I have times of happiness, laughter, joy and silliness, especially when my kids are involved.
But there have also been times of grief, sadness, frustration, and even....anger.
*gasp*
Did I really just say that? But can I really be a Christian and be...angry?
I thought I was healthy. I read lots of book, prayed, went to church, read my Bible, didn't smoke or drink.
But then my daughter died.
And it felt like a river of anger swept out of me, rushing forward, engulfing everything in it's path.
Yes, I was angry about my daughter. But there was also anger from hurt in my past, anger that I had tried to suppress for so many years.
Because it isn't Christian.
Because when I showed my anger to other people, to other Christians, they ran away. They didn't know what to do with it. Add to that all the sermons and talk about loving your enemies, and where does anger fit in? Or grow up in a family like mine, where yelling and copious amounts of anger were the norm, and you don't want to be angry...you've seen enough to last a lifetime.
Is it okay to be angry and still be a Christian?
What does the Bible say?
Most of us know the famous passage, be angry but do not sin. Sounds to me like it is expected that we will get angry, that the emotion itself is not a sin, but how you handle it. Do I tear into other people, smack my children around, and act out through ______ (insert any of the following: shopping binges, drinking, gambling, busyness, drugs, or any other addiction?) Or do I write, draw, play music, exercise, or find somebody safe to talk to about my anger?
I read about Jesus, overturning tables and throwing a whip around, running people out of the temple. I read in Psalms from David, who writes about crushing his enemies to a pulp.
It's been a struggle, but for the first time in my life, I am starting to understand that it's okay to be angry. I am pushing back against the condemnation I feel, from both inside and out, that you cannot be a Christian and be angry. I cannot heal until I have acknowledged my anger and have dealt with it. Ignoring pain, acting like it isn't there, or saying, it isn't all that bad, only pushes the anger deeper, and there it festers, like a putrid wound, seeping into other areas of life. Perhaps that is why the Bible states, Do not let the sun go down on your anger.
I recently heard the comment, Anger turned inward often turns into depression. When I look at the number of people in America today, even the number of people who attend church, that struggle with depression, it makes me wonder...there are a lot of angry people out there.
We've all heard sermons about loving our enemies. Wouldn't it be great to hear a sermon about anger? To hear a whole discussion on righteous anger and how we deal with it, as a church?
Don't you ever feel angry about human trafficking? About the millions of women and children who are sold into slavery each year? About the number of babies aborted around the world? About domestic violence? About the millions of children that die each year because they didn't have clean water to drink? About the fact that our culture has so emasculated men, that nobody seems to know what a real man looks like anymore? About the millions of orphans around the world that are left to themselves, or placed in ill-kept orphanages?
I do.
I feel angry about all these things. In a recent discussion about anger, a woman stated, anger motivates. When we feel angry about something, we are motivated to do something about it. To initiate change. To become involved.
Perhaps anger isn't all that bad.
