Are You Right to Be Angry?

“My name is Ryan. I’m an angry man. It’s been a few hours since my last struggle.” 

This is the part where you say: “Hi, Ryan.” 

The original AA could have been Angry Anonymous, and the reason you should say, “Hi, Ryan,” after I introduce myself is because you all belong at that meeting too. I’m not meaning to falsely accuse you. And I hope my suggestion that you’re an angry person doesn’t, well, anger you. Like you, I prefer to label myself as “frustrated” or “disappointed.” But I want to be open to the possibility that God sees in my self-styled “frustrations” what He saw in His pouting prophet in Jonah 4:1. When Jonah was “displeased” that God showed mercy to the wrong people, God saw “anger.” And right after the fall, right before the first murder, it was anger God saw in that brother whose devotion didn’t match up to his sibling’s (Genesis 4:6). 

When we think of people with an anger problem, we think of the road-raging man, the door-slamming mom, or the temper-throwing athlete. But if we let the Bible read us, we’ll also see anger in the husband who withdraws, in the wife who shuts her mouth but rolls her eyes, and in the church member who only criticizes others. Those in-the-know will beware of anger every time life doesn’t go our way. We may feel more than anger whenever life doesn’t go our way, but it would be strange for anger not to be there then. And since every human struggles just as much as Jonah and Cain to make things go our way, we feel anger often. 

God graciously invited both Jonah and Cain to evaluate their hearts when He essentially asked them both, “Are you right to be angry?” (see Genesis 4:6; Jonah 4:4, 9). If we’ll imagine God asking us the same question, then every moment of our anger can become an opportunity for sober reflection. Sober and slow reflection, knowing that we, like Jonah, will answer with hot takes that are not only too quick but too confident—“Yes, of course I’m right to be angry!”

In Uprooting Anger (see Terry Enns’s recent review), Robert Jones notes that of the forty-seven times the main Old Testament word for "anger” shows up (aph), forty-two of those occurrences refer to anger that God would say is not right.¹ Is it possible that our experiences and expressions of anger follow a similar trajectory—that we’re sinning nearly 90 percent of the time we’re angry? 

Jones lays out three qualifications for righteous anger that will help us evaluate our hearts when we’re angry.

Test 1: You’re Right to Be Angry, If You’re Offended by Sin

Anger appears whenever evil emerges. In other words, we get angry whenever we perceive that evil or wrong has been done. Every time we experience evil we should remind ourselves that it is God alone who has the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Thus, what we think is evil is evil only if God says so. Of course, God’s record of what’s evil is found in His Word. So a good question every time we see an anger-inducing wrong is, Does God agree this is wrong? What I find is that God doesn’t agree with me as much as I’d like. 

Back to Jonah: Did Jonah have reason not to like Nineveh? Yes, the Ninevites had a rap sheet of sins that was as long as the Tigris. Was Jonah right to be angry? No, because it wasn’t Nineveh’s sin that angered Jonah. He was angry that God did not will what Jonah wanted. The problem was that Jonah’s craving for judgment collided with God’s character of mercy. And that made Jonah exceedingly angry.

“Righteous anger reacts against actual sin.”² If we could see our anger rightly, we may see often that we’re not actually angry because God’s 10 Commandments have been broken but rather because one of My 100 Preferences has been neglected. We are not right in our anger if we’re angry about anything other than sin against God. That doesn’t mean we can’t be angry when someone sins against us or against someone we love. But we need the sanctified heart of David, who acknowledged that every sin against persons is first a sin against God (Psalm 51:4). So, the next time you’re angry, ask, Has God said this is wrong—not just in a subjective impression but in Scripture? Did they sin against God, or just inconvenience me?

This first test actually is the easiest to pass. Christians will have many good reasons to be angry, because this world is full of sin. And yet even if our anger starts right, it can quickly go wrong.

Test 2: You’re Right to Be Angry, If You’re Focused on God

We need to be concerned not only with what provoked our anger but also with who we are thinking about when we’re angry. “Righteous anger focuses on God and His Kingdom, rights, and concerns, not on me and my kingdom, rights, and concerns.”³

This test questions who is dominant in our thoughts when we’re angry—is it me who was wronged, them who wronged me, or is it God? Who we’re focused on when we’re angry is a test we can infer from Hebrews 11:6, “Without faith [throughout our anger] it is impossible to please Him [in our anger].” Or, 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink [or get angry], do all to the glory of God.” It’s humbling to realize that often when I’m angered because someone sinned not only against me but against the Lord, my thoughts are focused on myself—“How could they do this to me given all I’ve done for them! What does this say about me that they valued me so little?” And, in my worst angry moments, I’m thinking very little of God, what honor He’s due, or how to serve Him in my disappointment. 

Of course focusing on God in our anger isn’t saying that when we’re angry we should be angry with God. Rather we should focus on what God deserves and on what He wants. There are surely lots of ways to do this. The circumstances of our anger will determine what exactly we should focus on when we focus on God. But here are some possibilities: In the midst of anger, we should focus on God’s rights—not on our worthiness or unworthiness. We should focus on God’s Kingdom, on His power to rule even in this situation such that His good will certainly come of it (Genesis 50:20). We should focus on His concerns, that He would have us flee bitterness and an unforgiving spirit in order to pursue peace with the one who angered us (Matthew 5:9).

Being offended by sin and being focused on God are tests for our internal experience of anger. The third test evaluates our external expression of anger.

Test 3: You’re Right to Be Angry, If the Fruit of Your Anger is Godly

We can pass both tests of experiencing anger internally in ways that are pleasing to the Lord, and righteous anger can still be ruined if we express that anger outwardly in any way God would not approve. “Righteous Anger is accompanied by other godly qualities, and expresses itself in godly ways.”⁴ (Confession: This point tempted me to toss the book in the fireplace. But I realized the irony and resisted.) 

Whenever we’ve been wronged, we instinctively draw up Immunity Agreements on our behalf, exonerating ourselves from anything we may say or do while we’re angry. But what if Immunity Agreements authorized by the angry aren’t admissible in God’s court of law? Where did we get this conviction that being hurt gives us license to hurt?

How easy it is to transition from the role of the offended to the role of the offender, from deserving confession to needing to confess to God and then to bystanders we aimed our ungodly anger at and maybe even to the ones who sinned against us, all because we expressed godly anger sinfully.

Until death or glory, two powers will work inside the Christian heart: the Spirit and the flesh. One very practical help to evaluate our anger as right or wrong comes in the two lists of Galatians 5:19-24. When you’re angry—you don’t get your way, don’t do well at work or on a test, aren’t treated as you wish by people important to you—are the works of the flesh or the fruit of the Spirit evident in your response? Violence may be a more destructive expression of anger, but rolling our eyes, huffing, giving the silent treatment, and writing others off fall within the sinful, that is, fleshly expressions of “strife, rivalries, dissensions, divisions.” The fruit of our anger should be godly, which means someone else’s sin will not excuse our losing “patience” with them or our suspending “faithfulness” toward God until such time that we feel better. When we’re angry, love and kindness should still characterize us.

Being understandably hurt doesn’t make everything we do in that hurt right. What we do when life goes wrong matters.

When You’re Angry, Are You Right?

Everyone gets angry. Even the sweetest children. My son recently reflected on being none-too-pleased by the correction he received for doing wrong. In his anger he committed more wrong and thus needed more correction. When he was no longer angry, he admitted, “I shouldn’t trust my heart when I’m angry.” Amen, son. Neither should I. 

When it comes to anger, we want to start right and stay right. So, next time you’re angry, run through these three questions: (1) Why am I offended? (2) Who is the focus? and (3) What is the fruit?

¹ Robert Jones, Uprooting Anger, 27-28.

² Robert Jones, Uprooting Anger, 29.

³ Robert Jones, Uprooting Anger, 29.

⁴ Robert Jones, Uprooting Anger, 29.