The upside of anger

Here’s a thought: I don’t believe that anger is necessarily bad.

Yes, anger can be bad, and I certainly do not condone a damaging, destructive, hurtful kind of anger—the low-grade kind that leads to the degradation of another, destruction of property, bullying, road rage, and so forth. But is there also an upside to anger?

I did a word search on the use of the word ‘anger’ in the Bible, limiting my search preference to the Psalms. I did so because I wanted to see how many references there were to the Psalmist crying out in anger to God. But the results surprised me because my search reveals a God who is often angry:

• ‘He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath … his wrath can flare up in a moment …’ (Psalm 2:5,12).
• ‘The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry.’ (Psalm 18:7)
• ‘He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility—a band of destroying angels.’ (Psalm 78:49)
• ‘How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire?’ (Psalms 79:5)
• Even more disturbingly, my search also revealed a Psalmist who frequently requests God to strike the nations with his anger:
• ‘Arise, Lord, in your anger; rise up against the rage of my enemies. Awake, my God; decree justice.’ (Psalm 7:6)
• ‘Because of their wickedness do not let them escape; in your anger, God, bring the nations down.’ (Psalm 56:7)
• ‘Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them.’ (Psalm 69:24)

It seems that the Psalmist’s God gets angry quite a lot. But when it comes to human anger, the book of Proverbs, in particular, is insistent that anger leads to terror (20:2), strife (30:33), cruelty (27:4) and foolishness (7:9).

Is there ‘good’ anger?

So, what’s the deal here? Is it as simple as ‘God can get angry, because God is God and his anger is justifiably righteous’ (see Job 37:23)?

Or is it possible that anger has many facets: good and bad?    

Jesus once went into the Jewish synagogue, and a man with a shrivelled hand was there. Some of the religious people were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched closely to see if he would heal the man on the Sabbath (when Jews weren’t allowed to work—and healing would have been seen as ‘healing work’).

Jesus said to the man with the shrivelled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’ Then Jesus asked those who were watching him, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent. At this point, the Bible says that Jesus ‘looked around at them in anger’.

Let’s face it, we all get angry. We get angry at ourselves, at each other, and even at God. And we do so because anger is simply an emotion. It’s just our body’s way of telling us that our will has been blocked. That what we want to happen isn’t happening.

So, maybe the problem isn’t anger (in itself), but what we do with anger and where we let ourselves go with it. Because this I know, anger always leads somewhere.

The downside of anger

Jesus once compared unresolved anger to the fire of ‘Gehenna’ (in English, we know this place as ‘Hell’). Gehenna was the smoldering garbage dump of ancient Jerusalem. It was a place where the fire never went out but continually simmered away. But Gehenna was also a place where the fire would quickly flair up at a moment’s notice.

Gehenna was a simmering fire, but place more garbage on it and in a flash, Gehenna was the place of untamed fire. And Jesus says that any unresolved anger is just like Gehenna—simmering away underneath—ready to explode.

It was with this image of Gehenna in mind that Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, “Raca” [an Aramaic term of contempt] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell [ie, Gehenna]’ (Matthew 5:21-22).

A recent study of 1305 men with an average age of 62 revealed that the angriest men are three times more likely to develop heart disease than more even-tempered ones. Compared with cooler heads, hotheads are six times more likely to suffer heart attacks by age 55 and three times more likely to develop any form of heart or blood vessel disease.

When anger boils over into hostility, aggression and rage, it can cause harm (which we could label ‘Hell’). But anger does not have to lead us to Gehenna/Hell, it can lead somewhere more worthy. Returning to the story where Jesus gets angry, the next line in Mark’s story has Jesus saying to the man: ‘Stretch out your hand.’ The man stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored (see Mark 3:1-5).

This is a powerful image: Jesus’ anger and frustration leads him to heal and restore that which was broken.

Where anger leads

Where does your anger typically lead you? Author and psychologist Dr Henry Cloud says two types of feelings and attitudes reside in our soul; one is subjective and the other objective. To ensure our anger leads us in a productive direction, we need to consider the nature of our angry feelings.

Subjective feelings are not directed at anything specific, or caused on any given day by any particular object. They are already there, simply ready to jump out and express themselves at any given opportunity. Subjective feelings (like anger) blast other people, cause overreactions, dis­sension, broken relationships and many other relational diseases.

Subjective anger can have a life of its own, and often runs counter to the goals of those who carry it around. Those who are led by subjective anger can find that their feelings are working against their best efforts to make good things happen.

So here’s a straightforward question: ‘Are you angry?’ And by this, I mean the destructive, grudge-bearing, subjective kind of angry? And, if so, at whom are you angry? At yourself, a family member, a friend, someone at work, your spouse, your children, your neighbour, God?  

It is important not to ignore these angry feelings. Research shows that ignoring anger is dangerous to our emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual health. In the short term, it hinders us from dealing with real issues. And in the long term, it significantly increases the probability of developing real physical problems.

Anger doesn’t just go away. Ignored, it tends to get worse—and then it becomes an even greater problem for us to deal with in the future.

Healthy anger

In their helpful book, Mad about Us: Moving from Anger to Intimacy with Your Spouse, Gary J. and Carrie Oliver explain that one of the many potentially positive aspects of anger is that it can serve as a powerful and effective emotion. Healthy anger can help us identify problems and needs, and it provides us with the energy to do something about them.

This is what success­ful people do, Dr Cloud helpfully suggests. Rather than ignoring their anger or allowing it to manifest itself subjectively, they work toward solving their problems by moving subjective anger into an objective anger.

Objective anger is the kind of anger that solves problems, protects the things you value and stands against the things you do not want in your life. Objective anger looks for the real objects of our anger, making them specific, and then using objective measures to enforce them pro­ductively, getting the rage out of the anger equation.

This is the type of anger we see in the story about Jesus and the man with the shrivelled hand. Jesus’ objective anger about the inaction of the religious leaders and the injustice of a crippled man having a restricted life drove him to bring healing to someone’s life.

Although Gary J. and Carrie Oliver’s book was written to help spouses move from anger to intimacy, the wisdom within its pages is for anyone who needs help to deal with their anger. I’d especially recommend the chapter on making anger work for you (see box).

The good news is that change is possible in even the angriest individual. We can learn how to invest our anger constructively. The bad news is that it won’t take place overnight. But it is possible to use anger as the gift that God intended it to be and learn to make it work for us rather than against us.

Food for thought

• What was the last thing you got angry about? Why did it make you angry
• Where did your anger lead? Does your anger always lead there?    
• Are the things that usually get you angry worth getting angry about?    
• What could you do to ensure your anger leads to making things better?