifically I’m thinking of when I’m angry at injustice or when those with power abuse the weak. I respond with sadness which gives me empathy for the situation, but anger is what motivates me to do something about it.
It seems to me the danger of anger is in its power. It’s a lot like technology…in and of itself it’s not a bad thing…but in the hands of the wrong person it can be devastating.
Ultimately the righteousness of our anger should be determined by the fruit it bears in our words and actions. Is my anger ultimately motivating me do do and say things that increase hope, love, peace, patience and kindness? Or is it creating hatred, bitterness and violence?
I personally don’t do well with anger. It freaks me out and I can’t handle it most of the time. I take your words to heart that if and when it manifests itself in me, I really need to offer it up for inspection time and time again.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
When I get angry, I usually feel righteous. I usually have this feeling along with the anger that I’m right or I have been wronged and therefore “deserve” to be angry. That some other party “deserves” my anger. When I’m angry, sometimes I imagine that I have obtained the righteousness or the approximate righteousness or the somewhat distant righteousness of God. In other words, my anger and God’s righteousness are often linked in my thinking when I am angry. When I stop being angry and have a chance to think about things, it becomes plain that I have just blown my top again and it had nothing to do with God. It just felt that it did. Feeling and thinking. Odd how they are related.
August 28th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Some posts here sound like God has died and left us in an epistemological black hole of hell because of some special difficulty that anger poses in discerning God at work in us. That anger is special over and against discerning God in any other emotion.
It’s as if God is dead. And we are left on our own in some 19th century version of dead-beat epistemological introspective psychology. Looking within to see ourselves. Which we really cannot do very well (see IAT below).
There’s no question that anger clouds us.
But there is no reason why anger has a privileged status in clouding and confusing us any more than any other emotion. Including the positive emotions. Clinical studies on the emotion of “surprise” (classified as a positive emotion) show that surprise is just as stressful and confusing to our cognitive faculties as is anger. Anger is not a special category of confusion for us.
I’m not objecting to holding anger up as a single variable to see just how much dysfunction you can squeeze out of it. And how many confessions of dysfunctional anger we can wretch out of ourselves.
But the truth is that neuroscience systems analysis shows that we do not even have access to most of our bias in the domains that Ken has introduced. Which is why objective measures like the Implicit Association Test (IAT) can reveal these horrible prejudices.
We don’t even need fancier and newer clinical studies to know about anger. All we’re really doing here is admitting that we have an autonomic nervous system that operates faster than our conscious thought. And again, we don’t even have access to these deeper levels of bias without objective testing.
Certainly not by mere introspection and religious confession.
In fact, introspection is exactly the conceit that makes us think we know ourselves. And we’re clueless. See the literature on the IAT.
The question for a believer is whether God is dead or whether God can be one part of an Objective Test to us that overcomes our implicit bias?
The entire Scripture reeks and drips of God’s Competence to make this know to us. First one way, then another (to steal a phrase from Job). We’re not alone in this.
Anger is not a special category problem for God.
The harder question after all the throat-clearing confessions about dysfunctional anger are done – is whether God is big enough (it’s not “my” epistemological problem!) to give us discernment of the difference between anger that God wants and anger that God does not want – and its use. This is God’s problem.
If we’re really left alone in an epistemological black hole of hell to figure out anger – or any other emotion – all on our own, then let’s be honest. And say that we think that God is dead. When we’re angry. Or under any other emotion.
Once again, I’m not objecting to holding anger up as a single variable to see just how much dysfunction you can squeeze out of it … if that’s the Spirit’s Voice to you here and now.
But in all our confessions about dysfunctional anger, it’s equally important to see our bias against anger (the implicit biases we cannot get at without testing) as it is to see the truth of all the confessions made here about the harm anger can cause. The truth is that we can be just as biased against anger, as by it. Or for it.
But it’s really God’s epistemological problem. Not ours.
And if the Spirit is not in it, then we’re really just forming biases against anger and confirming our self-imposed diagnoses by wenching out confessions, like slicing open every single measles pustule just to confirm the diagnosis of measles.
And there can be a synthesis of Divine and human anger. Just like with any other emotion.
Jim
August 29th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Yes, the onus is on God to communicate. Our admission of our own bias and limitations on receiving said communication (we see through a glass darkly) doesn’t lead us to the black hole you are concerned about because ultimately, it’s up to God to get through to the likes of us. It should be humbling to know that it’s taken all he has (his beloved son) to do that.
Of course, 50 years ago, there were theological trends which moved from epistemilogical modesty toward or even flat out into “God is dead” thinking.
Conservative reaction has been to assert more epistemilogical certain than the Bible does. WE can’t drive forward in the 21st Century by looking into the rear view mirror. I wish I knew how to spell “epistemilogical”.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Jim, your denegration and trivialization of love–”lovey dovey love”–is dismaying. Jesus commanded us to love, not to anger. If you are feeling that you are being told not to get angry and that you should not because this is bad behavior, you are missing the point. What is going on in this post and subsequent dialog, aside from your comments, is an examination of what can go wrong with anger. What does routinely go wrong with anger. And how anger often leads us to do the opposite of love.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Ken, a very good response. I think we agree that the onus rests on God to communicate. And that we’re not left alone in a black hole beyond the reach of God’s intervention. I’m sorry that my post conveyed the sense that I personally might fear such a black hole. I don’t. I feel the Spirit is more than capable of spanning any divide. I partly regretted my comments here because I targeted a few posts which I felt implied that our experience of anger presents a some sort special problem for God. As if an implicit equation exists – “if it’s anger, it isn’t God.”
I regretted my post and wanted to take it down because it’s not for me to say what another person is feeling and experiencing in the Spirit. For all I know, the Spirit is mightily at work among people here precisely on this issue of anger. In specific cases. It’s not my job to play holy-spirit-junior. I regretted my post even more because I saw “Julie and Julia” last night. I wanted to see “Inglourious Basterds.” But it was my turn for chic-flick duty. The movie ended up as the most gentle delight that I’ve seen since “Babette’s Feast” or “Tender Mercies.” It got me. The gentleness. Tenderness. Kindness. Great stuff. I walked out of the theater feeling saturated and baptized with tenderness. I had a sudden memory. A memory of a truth which I have learned and forgotten a zillion times.
The simple truth – that the Spirit is a Gentle Person.
Not gentle in the sense of pouring into us only gentle emotions. Nor is the Spirit gentle in the sense of pouring into us only the good and positive emotions associated with the fruits of the Spirit, like joy, and peace. I don’t mean that the Spirit of God is Gentle in these ways alone.
What I remembered is that Spirit is a Gentle Person in another sense. A different sense. The Spirit is gentle with us because the Spirit does pour motivational anger into us, and then, if we reject the inner outpouring of Divine anger, the Spirit remains gentle – in the form of withdrawing from us and not forcing on us even the Divine Anger that we reject. The Spirit is Gentle in the sense of honoring our rejection of Divine Anger. Offering Anger. But not forcing. We remain free to reject Divine Anger. The Spirit remains Gentle in honoring our choices. Right or wrong. I needed to make peace with this – for the millionth time.
Cheers,
Jim
August 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Is Inglorious Basterds about the anger of man?
August 30th, 2009 at 8:24 am
“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.” Jesus’ brother
There is absolutely nothing we can do to produce righteousness, other than humbly accepting and acting on God’s perspective, wisdom, and direction (word in our hearts) in our lives. Focusing on my anger, love, or whatever tends to leave me suffering from Omphaloskepsis (this is my feeble attempt to come up with a word that nobody has ever heard). And we all know that we never can claim ourselves righteous anyways. So I think I am with Jim on this one, not that he needs my support.
Here’s an idea, because focusing on anger produces absolutely nothing in our lives, lets “…get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives.” Because according to this passage, that’s the only thing we have the power to do.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Hmmmmm I don’t really like righteous anything except the righteous nature in California’s Sierras.
I think righteous anger and righteous judgements are possible, but much abused by man. Sweet another loophole that justifies my bad behavior!
What ever happened to keeping posts short?
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I thought the word James used was “wrath” of man, much stronger than anger, & that wrath does not do the work of God.
We can still gain insight from what it is that drives our or another person’s anger.
What if people had been too embarrassed to pay attention to what made Jesus angry?
We are wired to have anger responses at times & angry feelings.
It is sad when “jesus people” set prohibitions, essentially labeling manifestations of the “honest-to-God” affective state “bad” or “naughty”.
Is that not being like Job’s comforters?
Invalidating of the genuine feelings of someone who deserves compassion & understanding, & who needs to see Christ’s imago even in opponents? (”Love your enemies, Do good to them that hate you, Pray for those who despitefully use you & persecute you”)
Anne Schaef remarked on how power structures attempt to suppress dissidents by labeling them “stupid, sick, ugly, crazy, or bad.”
Usually it has been applied to women, but sometimes to minorities as well.
God is a Big God.
He wants to be the Center of Everything..
He is not threatened by change & dissent.
He is so very interested in the journey,not just the destination.
“By their fruits you shall know them”
Ellen