Are You Good and Angry?

It's a mad, mad world.

A 1996 Gallup Poll found that 25 percent of American employees are angry at work. Younger workers (ages 18–34) are four times more likely to report feeling angry than those over age 50.

Hostile, uptight drivers endanger others on the highway, as if a driver's license were a license for rude behavior. A study released this year by the American Automobile Association (AAA) Foundation for Traffic Safety showed that incidents of "road rage" (reckless driving due to anger) have increased 51 percent nationally in the first part of this decade. Within the relatively anonymous confines of a car, ordinarily civil people lose their tempers—and some lose their lives.

Since 1990, more than 200 people have been killed and nearly 13,000 injured in documented cases of aggressive driving—and the actual number of victims probably is higher, since road rage isn't always noted as a factor in police reports. The AAA study concluded, "We may very well discover that personal anger and testosterone are the most dangerous drugs on the highway."

Angry words frequently spill onto the playing field and basketball court too. In his humorous look at baseball, The Umpire Strikes Back, Ron Luciano wrote, "Umpiring is best described as the profession of standing between two 7-year-olds with one ice-cream cone. No matter how good you are, your entire career is going to be spent making 50 percent of all the players and managers unhappy. Every call is going to anger half the people."

Unhealthy expressions of anger boil over into our homes and churches, even though the Lord warns us to get rid of "rage, malice, slander, and filthy language" (Colossians 3:8).

It's easy to find examples of sinful human anger that do not "bring about the righteous life that God desires" (James 1:20). But how often do we think about the sinless anger of God? Perhaps we need to restudy the biblical doctrine of God's wrath. In a book about the Minor Prophets called Taking God Seriously, Stuart Briscoe entitled his chapter about the book of Nahum, "God is Good and Angry." It's precisely because God is good that he expresses holy anger against sin. There is nothing impulsive, petty, selfish, or spiteful about God's wrath. He never loses his temper or throws a tantrum; but injustice invites his righteous indignation. "Our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29).

Nahum (whose name means "comfort") blended warnings about wrath with glimpses of grace. While "the Lord is slow to anger," he also "will not leave the guilty unpunished" (Nahum 1:3), and though "his wrath is poured out like fire," it's also true that "the Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble" (Nahum 1:6, 7). If we fail to understand the wrath of God, we cannot fully appreciate his grace or the saving work of Christ who suffered at the hands of angry men and died in our place. "Since we have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:9).

Instead of the bitterness and violence of Cain, or King Saul, or the prodigal son's brother, we need to imitate the assertiveness, honesty, and gentleness we see in Jesus. As Bob Russell noted in a recent column in The Lookout (May 11, 1997), Jesus got angry at the right things, in the right way, at the right time. So the next time you feel the heat of anger rising, stop for a moment and ask yourself, "How would Jesus handle this?"