Anger: The Step-Child of Justice

Anger seems to have a thousand tongues of fire. It can be confusing, feel outside ourselves, and hard to understand at times.

Anger burns bright and hot and fast, sitting right beneath my lungs and my stomach. It leeches strength. It leaves us tired.  In the brokenness of this world, our bodies can feel overworked from seeking justice, fairness, and “rightness,” when justice, fairness, and rightness seem elusive. Our sense of “right” and fair itself can be frustrating. Our arrows of anger shoot wildly at times, thrown off course by the breeze of our limited awareness, our hypersensitivity, and our independent definitions of right and wrong, good and bad.

Anger:

A strong or intense emotion related to feeling that someone has done wrong or something has gone wrong; often connected to something perceived as unfair or unacceptable in some way; often coupled with or related to a spike in hormones

Anger’s cousins include: irritation, frustration, annoyance, rage, wrath. These are each relatives of anger, connected to anger, but linguistically and experientially different. Identifying yourself as a human will help you look at your own anger. Emotions are a human experience. Anger is a human experience.

Anger is an emotion, then, that we have a relationship with but perhaps a relationship we hold at a distance. Often, our anger as humans can be off base or over the top, which brings a sense of guilt. But anger does have a purpose, connected to justice, connected to our deep desire for fairness in a world where we can feel unheard and unseen much of the time.

While our distorted sense of “rightness” needs honesty and admission, anger has its place.

As humans we have a penchant for ignoring our uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, yet anger has a place.

At times we might pet and stroke our pride over seeking the repair of love and honor in a relationship, but anger has its place.

We often see justice only from our individualistic lens, rather than one of community or “one another.” Still, anger has a place.

Anger is not the problem. Anger can become a problem when we blindly follow it – whether for a moment or to justify ourselves time and again.

The emotion of anger, like all emotions, has a job in these bodies. Anger indicates to us that life or relationship is off, not quite right, that something needs attention. Anger, at its core, is a helper to us. It has good information to share when we give it a tiny bit of space without inviting the lions of anger to roam in our lives and relationships freely.

Anger: An Exercise

Let’s try an exercise to see the connection between anger and its partner justice:

Consider your local context, the community around you, and name anything that seems “wrong” or feels “off” to you. This might include ways people are mistreated, yourself included, or the disasters and disappointments of life.

Do you notice and acknowledge a seed of anger in you, a little spark? We can more easily navigate anger when it’s small like that, outside of moments of shocking injustice or distress. When we acknowledge with regularity what feels “off” or “wrong” anger doesn’t build in our system quite so much, making the white-hot moments of anger that feel out of control less likely to boil over with words or actions we can’t put back inside.

The purpose of Anger

When we feel the kindle of “this isn’t the way the world is supposed to be,” we are meant to have a curiosity that leads us toward further investigation. Sometimes what is “off” will be inside of us, our own problems and flaws to confess. At other times it will be someone else’s problems or flaws impacting us. Still at other times we will confront the strangeness of a broken world waiting for God to recreate and make things new.

Without anger in a broken world, “everything is fine” becomes our mantra.

Fine is not what we were made for. The mundane, contextual, or ordinary, may be part of daily life, a good part, but fine is far from the flourishing we were made for that involves many emotions, sorting, and growth.

Holding the brokenness of the world honestly, with redemption and hope is. The words of the writer to the Romans may be about us or about the world in general when we note the anger and frustration we experience in brokenness:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:15-20)

We could swap in a communal “we” for “I” in the above passage. Or broaden the sentiment outside ourselves to the world in general. We have our issues, and so does the universe itself. It might sound like this:

I do not understand what is happening in the world. I want good, and I’m having a hard time seeing good or finding good, Lord. Is this what it is to be human? Is this life in the world – the desire for good, wanting the world to be a better place, and feeling helpless more often than powerful, feeling small and powerless, messing up, and trying again? Things fall apart. There are cracks and fractures. We all struggle, each of us in our own way.

Romans 8 follows Romans 7, reminding us that it is God who justifies us and justifies humanity. When we feel powerless, or rotten, or angry, or sad, God’s love remains.

At the end of the day, God sees what is true and “right,” when we might occasionally be off-base. God sees the whole story of humanity, the whole of my story and yours, when we see only parts. Being aware our lens is valid, while only partial, can help inform us as we travel through life trying to bring honor to this world rather than injustice.

When anger arises as yellow, rather than orange or red or magenta, opening our hands and asking for help holding it is a good start:

God, show me the injustices of the world, not only the injustices I see through my foggy lens. God, let Your love reside alongside my anger, always, in all things, each day. In Jesus Christ, who knew anger at injustice, whose love remains. Amen.