Anger is an oft misunderstood subject among Christians, who generally think that it is evil and something to be avoided, citing—almost exclusively—from a small circle of biblical verses to support such a stance, such as 2 Cor 12:20 (For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarrelling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder", Eph 4:31 (Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice", Col 3:8 (But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips") and Jam 1:20 (My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires").
These are important biblical injunctions that Christians must take seriously, of course. But they do not circumscribe all that Scriptures have to teach about anger and being angry. Though the words, 'anger,' 'angered,' and 'angry,' altogether appear about only 390x, the idea of anger appears far more frequently, expressed by such other English words as 'wrath,' 'vexation,' 'indignation. Of these, easily about 10% relates to God's anger. If God could be angry, (sometimes "very angry") then it cannot be a sin to be angry. If God's character as a whole is defined by the adjective 'holy,' then anger is a facet of holiness. Indeed, it may be said that, far too often, Christians are not angry enough; probably because we do not take sin seriously enough to warrant being angry.
Like many words, the word 'angry' often changes in nuances when used in different contexts, from the person being 'angry' being perceived in negative terms to being just and right in his response. Anger can mean the spontaneous and uncontrolled outburst of a person to perceived humiliation or disenfranchisement. It may also refer to the deliberate and measured retort of a person to a clearly unjust and intolerable act. It is important, therefore, that we should be clear about what we mean when we use the word. Examples of the former are easy to come by and without exception we have all witnessed one form of it or another. The latter is less common. Let me cite a historical examplar.
In late 19th Cent King Leopold, king of the Belgiums, secured Congo (today Zaire) as his personal colony. From it he abstracted a huge fortune, mostly from the wild rubber found plentiful in that country. To obtain a constant source of this riches, however, Leopold had to exert a draconian and wicked system of colonial administration that provided Joseph Conrad with the model for his character Mr Kurtz in his heart-wrenching novel The Heart of Darkness. The natives were forced to collect the rubber at the cost of neglecting their own farms. If they did not collect the quota of latex assigned to them, their right hands were severed as an example to others. The police force established to maintain this system of forced labour was issued with guns and bullets; every bullet spent had to be accounted for by a severed right hand. If a soldier decided to shoot of a dozen rounds just to release the tedium of a boring existence in the jungle, he had to find the same number of natives, have their right hands cut off to square up the numbers in his master's log book. Leopold's vast fortune which he used to build the lavish palaces and grand houses in Antwerp and Brussels was a fortune covered in blood.
When Congo gained its independence in 1960, Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister in the run-up to independence day. King Baudouin (grandson of Leopold) arrived in Leopoldville (today Kinshasa) for the celebration. In his address to the new nation, he had the shameless audacity and patronizing pomposity to say to them, "It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that you are worthy of our confidence." Seized with anger, Lumumba gave an impromptu response that essentially told the king what the people of Congo thought of their confidence. Recognizing that Lumumba represented a kind of democracy that would not work for them, US president, Dwight Eisenhower, ordered the CIA to take him out. With the connivance of Lumumba's chief of staff, Mobutu, Lumumba was kidnapped by the CIA on 14 January 1961, flown to Elizabethville (modern day Lubambashi) and, three days later, killed and dismembered, the parts of his corpse dissolved in acid. In his place, the kleptomaniac Mobutu was made a US backed dictator, until forced into exile in 1997 by Laurent Kabila.1
Lumumba's anger was not an uncontrolled outburst of an ill-disciplined socially-maladjusted adolescent. It was a measured response to an evil injustice masquerading as favour that needed responding to if truth was to prevail. Our anger at the CIA, the US, and Mobutu for their falsehood cannot be anything less either. And there is nothing political in saying so.
Two of the most interesting features issuing from a study of anger in the OT is the extraordinary number of Hebrew words for anger, and that Yahweh is the most frequent subject of it (almost all the 30 plus times). The idea of anger is expressed by at least eight different Hebrew words, including 'ap, 'wrath'; anep, 'displeasure'; behala, 'wrath'; ebra, 'overflowing fury'; hara, 'burning anger'; za'am, 'indignanation'; zal'apa, 'rage' and qetsep, 'wrath'.
Cain was the first person reported to be angry; in fact he was "very angry," wayyichar me'od, because his offering was not viewed with favour by Yahweh (Gen 4:5).
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©Alberith, 2017