Anger as the Sun Sets

"Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil."

- Ephesians 4:26-27

So this past Sunday we began a mini-series at United Life on the concept of "shalom", the peace and wholeness that God intended for his creation (a la Numbers 6:26), but which has been broken through sin. We talked about how, through Jesus Christ, God not only saved us once and for all, he is also saving us in the here and now, transforming our lives both communally and individually, helping us to become whole once again. Specifically, for the month of February, we'll be looking at the ways God transforms the four basic emotions that every human shares, but which have been broken in each of us: fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. This week, we'll be talking about anger. 

I share the above image, which might be a little too small and definitely too difficult to interpret, because it reveals the clear disobedience of the Presbyterian church to follow the instructions given to us in Ephesians. Because it's a little hard to read, let me interpret the chart for you: since the organization of the first Presbyterians in America in 1706 we have split numerous times. It is only through a few reunions that we have managed to keep the number of Presbyterian denominations down to 9. The amazing thing is that this chart only tracks three different roots. If we were to include all the denominations that trace their roots to the teachings of John Calvin and John Knox, that number would go from 9 to 47. And keep in mind that we are not talking about individual churches here: we are talking about denominations, each consisting of hundreds and thousands of churches, many of which themselves have endured their own schisms. 

And though not every one of these splits has been bitter, the majority have been, each representing the inability of groups of people to see eye to eye with one another. Each split represents one side saying about the other, "We cannot do this anymore. We cannot worship God with you. In fact, we wonder if we are even worshipping the same God." Each split represents the inability of followers of Christ to be angry without sinning. 

It's interesting that Paul tells the Ephesians to "be angry." I know that my image of an obedient follower of Christ is rarely of an angry person. Yet there is a difference between being angry and being sinfully angry. Anger, in itself, is actually a gift: anger is our natural response to things not gonig the way they should, whether they happen to be large injustices or small tragedies. With our world the way it is, something would be wrong in us if we didn't feel some amount of anger. 

But being "sinfully angry" is a whole other matter, and the splitting of churches gives us an idea of what it's all about. Our anger is sinful when it moves from an issue to a person. Here's what I mean: if we are angry over an issue, we can go to the person with whom we disagree and discuss the matter with them, sometimes heatedly, sometimes calmly, but always with the attitude that we wish the best for that person. But when anger moves from an issue to a person, it feeds that flame within us, the one that whispers, "I don't just want to win this argument, I want to see him eat his words. I want to see him crash and burn." Paul is clear: there is no room for this in Christ's body.