Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness

“There is grace for the humble. Grace for those who ask for it. Instead of confessing others’ sins, you can confess your own. Instead of proudly proclaiming your own rightness, you can confess your many sins, failings, and weaknesses and ask for grace. Instead of railing against God when you don’t get what you want, you can submit yourself to God and draw near to him.”

“Jesus did not live a calm life. He cared too much. Yet he was not a tense person. He was not irritable, anxious, or driven. But he was not detached, cool, or aloof, either. He was no stoic or Buddhist. He plunged into the storms of human sufferings and sins. He felt keenly. At his friend Lazarus’s tomb, in the presence of death and human woe, he both bristled with anger and wept with sorrow.”

“It’s no accident “Love is patient” comes first in 1 Corinthians 13. Patience isn’t very dramatic, but it counts.”

“There is nothing so unromantic as love. 3 Romantic feelings of attraction and pleasure will sometimes be associated with love, but the essence of love is different: a whole-hearted commitment to act for another’s welfare.”

“None of us are as bad as we could be (though some people come close). None of us are as good as we should be (and the more you know yourself, the more you see how you fall short). Each of us is a microcosm: a perpetual skirmish in the Great War between good and evil.”

“Every time you get angry, you make your values and point of view explicit.”

“Here is the sweet paradox in how God works. He blesses those who admit that they need help: The poor in spirit are blessed (Matthew 5: 3). Sanity has a deep awareness, I need help. I can’t do life right on my own. Someone outside me must intervene. The sanity of honest humility finds mercy, life, peace, and strength. By contrast, saying we don’t need help keeps us stuck on that hamster wheel of making excuses and blaming others. The end result isn’t life and peace; it’s self-righteousness, self-justification, alienation, and bitterness.”

“We are meant to live with God on the throne, with a wide-open heart to him and others. But a contentious, judgmental person has shriveled up inside, shutting down to both God and neighbor. On the outside, a contentious person speaks rotten words that tear down rather than build up and condemn rather than give grace (Ephesians 4: 29). On the inside, a person swept up in sinful anger has become demonic and diabolical—in the truest sense—an image-bearer of the hostile critic of God’s people (James 3: 15; 4: 7).”

“There’s something high and mighty about anger, when distilled to its basic elements. Anger goes wrong when you get godlike. Your desires become divine law. Poke your way into every example of bad anger, and you’ll find god-playing.”

“No one can understand a person who isn’t willing to hold two opposites together. You can’t understand yourself without holding the creation and fall together.”

“The more insoluble and heartbreaking a problem, the smaller the action that is called for in any particular moment. We are slow to grasp this. Great suffering produces great anger, great fear, and great despair in part because no great solution is possible. But small kindnesses matter a great deal.”

“We often think that an “anger problem” must mean some major personal or interpersonal trouble. We think that the main sins to be solved are the violence, the tantrums, the arguing, the rancor, the deep-seated bitterness, the sour attitude. It’s true, these are serious business. If they remain unsolved, human life becomes a living hell. But in my experience, I’ve found that it’s often best to start with little problems. Disentangle your complaining. Come out to the clear, firm alternative. How on earth does a sour, negative attitude become a sweet, constructive spirit? Learn that and you’ve learned how to live well. You learn the secret of contentment (Philippians 4: 11–12).”

“When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord” (Proverbs 19: 3).”

“People in conflict have distorted hearing and speaking. We tune in to the same wavelength we broadcast on. I’ll listen for and speak whatever proves you wrong and proves me right. It’s the wrong channel. Angry people are unreasonable. We don’t talk sense when we are contentious.”

“The truth is that you can’t understand God’s love if you don’t understand his anger.”

“I was never meant to control the world, but that does not mean the world is random, purposeless, and out of control.”

“Sanity has a deep awareness, I need help. I can’t do life right on my own. Someone outside me must intervene. The sanity of honest humility finds mercy, life, peace, and strength. By contrast, saying we don’t need help keeps us stuck on that hamster wheel of making excuses and blaming others. The end result isn’t life and peace; it’s self-righteousness, self-justification, alienation, and bitterness. Chapter 3 How Does That Shoe Fit?”

“The more insoluble and heartbreaking a problem, the smaller the action that is called for in any particular moment.”

“Angry people always talk to the wrong person. They talk to themselves, rehearsing the failings of others. They talk to the people they’re mad at, reaming them out for real and imaginary failings. They talk to people who aren’t even involved, gossiping and slandering. But chaotic, sinful, headstrong anger starts to dissolve when you begin to talk to the right person—to your good Shepherd, who sees, hears, and is mercifully involved in your life.”

“Mercy is an entirely different way of reacting to offenses, to things we think are wrong. Think about this: mercy is not a non-reactive indifference—because it cares. And it’s the furthest thing from approval—because what’s happening is wrong. Mercy includes a component of forceful anger, but anger’s typical hostility, vindictiveness, and destructiveness does not dominate. True mercy proceeds hand in hand with true justice. It brings mercy to victims by bringing justice. While working hand in hand with justice, it offers mercy to violators. Mercy contains a combination of attitudes and actions that proceed in a constructive, instead of destructive, way. Mercy, including its component of constructive anger, is an amazing act of love. It’s how we love in the face of something wrong. I can know something is utterly wrong, yet I can act constructively.”

“Everyday complaining is so often about convenience and ease—but you can learn that other things are much more important. You want something better out of life than simply becoming one more complainer and cynic. That human kindness gives a sip of the fresh water of wisdom. God is the spring itself, the mighty river of living water. Jesus said that he went about the work of “making disciples.” That’s just a fancy way to say making us over so that we become like him in the way we treat people.”

“We have seen that anger is a moral response saying “That’s wrong and it matters.” We have seen that you do anger—all of you, body and soul—and you do it for personal reasons. But how does it arise, and what factors shape the particular forms it takes?”

“Bad anger doesn’t just go away. It festers over a lifetime. And good, constructive, problem-solving anger—like mercy—doesn’t just happen. It must be cultivated over a lifetime.”

“Two things struck me about Jimmy. First, he spoke in an unvarying monotone. His emotions were flatline. He sounded like he was reading from a telemarketing script. This dull litany of grievance was scarier than outright anger. At one point I asked him, “Are you angry?” (I was inviting him to say the obvious, let it come out of his own mouth.”

“Platitudes, affirming self-talk, mindfulness, self-assertion, or medication can never do what actually needs doing. None of these angers is explained or resolved by the self-help industry.”

“God does promise in that situation that even in the sacrifice of their lives, death is unable to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. A bigger purpose is being worked out by God. We will not find heaven on earth until heaven comes down.”

“Think with me about two wildly different ways of expressing displeasure with what is happening. Here are two lists of energetic ways of speaking up to wrong: List 1 List 2 rebuke attack reprove criticize admonish accuse exhort moralize confront condemn judge fairly be judgmental warn threaten talk directly talk aggressively righteous indignation self-righteous hostility Do these lists sound rather similar? How are they alike? How are they different? In fact, they are as different as heaven and hell. List 1 gives voice to goodness and love when we are concerned to address and redress a real problem. List 2 gives voice to evil and hate in the act of condemning. But, unfortunately for the clarity of our mind and emotions, both lists tend to call up the same connotations. When people say they “rebuke,” they most often attack. When they “confront,” they most often condemn. When they “judge,” they are most often judgmental. Both lists sound aggressive, as if both lists express different ways of “getting it off my chest” and “letting you have it.” It’s true that both lists have something wrong in view. And both lists can express the emotion of anger. In other words, they are both on the spectrum of displeasure toward whatever is going on. But the motivation, the intentions, and the way of coming across are opposite. When List 1 is done right, you act in the image of Jesus. You work to redeem. When you do List 2, you act out in the image of Satan. You murder verbally. List 2 words are innately destructive. These are ways to attack people, not problems. They “take out the speck in your brother’s eye” by swinging a 2 x 4 at his face. They are harmful, not helpful, in addressing problems. These are hostile, unkind acts. When you are judgmental, you will find that other people, without fail, react to you with fight, fright, or flight. The war continues. List 1 words intend to capture something utterly constructive and life-giving. These are ways of expressing firm, candid love. Indignation, for example, is a just and energetic response to something mean, evil, unjust, plain wrong. For you to do the difficult kinds of wisdom expressed on List 1, you must care enough to tackle a real problem directly. You must aim with all your heart for a constructive solution. If you are lovingly direct, you will find that other people sometimes (and amazingly) respond extremely well. (Not always; there are no guarantees in interpersonal relationships.) You are an agent of peacemaking in a world at war. I have tried to describe this most rare and wonderful form of anger. But you’ve got to see it to believe it. As you start to do it, even haltingly, you will become convinced that this is the way of life and love in a world of wrongs.”

“This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; This is not the end but it is the road; all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.”

“But in real life, anger is the reaction that incinerates marriages and disintegrates families. It energizes gossip and guns down classmates. It divides churches, turns friendship into enmity, and erupts in road rage.”

“One of the effects of being marked by suffering is learning to value the future. Not all the crying or pain goes away now, but he will make all things new.”