I Believe in Anger

I'm an angry person. I'm not talking about anger in the sense of having a temper or getting mad over stupid things. But I'm still an angry person.

When I see a man or woman maliciously beat their kids I get angry.
When I see kids forced to come home to an empty house because their parents are too self-absorbed with their careers, I get angry.
When I see a homeless person, digging through the trash trying to survive off of the scraps that most of us throw away, I get angry.
When I hear about children in 3rd world countries who die everyday from preventable diseases and illnesses, I get angry.
When I hear about pastors who abuse their churches and extort money from their congregations, I get angry.
When I hear about churches that abuse their pastors and make him feel like an employee, I get angry.
When I see people who lift their hands in worship only to walk out the doors of the church and deny Him by their lifestyles, I get angry.
When I see people who are duped into believing and carrying out the most ridiculous lies in the name of "Religion," I get angry.

In Ephesians 4:26, Paul quotes Psalm 4:4, "Be angry, but do not sin." Anger is not intrinsically sinful. In fact, the Bible calls us to be angry at the atrocities that we see in the world. Paul was calling the Ephesian church to get angry at the moral corruption that had fled into the congregation. He wanted to them to be angry because that was the logical response. In Matthew 21, Jesus got pretty ticked when he saw the corrupt state of the temple complex where people had turned God's house into a market place. In His anger, Jesus flipped the tables and drove out these criminals with a whip. Jesus was angry but did not sin. But it doesn't stop with anger. We are called to do something about our anger.

You see, when we look at our world, we as Christians should be angry; because believe me God certainly is. Most of the time we are told that anger is sinful and that to act out in anger is even more sinful. But that is not what Paul was saying and certainly not what Jesus was demonstrating. To be angry and sin means to see the corrupt moral state of our world and to do nothing; to pretend that it's none of our business.

We as Christians have a responsibility to be the hands, feet and mouth of Jesus in a fallen world. Jesus came into this world "to preach good news to the poor...to proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:18-19 HCSB). We as Christians carry on that responsibility as we fallow in His footsteps.

When you claim to follow Jesus, the state of this world should tick you off!!! And when it does, it should drive you to action starting with the proclamation of the good news of Jesus our Savior. Be angry, but do not sin by doing nothing!