On the Place of Anger in the Christian Life

Here are a few reminders about the place of anger in the Christian life that I’ve been learning lately:

1. Anger is not necessarily antithetical to love and justice.
2. The policing and vilification of the anger that arises in response to injustice serves to enable and support injustice.
3. God gets angry at injustice.
4. To be like God we must learn how to be angry, too.
5. Anxious systems rely on the suppression and repression of anger at the injustice in the system.
6. Authoritarian supremacist systems are anxious systems that use shame, fear, and guilt to exert group conformity and control critiques of the systems.
7. Anger (at injustice) feels “transgressive” in anxious/authoritarian systems. This is because it tells the truth about wrongdoing in a way that threatens the system itself.
8. Not all anger is equal, not all anger is virtuous, not all anger is sinful, not all anger does good work.
9. I’ve had to learn how to feel my own anger, not be offended by the anger of others, and discern the kind of anger that is arising, and the work it’s doing.
10. If we are going to learn how to love like Jesus loves we must face and befriend our own anger and make space for it in our life.

Finally, Melissa Florer-Bixler’s book How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace was really helpful for me as I’ve sorted through my anger and the role of it in my Christian life.