Anger's Importance

As we watch the news seeing reports of horrible violence perpetuated against people, murders, and assaults it quickly leads us to condemn all violence and anger.  Our attempts to make people be nice seem only to suppress a deep rage within those who are suffering injustices.  This is evidenced by the lashing out of the Black community in America against police and police brutality.  Efforts to squelch the violence and make the Black community calm often result in more clashes and anger.  Jesus was angry on more than one occasion and yet did not sin in it.  Jesus cleared the temple with a whip overturning tables, clearly expressing anger that His Father's House had been turned into a business.  Scripture clearly talks about Jesus anger with the Pharisees but Jesus never goes down the road of wrath.  Wrath and anger are different, a person with wrath has sought to be god themselves determining how the person they have wrath with will be punished (judgment).

So Jesus was filled with anger at times and yet in the next scene after clearing the temple, we don't see Him whipping the disciples for their stupidity (they certainly displayed it at times).  We don't need to look far inside or outside the church to find how anger is expressed in unrighteous ways, there actually seems to be a growing anger/rage underneath the surface.  Road rage is on the rise each year and 37% of road rage cases involve a firearm.  I believe all the sin involved with anger has given anger a bad name.  After all Ephesians 4:26 says, "Be angry, and yet do not sin..."  It seems overall in the Body of Christ we seem to major on "...yet do not sin..." and wander why men are not as interested in church.  On a given Sunday there is an adult crowd that is 61% female and 39% male.  When church sends the message to men that they must be nice, the fierceness that is in men is quietly made unwelcome.

I am realizing that much of my anger has been surpressed in an effort to please my female run home as a child.  I have found the more my anger gets surpressed, denied, or pushed away there is a loss of the fierceness and passion needed to face life's toughest circumstances.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force."  I don't know any violent men who don't have anger to go along with the violence.

How do we see the fierceness within our identity "in Christ" released and how do we see the Body of Christ rise up as the warrior bride she is called to be.

In the Fierceness of the Kingdom,
Bret