Angry Peace

What a wonderful thing to be a peacemaker. I'm ready for my next step towards not being angry. Correction: angry for the wrong reasons. I think I put a lot of confusion as to what anger really means, just as there are different meanings to the word forgiveness. Within the Christian Circle, there are often blurs in the meanings of words/terms. Just as an example, and to touch on the surface of the subject, forgiveness is not the same as reconciling. Where repair is ideal, we must realize that not everything will have the knitting back together like our spirits pine for. Forgiveness has many different faces, sometimes false, just like anger.

Anger, in its purest form, is unrest to the point of reaction to a situation with a harsh frustration. I've sometimes included anger in a lot of areas that aren't necessarily things to have the label put on them: guilt, regret, or blame. Just because I have a certain personality type doesn't mean I'm an angry person. To elaborate, I'm opinionated on certain things. My family, in general, is very opinionated. Not as much as some, but enough. We get passionate about things we have very strong connections with. While there are healthy ways to be opinionated, this doesn't mean we are angry. When someone first told me I was opinionated, I remember thinking, "Dear Lord! I'm a horrible person!" where these two things really have nothing to do with anything. When I realized that being opinionated is a way of having a very "judgmental" (or decisive) personality type, the load was lifted a bit. I still don't like the fact I'm an opinionated guy because I use it to react in rash ways, but if people start walking over me with facts that aren't true, I'm able to defend yourself. I have my opinion about music, art, comics and politics. That does NOT mean I'm angry.

Revenge is also not anger. Revenge is something that is, honestly, from the it of hell. If Jesus spoke against such things, as in Matthew 5:38-42, should we declare such things as justifiable or holy? I could go on to suggest that war, an act of revenge, is not considered holy, but that's me being opinionated again. I apologize. Revenge is an ugly thing rooted from bitterness (another factor that will be discussed later) and carried out in an ungodly way. Revenge is us acting in an illegitimate way: it's reaction without thinking. I wish so many times that my being would not have--and still wouldn't, when the time arises--act in ways that are beside my spirit and better understanding. Revenge is not an emotion, like anger is. Revenge is a tool of some demon, which has been very useful for the legion of them. If you'd like to disagree, I'd encourage you to look at the continent just south of Europe. I believe there will be enough genocide and tribal war there to make a sound judgment. Revenge is not anger. It is an unreasonable act.

Bitterness is not anger, either. I would stress to the reader that anger is an emotion and not an action. It's strictly an expression of a state of being. It does not identify you. Bitterness, and the state of it, does. Being bitter means one does not release a situation in their spirit or heart. It's a state where one person/body has placed a circumstance and/or situation that has wronged and scarred them in front of the other party--and sadly not necessarily the party that may or may not have created the bitter party to be a victim--and uses it as a veil to fuel their own being to prolong the anger emotion past the point in which it is healthy. Bitterness is judgment in one's heart which places one in a position where one cannot help but act out of pain, not out of love. Bitterness, as best I can say, is some cancerous version of anger. Bitterness seeps into our beings and created the opposite of forgiveness, which is much harder to undo than the mere temper tantrum. Bitterness teaches us hate, war, and revenge. Anger teaches us that love isn't present in a situation or ourselves and propels us (if we let it) to pursue acts of righteousness.

Spiritually healthy anger tells us that God is absent from a situation, and that it needs to remedied. Take, for example, when Jesus walked into the temple and saw it taken by men who knew nothing of the responsibility of taking on the Lord's name. He's seeing the very commandment God (or He!) gave Moses on Mount Sinai in Matthew 21. ANGRY, Jesus starts overturning tables in the temple where they are selling, changing money, and having doves for sale (which apparently sets God off). Now, the word "angry" is not found in the chapter (verses 12-15) in the New International Version, from which I am referencing the account, but I doubt people were calling Jesus "chuckles" during this. Take, also, Hosea. God, outright, calls Israel a whore. He even goes as far as to say the girl needs to get the other man out between her breasts. Out of this anger--this sheer frustration--God chooses to say, "but I'm going to win her back. Deep down I know she loves me." God judges Israel for her wrong-doings, but not without letting the nation know how he loves them. He is not bitter. What we gather from scripture is that God acts in anger, but not in the anger we always think. We confuse anger with the things aforementioned, and we say God is an angry God. What a false label! God is not an opinionated, revengeful, or bitter God. If he were, he wouldn't have kept trying. If he was bitter, he would not have sent Jesus. Though I am no master of my tongue, or a noble, righteous soldier in all times of my life, I know that my God is love. His whole being is one who loves.

When we find ourselves labeling God as an angry God, let us remember what anger should be, not necessarily our own bitter, revengeful, or harsh judgments. Let us remember our beautiful, love God for the God he says he is. He is a God who simply does not give up. He will keep finding ways that will have men leave their estranged state (2 Samuel 14:14). Our God is not our conventional thinking, but a lovely, wonderful mystery. Let us find the grace and peace that he offers and hold to the love that he constantly feeds us.

Grace and peace to us all.