Just Plain Mad

November 5, 2022

Anger is fun. No, that’s not quite the way to say it. It gives a person a feeling of power, like you are the center of the universe for just a little while, and you have the right to be.

I miss it sometimes.

Why did God take it away from me? Don’t I deserve some focus on myself every once in a while? Doesn’t everyone deserve a few minutes of being most important? That’s what anger is, at its root. It’s the world as seen from my point of view, and something or someone has ruined it. My very core is being attacked.

I feel the right to anger sometimes, but I do not like to see it in others. They seem out of control, willing to hurt anything around them because their personal world is being attacked.

Does Matthew 16:25 apply here? “He who would save his life shall lose it, and he who would lose his life for My sake shall find it.” Giving up anger is turning loose of a very significant part of me.

Maybe I don’t have to give it up completely. After all, Jesus got mad, at least one time, when he turned over all those tables in the temple. I do want to pattern my life after Jesus.

On that day Jesus was mad about something that was very dear to God. The religious authorities had taken over the Court of the Gentiles, in front of Jerusalem’s temple, to sell sacrificial animals and to exchange Roman money for coins acceptable in a Jewish offering. The space that had been reserved for outsiders to come near to the temple was no longer available.

So I can see that I can, and should, get angry about things that attack God. I guess we call that righteous anger.

The other kind of anger, that’s mostly about me, is something God slowly removes from a Christian’s life. I miss it sometimes but, well, if I’m giving God the right to ‘clean me up,’ any part of me is fair game.