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HomeResourcesPodcast episode 075: Commanding the heart: Anger with Chase Kuhn and Kara Hartley

Podcast episode 075: Commanding the heart: Anger with Chase Kuhn and Kara Hartley

Published on: 20 Apr 2022
Author: Chase Kuhn

Violence is not only a physical activity, it’s also something that lurks in our hearts. The Lord Jesus cautions us that refraining from physical violence is only half of the equation. We are also liable for our thoughts towards one another. Kingdom righteousness demands that Christians pursue reconciliation with one another, rather than harbouring a grudge. This is urgent work!

At our first live event in March 2022, CCL Director Chase Kuhn and Archdeacon for Women Kara Hartley consider how the command to not murder exposes the anger in our hearts.

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Runtime: 58:33 min.

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Transcript

Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.

Chase Kuhn: Hello and welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast. My name is Chase Kuhn and I’m pleased to welcome you to this special episode of our podcast. Every year, we hold four live events for the Centre for Christian Living. This year in 2022, our events are focused on “Commanding the heart”. We’re looking at Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 and considering how various facets of his teaching in the commands that he engages there expose our hearts.

This episode today has the audio from our most recent event—the first in this series—on anger. I spoke at the event, along with my dear friend Kara Hartley, and I hope very much that you’ll benefit from the audio from that event. Enjoy!

[Music]

Introduction

Jane Tooher: Well, welcome. My name is Jane Tooher. I serve on the faculty here at Moore College, where I lecture in ministry and church history, and I’m the Director of the Priscilla & Aquila Centre.

It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the Centre for Christian Living live event on anger. The Centre for Christian Living is a centre of Moore College that exists to bring biblical ethics to everyday issues. This year, we’ve dedicated our four live events to the exploration of how the law reaches us as Christians.

Often our approach to the law is like walking a tightrope: teetering back and forth, worried about falling off, on one side, into legalism and, on the other side, into licentiousness. But perhaps this is not the right way to think about righteousness in God’s kingdom.

For 2022, we will consider different laws that Jesus expounded in Matthew 5, exploring how the commands reveal the heart. Tonight we begin with Jesus’ first example of kingdom righteousness: not only is murder prohibited, but so is anger. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 5:21-26:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

In response to what I’ve just read and in anticipation of all we’ll hear this evening, I ask you to join me in prayer.

Our great God and heavenly Father,

We thank you that you see and know all things. We pray that your Spirit will work in each one of us tonight to listen to your word so that we will understand what anger is—that we will love others deeply and that we will understand and love justice. Please give each of us soft hearts to listen to what is being said, and please give faithfulness and great wisdom to Kara and Chase as they speak and answer questions.

Father, we pray these things for the sake of Jesus’ name and for his glory. Amen.

I’m very pleased to introduce our two speakers for this evening. Kara Hartley is the Archdeacon for Women in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. Chase Kuhn is the Director of the Centre for Christian Living and lecturer in Christian doctrine and ethics here at Moore College.

Well, what are we going to do tonight? What’s our format? We’re going to hear two short addresses on the topic of anger—one from Kara, who’s going to introduce us to the topic, and then we’re going to hear from Chase, who will take us to the Bible and see what God’s word has to say on anger.

Then we’re going to listen to a conversation between Kara and Chase on the topic, about the practicalities related to anger. And then finally, we’re going to finish with a Q&A session. [Editor’s note: The Q&A session has not been included in this episode, but you can view it online. {It starts at the 1:02:50-minute mark.}]

So let’s begin with our first presentation and Kara will introduce us to anger. Please welcome Kara.

[Applause]

Part 1: Presenting the issue

Presentation by Kara Hartley

Kara Hartley: Thanks, Jane! Hello everyone and hello to those online as well. Thanks to Chase for the invitation to join him to think through this important topic.

I was watching TV the other night, and on one of promos for that station’s shows, they had a clip of the comedian Hannah Gadsby. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She’s actually quite famous for saying she was quitting comedy a couple of years ago and then, I think, she’s continued in her career anyway.

She had this line in the clip: “People are never angry for fun. It comes from a place of pain.” Since I was preparing and thinking about this seminar, that caught my attention, and it made me think. Is that true? Is anger always from a place of pain?

In reality, people get angry. The NRMA’s 2021 Courteous Driving Survey, which included 2,154 people, in a year when we weren’t driving very much because of COVID, found 71 per cent of drivers in New South Wales and the ACT had experienced some form of road rage in the past year. Among those surveyed, 84 per cent admitted to committing road rage in the last year, and blasting the horn, making rude gestures and yelling abuse topped the list of the types of road rage they’d experienced or committed. You’ll be pleased to know that no participant said they had been physically assaulted because of road rage.

People get angry. Sometimes they seem to get angry over simple and somewhat trivial things. I get angry, and I take it you get angry as well. As Christians, we may not get all shouty and rude about it. We may hide our anger a bit better than that. Often we’ll have a slow internal seethe. Or perhaps some silent treatment—maybe a little bit passive aggressive. Or we’ll find that opportunity to sit down with a friend and have a rant about that person who has made us angry. Anger can be a momentary response and then disappears. Or it can be an ongoing emotion that might consume us.

But is anger always from a place of pain? It might be. But just as often, our anger bubbles up from a place of perceived pain—that is, perhaps more from inconvenience or entitlement. That is, my desires—my wants and needs and hopes—have been compromised by someone else and I’m very angry about that. Our anger could emerge from a place of fear, which, I guess, can be a place of pain. That is, fear of losing control over a situation or over a person. So anger and coercion somehow work together to regain our control.

Here are some reasons why my anger might bubble up:

  • That person pressed my buttons. They drive my nuts.
  • That person actually did the wrong thing and that makes me so mad.
  • That person hurt me, or was abusive or violent or mean, and they ought to be punished, and I’m angry about their actions or who they are toward me.
  • Or I feel overlooked, sidelined, taken for granted, humiliated and abandoned, and I’m angry.

Before we go into too great a detail about anger—before we get too far—let’s consider just for a second what is anger? What do we mean when we say we’re angry? Then I want to raise two questions that I think we need to wrestle with: should we even get angry, and in what sense does the Bible give me permission to be angry?

1. What is anger?

First of all, what is anger? Most people will suggest that anger is an emotion. That is, the emotion of anger emerges as a response to my understanding or my experience of an event. So the obvious: somebody cuts me off in the traffic. It’s amazing that in my normal life as I go about, I would very rarely yell at somebody. But somebody cuts me off in the traffic and in the confines of a car when I’m on my own, I can explode.

Hearing your friend has said something untrue or hurtful about me to others. A colleague has mistreated me somehow in the workplace. Or someone has committed a violent or abusive act. The emotion of anger emerges as a response to my understanding or experience of an event like that.

My anger may be expressed in a range of emotions: irritability, argumentativeness, bitterness, passivity, shouting or, even in the extreme, some violence.

David Powlison in his book Good and Angry says that at its core, anger expresses “I am against that”.1 He goes on to say,

Anger expresses the energy of your reaction to something you find offensive and wish to eliminate … [It is] active displeasure toward something that’s important enough to care about.2

So he says anger is always about displeasure. It’s the way we react when something we think important is not the way it’s supposed to be.

In their book Untangling Emotions, Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith identify anger as a “moral emotion” that passes judgement.3 They argue that at its best, anger is right to say that something is wrong. But then they argue that at its worst, anger is “unadulterated self-interest and issues an ultimatum” to the other person: it’s my way or the highway.4 They add, “Anger offers the intoxicating experience of playing God”.5 Vengeance is mine, not God’s. This is ugly anger and is quite arrogant.

Therefore, when we think about anger, anger aligns to the values we hold. It actually reveals underlying beliefs—beliefs that I hold that are integral to my view and understanding of the world.

So at its best, this might look like being angry at the injustice of child slavery or at violence towards women. We express that in ways that are good and constructive: we might write petitions. We might attend a peaceful rally. We might contact a local member of parliament. We might do things as a result of that injustice.

At its worst, I get angry when somebody cuts me off in the traffic or pushes in in the queue or turns up late, and at that point, my anger is an expression of my belief that I ought not to be inconvenienced or interrupted, which certainly aligns with what matters to me, because what matters to me is often me.

So it seems that there are two sides and two possible extremes of anger. I think this is where our wrestle with it begins. There’s the extreme of being angry at injustice, and how we express that helpfully. But there’s the other extreme that, in the end, anger expresses what’s important to me, and what’s often important to me is me.

But then there’s those other two questions I raised: should we even get angry? And does the Bible give me permission to be angry?

2. Should we even get angry?

As I said, anger is a moral emotion: it makes a statement about what matters. I just want to step back for a moment, though, having laid that foundation and those questions, and take a look at the sweep of the Bible story as we’re thinking about this from a Christian point of view—thinking about from creation to new creation. Ultimately, where the Bible is pointing us to is a final existence that is free of wrath and rage—of anger. It’s the people of God gathered around the throne of God, governed by peace, if you like. Yet we know that between the Fall in Genesis 3 and the return of Jesus, sin impacts aspects of all of our life together. When it comes to anger, the Old Testament identifies God as “slow to anger” (Exod 34:6), and often when his anger is expressed, his anger needs to be aroused or awakened. His anger is a response to sin and injustice.

This side of the cross, there may be times when my anger is justified. In Ephesians 4, Paul seems to acknowledge that there’s a time for anger, but then says, in your anger, “do not sin” or “do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26). He then goes on to tell them to get rid of all anger (Eph 4:29-32). So in your anger, do not sin. But get rid of all your anger.

James 1:19-21 says, “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (v. 19)—like God, who is slow to become angry. But the reason for this slowness is because James says, “for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (v. 20).

But we need to be careful to jump too quickly to these kinds of exceptions. The commands to rid ourselves of all rage—that we are to leave God to execute his judgement—are the greater emphasis in the Bible for the life of the believer.

3. Does the Bible give me permission to be angry?

Then, of course, there’s this idea of righteous anger: if the New Testament is to direct us away from expressing anger, then how do we understand this term of righteous anger, which people will often turn to to explain or perhaps provide some permission for our anger?

What is righteous anger? Tim Challies defines it as “Righteous anger reacts against actual sin, not a violation of my desires or preferences”.6 It’s the idea of anger that focuses on God and his kingdom—violations of God’s holiness, if you like. It’s a concern for the name of God, and when that is violated, then God and his people are angry.

But as we get angry at behaviour and attitudes that profane God’s holiness, how do we express that anger? Do we go into fits of rage? Do we go into a time of grief? Do we sign a petition? Do we vent online? Do we turn to prayer? Do we march in the streets? Do we do all of that? How do we express that righteous anger?

In addition, what triggers righteous anger or what are the limits of this kind of anger? We see God’s name violated and his goodness perverted on a daily basis. Why do I exercise some form of righteous anger over one issue, but not another issue?

This is simply an introduction as we explore this issue. Two final thoughts from me before I hand over to Chase. Firstly, as I’ve said, so much of our anger results from those daily irritations—things that come from interactions with others, like road rage—including, so often, the people we live with. Someone raised with me the possibility of whether those who live alone may not have as many opportunities for anger because there’s no one at home to annoy them. It’s quite an attractive thought, isn’t it! I found that such an interesting comment and I considered it for quite a while. How does physical proximity to others increase or decrease the opportunities for anger? Perhaps those momentary spurts of anger are reduced. But I take it, rather than proximity to people, it’s actually simply being in relationship with others that provides the soil for anger to grow. That is, whether I have less opportunity to express anger or enact it externally, what Jesus is concerned about—what we’re concerned about—is how I’m dealing with it internally as a matter of the heart.

The second issue that many of us struggle with is whether we can or whether we should ever be angry with God. The issue is we get angry. The questions are: whether we have a right to do so. If so, when? And what are the consequences if we do?

That’s why it’s so wonderful that Chase is going to come now and sort it all out for us [Laughter]. He’s going to come and speak particularly from Matthew 5, and deal with all these issues so beautifully.

Presentation by Chase Kuhn

Chase Kuhn: That’s quite a setup, isn’t it! I was really glad I’d invited you until then. [Laughter] It has been a real joy to be working with Kara on this topic over the last month or two. We’ve planned it for longer than that, but we’ve really been working hard this last little while and I’ve benefitted a lot from even our conversations just this evening so my appreciation to Kara and to Jane helping out.

The most profound lesson that I’ve learned is this: that anger is a measure of our morality. I’ll explain that in a moment. Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley in their book, The Heart of Anger say, “[I]f a being is to be moral, he must show anger at wrongdoing. Anger at evil is the necessary corollary of love for good.”7 So if you and I wish to be moral, anger will take an important place in our lives. The question is, are we angry at the right things? Do we deal with anger appropriately when we’re off the mark? Anger is the measure of our morality.

But as profound as this lesson has been for me, it hasn’t been the one that’s been the most searching for me personally. Instead, that’s come from the wake-up call that Jesus’ teaching brought to my life. Like some listening this evening, I’ve not thought about anger being a real central struggle for me. I’ve known angry people. I’ve even lived with them. But I wouldn’t classify myself as an angry man, but I guess this is in part because I don’t express anger the ways that I’ve seen anger expressed in other contexts. For example, loud, fierce shouting; kicking in locked doors; the silent treatment for weeks on end; public shaming and ridicule. To my knowledge, I’ve not perpetrated any of these acts, even though I’ve seen them.

But my anger has been shown to me, funny enough, in a recurring dream. I’ve actually had a real dream that’s happened multiple times over: it’s a nightmare in which I see a person from my past who has had a significant impact on my life and caused me a great deal of pain in a negative way. In my dream, I am shouting at him at the top of my lungs, telling him everything I wish I could have said for years. I even think in one of my dreams, I might even be punching him in the face. That’s a real admission: I’m confessing this to you.

It’s real anger—deep feelings of anger that have been buried down inside of me. In fact, feelings that no one would know about me—feelings I didn’t actually even know about myself. Once I was awakened to them—quite literally, once I woke up from that dream again and again—I realized, “Oh, there’s something lurking there.” But my first instinct was not to shut it down; it was to justify it: “Of course I feel that way—as I should feel that way. That guy. Those things. Can you believe it—what he did? All that I’ve been through.”

Jesus on anger

But Jesus’ words and thinking on the topic of anger have brought me to question my judgement about my anger. So the Lord Jesus teaches on anger as the first example of how the law features in his kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount. He makes it clear in Matthew 5:17-20 that he in no way comes to abolish the law. Instead, he comes to fulfill it. In demonstration of how he considers the law, Jesus gives us six examples of how righteousness is required for his kingdom, and how that supersedes the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

I’m not sure why he starts with anger, but I could guess, and here’s my best guess: I suspect it’s because most of us aren’t murderers. In other words, if you start with murder, everybody says, “Oh yeah. I’m all good. I’m not a murderer. In fact, I don’t even have murderous intentions. There’s nobody I would literally wish dead.” But this felt distanced from the issue. It’s precisely why Jesus’ teaching on it strikes us in such a way as it does. Jesus shows us just how near murder is to all of us:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.” (Matt 5:21-26)

My basic understanding of Jesus’ mission in speaking about the law is to show us how he leads us unto a life even more righteous than fundamental adherence to the Mosaic law. In essence, this means that the Lord transforms us. That is, the promises of old are fulfilled: God sends his Spirit to write the law upon our hearts. Therefore, kingdom righteousness is more excellent, because it’s not merely superficial. Kingdom righteousness deals from the heart.

Jesus’s teaching startles us because he associates an unimaginable deed with a common disposition. Now, those two things seem very far apart for us. “This unimaginable deed? I would never murder. But oh: anger. Murder? No. Anger? Well … Oh, you mean using those words. Oh. Oh, you mean those actions. Oh. Yes, those words. Yes, that way.” For these things, Jesus says, there could be hell to pay.

Now that’s seriously raising the stakes. It’s the times I’ve lashed out because I haven’t got what I wanted. It’s the insult I say to my colleague because they’ve frustrated my plans. It’s the names—the words—that I’ve shouted in the car at the person I’m impatient with. Jesus quickly shows us the severity of these actions and attitudes. Our anger will be liable to judgement, he says.

I think most of us quickly look for an escape: “Oh, but surely not all anger’s bad, right?” It’s funny: Kara and I were talking about this: how many times did we say we’re going to be talking about anger, and people said, “Oh, but not all anger’s bad, right? I mean, there’s righteous anger.” That’s the first thing people want to say! “Some anger’s really good.” Now, that’s true and we want to talk about that. Some anger is good and appropriate. But I fear that we often look for justification for our actions, rather than accepting a necessary check on our hearts.

Anger is good when it’s concerned for the things of God, when we’re frustrated about the things that God cares about and when our anger is driven by something that’s beyond ourselves. But too often, our anger has our selves as our reference point. It’s a reaction to what we feel has been attacked: our rights, our plans, our preferences, our priorities—just as Kara has so helpfully said. When I feel offended, I get angry, and this anger is far from righteous.

Reconciliation

Jesus gives us two scenarios to challenge us further in verses 23-26. First, he tells us in verses 23-24 that if we’ve caused someone to be angry, it’s not a matter of indifference. So important is it that reconciliation should take precedence, even during religious practice. You might be right in the middle of singing hallelujah choruses and you need to stop. It’s that important. This is not to say that worship of God is unimportant. Instead, it’s to stress just how vital reconciliation with our brothers and sisters is to our worship. Listen to what the Apostle John says in 1 John 4:19-21. (By the way, you can also find the same kinds of things in 1 John 3):

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

The point that Jesus stresses and that John later picks up is this: we can’t rightly worship while we have strife with one another. Anger must be settled.

This leads to the second scenario and the point that Jesus makes in verses 25-26: reconciliation is an urgent matter. So it’s not a matter of indifference (vv. 23-24); it’s an urgent matter (vv. 25-26). Jesus tells of a potential court trial and encourages reconciliation before the trial ever begins. The threat of not doing so, he says, is imprisonment.

Interestingly, Jesus covers anger from two sides in this section (vv. 21-26): in the original warning, Jesus tells us not to act in anger—not to lash out with our words and things and say, “You fool!” But in the other scenarios that he gives us a bit later on in the passage, he cautions us as the ones who’ve caused offence to another—who have led them to anger. So we’ve either been the angry person or we’ve caused anger in someone else. In both—in either being offended or being the offender—we’re meant to see that anger is a soul-threatening problem.

In recognising the significance of the issue, we’re told to pursue reconciliation. It’s the call to reconciliation that, I think, can be quite difficult for us. What does this mean? How does it even take place? Well, the steps for how we’re supposed to proceed aren’t spelled out for us in this passage, unfortunately. But I suspect it’s because the principle that is being taught leads us to understand what we’re supposed to do. Let me explain what I mean by that.

We are unrighteous in our anger when it issues forth from personal protections. We may be angry because of hurts or fears, loss of control, or not getting what we wanted, as Kara mentioned earlier. But in all these things, the point of the anger is about avenging ourselves—about settling a personal score. In short, we are the focus. We are the reference point.

But in the kingdom, citizenship requires the loss of life. It requires a laying down of rights, if you will—of carrying your cross. It’s not because we don’t care about life, but it’s because we have hope beyond this life. So rather than making demands about immediate justice, we wait for ultimate justice that comes in the end. Rather than seeking personal benefit, as if this life were all that we had, we give up anything and everything in expectation of the life to come. This is the life of faith.

As kingdom citizens in gospel faith, we forgive because we’ve been forgiven. When we’ve offended another, we claim responsibility. We don’t need to fight to be right, because we’ve been given all that we need for righteousness. We don’t need to protect our reputation because we have an identity in Jesus himself. Instead, we can admit faults and failures, we can demonstrate repentance, and we can seek renewed relationships from a place of security that we find in Jesus alone. Without the gospel, we fight for things that we feel we need from a deep place of insecurity and fear. But in Christ, we’ve received God’s perfect love, which casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

Conclusion

So as I conclude this section, I just want to summarise a bit of what I’ve been journeying through with you—the main challenge that I’ve faced and how it connects to the main lesson that I’ve learned. I’ve realised that anger is an issue that lurks deep inside of me, and is easily justified by me in my own self-righteousness. But this exposes my immorality. All anger isn’t bad, of course, but anger for the wrong reason is. My anger has arisen from a personal vantage point, rather than a theological one. I’ve been more concerned about the offences against me than the sins against God. In this way, I have been exposed.

Anger is a measure of our morality. If I were genuinely moral, then my anger would be directed towards the wrongs under God. If I was genuinely moral, I would repent of the anger caused by my feelings of personal offence and entitlement, and in this repentance, I would pursue reconciliation.

So as I think about my dreams of hurt and bottled-up anger, I wonder, “What, Lord, would you have me do as your disciple?”

[Music]

Announcements

CK: As we take a break from our program, I want draw your attention to a couple of upcoming events that may interest you as you continue to grow in your Christian life. They’ll be taking place at Moore College in Sydney and also are available via livestream.

Commanding the heart: Lust (4 May)

The first is the second event in our series on “Commanding the heart”—this time focusing on lust. Jesus raises the alarm when he warns us that adultery is not limited to sexual intercourse outside of marriage, but actually begins much earlier in the lustful glance of the eye and in mental fantasies. Adultery isn’t just physical; it can be done in the heart. So great is the threat of a wandering eye or a straying hand that Jesus suggests losing part of the body, instead of facing the fire of hell. Kingdom righteousness demands much more than physical abstinence from sex outside of marriage, but not less.

In view of this teaching, what kind of sexual conduct is becoming of a disciple of Jesus? I’d like to invite you to join us on Wednesday 4 May in person or online as Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones and Dr Dani Treweek help us to consider how to deal with lust in our hearts.

Marshall Ballantine-Jones is a researcher on the effects of sexualised media and social media behaviours, and has just completed his PhD on pornography and its impact on adolescence, and the connections to narcissism, social media and sexting. Dani Treweek has completed her PhD on a theological ethic of singleness, and is the founding chair of the Single Minded Conference.

Again, I’d love for you to join us: Wednesday 4 May starting at 7:30pm AEST, and you can register on our website.

Men and women and church discipline

Our sister centre at Moore College, the Priscilla & Aquila Centre, is hosting an event in June at which our current speaker on this episode, Kara Hartley, will be speaking alongside Phil Colgan, the Senior Minister at St George North Anglican Church in Sydney. They will be speaking on the very tricky topic of “Men and women and church discipline”. This event will be held on Wednesday 1 June and it will be part of the Priscilla & Aquila Centre evening seminars.

Of course, we know that church discipline can be a much-neglected topic in many churches today. However, the Scriptures suggest that it’s needed for the good of the church, and because Christians are called to love people who are caught in sin. So how do we apply biblical principles of church discipline to the modern church? What can we do at earlier points to ensure that more drastic church discipline is not required? Of course, one more complicating factor is our curiosity about the dangers that exist of abusing power imbalances and how that changes the process of discipline.

Again, I invite you to come out to this event on 1 June for the Priscilla & Aquila Centre, and you can register at their website: paa.moore.edu.au.

2021 CCL Annual

One further resource that I’d like to bring to your attention is our 2021 CCL Annual. Each year, we compile an annual that collects the highlights from the previous years’ resources from across our events, our podcasts and the essays that we publish.

Last year’s main theme was on community, and in this annual, you can especially find resources from each of our four events on the theme of community, as well as so many other resources. Each entry is short and digestible, and is a really great way for you to keep on engaging with deep thinking on the Christian life from a biblical perspective. I encourage you to check that out on our website or wherever you would get your normal ebooks.

Now let’s back to our program.

Part 2: Discussing practicalities

Righteous anger

JT: I’ll just let Chase catch his breath. We’re going to have a discussion now between Chase and Kara. So I’ll ask them both to come up.

You touched on righteous anger and that’s normally the first question that people ask, so how about we start off with that? Is there such a thing as righteous anger?

KH: I think you brought that up, Chase, just towards the end, that it is right to be—and I touched on it—I think there is a place that we can be angry of the things that compromise God’s holiness and are offensive to him. So it’s bound in that relationship, isn’t it.

So there is a place for righteous anger. But I think my difficult in unpacking that is I am so compromised. So I might get angry over one issue that I know would make God angry. But why am I not angry over that issue that makes him angry? So I feel quite compromised in that anger.

CK: I also don’t trust myself enough. So even where I could probably give a really good theological reason, which I’ve—as I’ve grown as a Christian man and grown better as doing—which is a dangerous thing [Laughter], because I could try to justify something theologically for what I’m actually really driven by personally. So even in the hurt that I’m mentioning from this dream that I’ve had of real issues in my life, I can make good reasons up in my mind why that’s right to be angry. But actually, if I were to really dig deep, I think it’s coming from me feeling that I’ve been wronged and I need to that be made right now through whatever I would inflict on this other person.

KH: Yeah. So just going on from that, though, I think a lot of people would encourage you in that, right?

CK: Yes! So I don’t think we’ve done ourselves any favours. I think this is where we’ve gotten really confused. In fact, I had put this in my talk and then taken it out: I don’t think we help each other in our anger. So I don’t know if you’ve had a conversation like this—maybe in your church Bible study group or after church conversations around tea, or whatever it may be, or maybe in your youth group if you’re listening from youth group. But you hear somebody complain about something that’s been done to them, and everybody says, “That’s not right!” “Yeah, I know. And I’m going to do this.” “That’s what you should do. We should settle the score. I’m with you in that.” Now I’m encouraging you in that, and actually all I’m doing is reinforcing bad things in you that are making you feel firmed up in your entitlement to certain things that are actually off the table as a Christian—where we’ve, in one sense, given those things up.

KH: I think this is the really difficult thing, because that thing that person did to you was wrong. It was, in and of itself, the wrong thing, by any measure of Christian thinking and understanding. But you’re saying in your anger that you’re expressing in that anger—that’s entitlement, though, rather than—I don’t know. What is it? Jane, jump in.

JT: How does it work when, as Christian men and women, we have the Holy Spirit in us? Is it always entitlement? Is it always human-centred and not God-centred?

CK: That’s a great question. The right way of approaching that anger issue, I think, comes down to “What do I hope for you in my anger? Am I angry with you and hoping to get back at you? Or am I angry at what I’m seeing you doing is an offence to God and hoping that you will grow through this onto Christian maturity?” Those have very different answers.

KH: That’s a very different place to be and in that moment, I imagine—I mean, by God’s Spirit, you could arrive there, but I feel like that’s a very mature place to arrive.

CK: A very difficult thing for you to actually do! So if you’re actually seeking their destruction, then you’re bringing them down. But the right kind of anger would hope to see the sin removed so that they can be walking in a better way with the Lord. Which, I think, comes back to the presence of the Spirit.

What do I do about my anger?

JT: So I’m feeling really angry. I want help. What do I do? I’m thinking is this righteous anger, or can you help me?

KH: Yes. We can pray together, to start with. I think that’s got to be the place, right? “Can you help me?” Well—

JT: Challenge me—like what was mentioned before?

KH: Yeah, I think there’s a definite place to challenge, and that’s the other really complicated thing in this whole current conversation around anger and things, isn’t it, is that how to challenge somebody without dismissing the hurt—so how to do that sensitively, I think, is also another challenge.

CK: Yeah. I suspect there’s got to be a cooling off period. So in the heat of the moment, there’s only going to be probably an eruption. If that’s been boiling for a while, then what you’re going to come with is going to have a lot more—I don’t want to mix the metaphors, so let’s just say a lot more heat than you hope. So in order to be heard well, if you come with that kind of heat, it’s going to feel quite vitriolic, and I guess if you can calm down and cool down a little bit, take time out to pray about it, and maybe even process the things you hope to think about—maybe even talk it over with somebody: “This is how I’m feeling. I’m trying to discern whether or not this is just about me. Or how I can actually help this person in the Lord? Am I the right person to do that? But I do need to actually hopefully call them to account. That’s a really important thing.

One thing that’s really fascinating is Jesus encourages us—as the one that would have caused the offence that led the other person to be angry—to seek them out. So if I know I’ve done something really awful to Kara and she’s just raging at me right now—and maybe rightly so—I’m meant to seek out reconciliation, rather than waiting for Kara coming to me and saying, “How dare you do that to me!” I’m actually supposed to be reflective enough and self-aware. That’s not always happening.

JT: But if you don’t seek her out and Kara comes to me and says, “I’m really angry with Chase”, would it be wise for me to say, “How about you take a moment—maybe write some things down and pray—and then we can chat about it a little bit later when your thoughts are a bit clearer?” It will depend a bit on personality and Christian maturity, maybe, and what the actual thing is that has happened.

KH: I think, too, at that point, the listening becomes so important—the listening and giving that person some space. Because depending on who you are—as you said, personalities—some people get there themselves as they talk it out and understand what’s going on for them. But yes, giving them space, giving some time—that cooling off time—I think is really, really important.

CK: I think there’s also a lot of wisdom in Matthew 18, which gives us a plan, if you will—a plan of attack for how to address something when you’ve been wronged. There is a kind of one-to-one approach at first. Then there might be a two-to-one. Then you might involve more people. Then you might involve more.

But I think in each of those instances, you’re actually trying to help the person identify the wrong for the hope of reconciliation and for their spiritual maturity. So again, it’s not trying to get them just to admit the wrong so that you can say, “Ha! I told you: you were wrong the whole time.” That’s not the point. The point is for you to be living peaceably as Christians and seeing them grow up in the Lord.

I don’t know. I find this to be a very tough thing to do. Ideally, we all are hoping for each other to be for one another. We do pre-marriage counselling occasionally—my wife Amy’s here tonight. We do pre-marriage counselling with a lot of couples, and often it’s like holding a mirror up to your own problems. But one of the things we end up talking about is just how hard it is to be assuming the best of the other and actually wanting the best for the other. So often we’d rather be right than wrong, or admit wrong. How to actually come together in the gospel, generously, saying, “I’m willing to take this and—”

KH: Jane and I are laughing because we had this exact same conversation about something else earlier today, and we were talking about that need for generosity—not always to assume that that person intentionally went out of their way to do something to make me angry. But actually, they’re sinful and I’m sinful, and their unintentional action that pushed my buttons—it’s not their fault; they’re my buttons; I have to take responsibility for that—but to think generously towards them and go and seek that reconciliation so that this doesn’t become a festering sore in our relationship.

CK: A couple of bad responses there, then: so as the one who’s been offended, you can go in and say, “How dare you have done that to me!” Now, the person on the receiving end might think, “I didn’t even know I did that thing to you. Oh my goodness!” But their bad response could be, “Pfft! Who are you to tell me?” So immediately defensive. Now you’re just at war and it’s going to be a shouting match of who’s going to win, and no one’s going to win.

Whereas actually, if you go in and say, “I’m not sure if you knew you did this, but I would like to understand why this might have happened, and I want you to know how it made me feel, and this I don’t feel was right.” You think, “Oh, I didn’t know that, but I’m glad you told me and I really am sorry and I’d like to work on that. Please accept my apology and if there’s a way we can make amends”—that’s a very different outcome, isn’t it.

KH: That’s right. Generosity.

CK: Generosity!

JT: Yeah, we’ve been shown grace, so extend that grace to others as well.

CK: That’s a very helpful and succinct way of putting it.

KH: That’s right. If only she’d come in ten minutes ago! [Laughter]

CK: I appreciate that, yeah, weird. [Laughter] Save a lot of time, Jane, if you’d just told us that before! [Laughter]

Living with an angry person

JT: Chase, in your talk, you spoke about seeing/observing an angry person. What about if we’re living with an angry person? You got any wisdom any on that?

CK: Yeah. It’s a very, very hard thing to do.

JT: What should we do if we live with an angry person?

CK: Yeah, I mean, the first thing to be said, and we don’t say this in a token way, and in fact, Kara and I were talking about this earlier: we don’t want to say this in a token way. Anger manifests itself in all of us. It’s important to recognise that. Some people will have patterns of anger, and it’s important to recognise that. But there’s another level of anger that can be abusive that doesn’t need to be lived with. That can be physically abusive, and I encourage anybody listening that if you’re in that situation, go somewhere safe—get away from that situation so that you can be safe. That’s really important. In no way do I think what Jesus is telling us here is to stay in and just cop it. That is not what’s being said.

Likewise, I think, there’s other kinds of abuse, and abuse that I’ve witnessed in other contexts, where people might really be verbally and emotionally abused, and that also can be equally destructive. It may not leave the same kinds of bruising, but it can be really, really bad. I think that people in that situation probably need to be evacuated into safety and get some remedial help, I think, on a case-by-case basis.

So if we take that kind of extremity out of it, then we’re living with people who maybe have bad habits. Maybe at that point, you want to speak up. I’ve given the—I don’t want to say the “important” word about getting away from abuse. But what do you think?

KH: Oh, absolutely. I just want to reiterate that. Also, we’ve talked about anger and then reconciliation. If it’s anger that’s expressing itself in abusiveness—either physically, verbally, emotionally or in other ways—the reconciliation process is a process and it can take a long time, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re restored back into that relationship either in a physical way—that is, coming back to live in the same house or something like that. So I just want to make that clear as well.

The habits of anger: I mean, I think the silent treatment one is a really interesting one. In my growing up, it wasn’t a pattern in our household to say “Sorry” to each other. We didn’t really do that. Sibling to one another, we weren’t really encouraged to develop a pattern of saying “Sorry”; we weren’t encouraged to say “Sorry” to parents; and we didn’t see that modelled between parents. So that’s really interesting. How do you resolve conflict at that point? Well, you just stop talking to each other for a while until somebody has to ask a question. “Do you know where the butter is?” or whatever it may be. That’s the break and then you’re back into conversation. That’s not ideal, I don’t think.

I don’t even know where we’re at.

CK: That’s an incubator for bitterness, isn’t it.

KH: Yeah, that’s right.

CK: That can be a really unhealthy habit.

KH: Yes, that habit of anger.

CK: Yeah, helping break that cycle of bad habits is a really important thing, and that, I think, can come through modelling. But that has to be done, again, generously, rather than as a correction. So I can’t just say, “You never say, ‘Sorry’. You need to start saying, ‘Sorry’.” That’s putting a demand. Whereas, we can go to them with a “Sorry” and own our own part in that and hope for some change there.

KH: That’s right. I think you might see that modelled somewhere else and start doing it, then, in your own household or whatever it might be. As you say, demanding it of somebody—pointing the finger—that’s not the solution for healthy relationship. But, that generosity.

CK: I think one of the hard things is watching these things be quite cyclical. So you get in these patterns of relating: if something falls off—the wheels come off for a while—somebody gets really angry. There’s a blow-up. We all take shelter for a while—sometimes quite literally, but just otherwise emotionally—whatever it may be. Things cool down. We have to re-engage. Eventually life settles back down again. Then something else piques and we blow up and we go back to the cycle again.

It’s very difficult to interrupt that on your own in just the everyday life. I guess what we can only be responsible for is ourselves in that situation and our response. It’s very difficult for us to become responsible for the angry person. So we should never discount prayer for that person. We should never discount help from the outside, and seeking help from the outside, and hopefully a willingness for some help on the outside. But also being willing to own whatever we can in that context of what might be a contributor to that. So if you were somehow instigating situations that are leading to anger and doing that, maybe even, in your own frustration with the situation, you’re not helping; you’re hurting, and that actually is just making the problem worse.

KH: So it requires quite a lot of humility at that point—humility in relationship with one another, ready to see your own inadequacies and failings in relationship, and make amends.

CK: It’s always easier to see the problems in other people than it is in yourself.

KH: Oh totally!

CK: So it’s easier to point out they’re always angry and they’ve got all these issues, and that’s why everything’s wrong in my house. Suddenly you’ve just uncovered all of the deep bitterness that you’ve been harbouring in that passive aggressive anger that might be lying around.

JT: I just want to remind anyone who’s in the Moore College community—Kara and Chase touched on just before domestic violence and anger—that on the Moore College website, there’s a domestic violence policy and a list of counsellors that might be helpful for you. For those not in the Moore College community, again, as Chase was saying, I encourage you to get help if you’re not in a safe environment at home: speak to your GP, your pastor, a counsellor, or speak to the police if you need be.

KH: Also, Jane, just on that, if you’re in an Anglican church or not, and if you want to look up some resources, there’s a Safe Ministry website that has our own diocesan policy on these matters that you can look up.

CK: And if anybody’s stumped, get in touch with CCL. We’ll point you to the right directions as well. Happy to.

The Book of James and the tongue

JT: What about the Book of James? Is there connection between anger and the tongue? It seems that that’s—yes there is!

CK: Absolutely there is! Right? So the weapon we often use is words. I think we really ought not to discount just how impactful words can be and to recognise just how harmful our own words may be in ongoing situations.

Where I’m acutely aware of this, for example, is as a father of young children. The kinds of irritations that I express and the kinds of words that I use when I’m irritated communicate particular things to my children that become a part of how they’re thinking about how I feel about them, about how they feel about their own selves and their identities, and we have to really take stock of the kinds of things that we say. I think that’s why Jesus warns about in our anger, the kinds of words that we would say and the ways that these things escalate, and to not discount our words, as if those are insignificant. James says, “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (1:19).

KH: Yeah. My husband’s watching this and so I’ll apologise now.

CK: Thank you, Brett, for letting us have Kara for the evening! [Laughter]

KH: But likewise, that thing that you’ve said three or four or five times that he does again—I can’t think of an example—but, again, you just come in with that word, or it’s a bit cutting or it’s a bit snide, or it’s a bit patronising, even. You hear yourself say it and you just think, “What am I doing? It’s a spoon. Or it’s a plate. Really? Come on!”

CK: Yeah. I watch even the habits I have in the car and the kinds of things I say that my kids hear. If I yell out, “Oh, what a moron!” or whatever it is, my kids start saying those things: “Oh, look at this moron!” I’m thinking, “Ohhh! That’s ’cause I taught you that. That’s ’cause you’ve learned that from me.” I could tell you where I learned it. I know where I learned it from. So I have these kinds of patterns that we pass onto each other. But taking real care with our words is no insignificant matter with this.

Understanding our creatureliness

JT: You touched on children. Some of us here might have teenage children, or some of us do have teenage children, and some online as well. Just things like going through puberty, hormones, or women later on with menopause, and potential things about us as creatures and different stages of life where it’s not unusual, because of hormones and other things like that, or pregnancy, sleep deprivation with young babies—those parts of life where we may be much more prone to anger than others. So we’re sinful, yes. But we’re also creatures. We’re weak.

CK: That’s a great issue to raise.

JT: Explaining that to people in those life situations as well—understanding themselves holistically, but not justifying their sin—

KH: Again, you’re exactly right, Jane. It’s understanding yourself. So again, I haven’t had teenagers. I was one. I don’t think I was particularly pleasant. But older women, menopause—

CK: I’ve not been through menopause! [Laughter]

KH: Sure. [Laughter]

CK: All kinds of things that we don’t know about it.

KH: That’s right. But it’s a thing that happens. You hear yourself saying it. You watch yourself doing it—hear yourself saying it. It’s that being quick to say sorry afterwards. You’re weak, you are—you’re vulnerable, you’re sinful. You fall into the trap of the loose word–the cutting word. But then it’s reflecting on that, recognising you did it, and then being quick to offer the apology. Would that be true with children as well—like when you unnecessarily—

CK: Oh, it’s modelling grace in every season. I try to encourage people that life is really seasonal. I would love to say that I’m just a steady, steady ship, or that I’m just even-keeled all the way. But there are real peaks and troughs, or ebbs and flows—however you want to put the illustration. There are times when we feel really out of sorts, and other times when we feel like things are going all right. But actually in those seasons, modelling a patience with one another—again, a generosity and a kindness, grace—I think, is crucial for us, and also giving space to one another to grow. I think it’s very easy for us to have a standard of perfection and assume that everybody needs to have perfect character always. What we’re doing with children or even with family members who might be older than us or different than us—whatever it may be, we’re actually hoping for them to keep growing in Christ. That takes time and that works through a process, and that actually comes through these seasons in times of development.

KH: Yeah, that’s exactly right. One of the things that strikes me is that let’s say something happens on a Sunday night, it might be Wednesday and I’m thinking, “That was pretty ugly.” You’ve still got to go, don’t you, back to that person and say, “Sunday night was pretty ugly and I’m really sorry about that,” and allow, again, your own reflection of yourself and the anger that you expressed there—show remorse and repentance for that. Even on Wednesday. Even on Friday.

CK: Oh absolutely!

KH: Don’t let it just pass, I think.

CK: Very helpful.

Conclusion

JT: Chase, would you like to close in prayer for us?

CK: I would be glad to. Thanks.

Our heavenly Father,

We are thankful that we can meet together tonight. Thank you to all who have been able to travel into Newtown and for those who joined us virtually in so many different places. We’re grateful to be able to learn from your word. We pray, Lord, that what was said tonight would be helpful to all of us in our Christian faith—in our Christian walk. We pray, Lord, that you would lead us to repent where necessary, to perhaps apologise, to speak words of truth to one another. And we ask, Lord, that your Spirit would be growing us up into Christ our Head so that he might be honoured.

We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[Music]

CK: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.

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We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.

As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.

[Music]

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Endnotes

1 David Powlison, Good and Angry: Redeeming anger, irritation, complaining, and bitterness (Greensboro: New Growth Press, 2016), 39.

2 Ibid.

3 J Alasdair Groves and Winston T Smith, Untangling Emotions (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), chapter 14: “Engaging Anger”.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Tim Challies, “3 Marks of Righteous Anger”, 9 December 2013, https://www.challies.com/christian-living/3-marks-of-righteous-anger/

7 Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley, The Heart of Anger: How the Bible Transforms Anger in Our Understanding and Experience (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 97.