Part One of a short series on Anger. These are excerpts from a paper for a Seminary course.

It is often the case that life does not go according to plan. Families plan vacations only to have to cancel due to natural disasters. A long-time employee gets fired due to an economic downturn. Married couples leave their wedding with big dreams only to have infidelity, sickness, or death ruin everything. Sadly, these moments often lead to anger that turns into a tidal wave of bitterness and discontentment. The heart is thrown into turmoil leading to questions such as: where is God? Is God good? Can I trust him? These are the questions I will be exploring. I intend to show that anger over undesirable circumstances is often experienced as anger at God resulting in grumbling, bitterness, and laxity toward sin. I will address this by showing that God is not distant from his people. He is working for our eternal good through Christ who is our source for true hope and peace. I will close this paper by offering an example revealing how one may speak directly to someone suffering from anger over their discontentment with life’s circumstances.

Defining Anger

J.I. Packer has helpfully articulated anger as “a state of disturbing and energizing passion in which strong negative emotion is triggered by a perception of wrong done to oneself or others or both.” Packer’s definition draws out several aspects of anger worth further consideration. Those are anger as a “disturbing and energizing passion… [and] emotion,” a “wrong done to oneself or others or both,” and as a “perception.”

From the Heart

Packer’s designation of anger as a “passion” and “emotion” point to the reality that anger is ultimately the human heart responding in a specific way to specific circumstances. Jesus’ connection between actions and the heart is recorded in Luke 6:45. He says, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” Jesus connects human words and deeds to the state of the heart. Whatever a person does, good or evil, indicates something about the condition of their heart. This is significant in what it reveals about an individual. Ash and Midgley state that:

"The triggers that set off anger vary. But the rage that is triggered always reveals in some way what the angry person truly values and treasures. Anger rises in my heart when something I value is either threatened or taken from me. If I feel I may lose it, I become angry in anticipation of loss; if I have lost it, I am angered by actual loss."

Anger, in whatever form it takes, is ultimately a response of the heart wherein our values are revealed. This raises the question of whether or not anger might be appropriate in some circumstances or if it ought to be viewed exclusively in a negative light.

Vice or Virtue

The second element to Packer’s definition to consider is that anger is a response to “wrong done to oneself or others or both.” We should understand this as the heart's response to undesirable circumstances. However, the Bible teaches us that the heart is not a trustworthy guide. The prophet Jeremiah wrote that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer 17:9). Therefore, it is no surprise that the Bible frequently condemns the anger of man. Proverbs 22:24 warns the wise man to “make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man.” James cautions his audience that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (Jas 1:20). Additionally, there is implicit disapproval of man’s anger through the unrighteousness it produces. We see this in case of Cain, Simeon and Levi, Saul, and the Sanhedrin. Therefore, we should conclude that the Bible does present anger as vice. 

Yet, one cannot read the scriptures and conclude that anger is to be viewed exclusively in a negative light. Consider Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 4:26. He instructs them to “be angry and do not sin.” Thiago Bitencourt argues that this is anger directed at anything threatening to “disrupt the holy unity of the Spirit-indwelt community.” He goes on to say that Paul’s instruction is “a call to swift action, in godly justice and love, against anything that may threaten the growth, unity, and peace of the community as well as anything that may grieve the Holy Spirit.” Thus, one can argue that anger can be either vice or virtue. The determining factor, according to Scripture, is the heart-level motivation for the anger.

Part two will consider circumstances that often lead to anger.