When Should We Vent over Social Sins?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Ian from Ann Arbor, Michigan writes in with an excellent question, especially given the
00:00:09.680 | summer that we have experienced in the States.
00:00:11.760 | He asks, "Pastor John, when approaching controversial issues such as abortion or homosexuality with
00:00:17.600 | my friends, I've always been very careful.
00:00:20.580 | Even if something like abortion makes me very angry, I try my best not to show any of it
00:00:25.520 | because I'm worried that my anger will be misinterpreted.
00:00:28.080 | However, Jesus makes a chord of whips and violently drives out the money changers during
00:00:33.720 | the Passover.
00:00:35.260 | This definitely sounds like something that can be misleading.
00:00:38.220 | People could see Jesus as unreasonable or as someone who uses violence to get his own
00:00:42.560 | way.
00:00:43.560 | Jesus's behavior confuses me.
00:00:46.140 | Should we get angry at these sins that we see in culture in the presence of others?"
00:00:51.080 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:00:53.640 | Let me turn the tables on Ian and suggest that feeling and expressing appropriate anger
00:01:03.220 | about, say, abortion or whatever injustice may communicate more truth about God, about
00:01:14.720 | the Christian faith, about Scripture, about Christ, than the absence of anger communicates.
00:01:21.880 | Ian says, "I'm worried that my anger will be misinterpreted."
00:01:28.000 | And I'm turning the tables and asking, "Are you equally worried that the absence of anger
00:01:35.480 | might be misinterpreted?"
00:01:36.840 | Or the positive way to ask it is, "Is it possible that good anger and good expressions of anger
00:01:45.000 | could communicate more truth than the absence of anger?"
00:01:50.080 | Now I can think of—I did think of—seven or eight or even more ways that feeling and
00:01:58.320 | expressing appropriate anger might communicate more truth about an injustice and about God's
00:02:06.480 | relation to an injustice and about the Christian's relation to injustice than a cool, unemotional
00:02:12.920 | discussion without anger of the injustice.
00:02:17.480 | And I'm going to mention those.
00:02:18.480 | And before I mention them, it is important to own up to what is being felt here, what
00:02:26.840 | Ian is concerned about.
00:02:29.040 | It is important to mention that not all anger is good.
00:02:36.080 | In fact, most of it is contaminated—so contaminated that James says, "The anger of man does not
00:02:46.120 | work the righteousness of God."
00:02:49.200 | And therefore he says, "Be slow to anger."
00:02:53.120 | And Paul says, "Put away anger."
00:02:56.960 | And so I know from experience, and we know now from the Bible, that lots of our anger—I
00:03:03.320 | would probably say most of our anger—is contaminated with fear and insecurity and ego and defensiveness
00:03:10.760 | and selfishness.
00:03:11.760 | It's just ugly stuff behind most of our anger.
00:03:16.960 | But once we do our best to get that log out of our angry eye, we hear not only that God
00:03:26.520 | is a God of anger, and we hear that Jesus got angry, and we read Ephesians 4, 6, "Be
00:03:31.880 | angry and do not sin," and we know that we can't sweep all anger away.
00:03:39.720 | So I'm not saying we should give vent to all the stuff that may rise up within us,
00:03:48.240 | since some of it may be very selfish and vain and rooted in fear and insecurity.
00:03:53.280 | I am saying that when we have admitted to ourselves and to others and to God that we're
00:04:01.720 | so imperfect, and we've done our best to take the log out of our eyes best we can,
00:04:09.120 | there is a place to feel and express anger when we see God's name dishonored and people
00:04:15.880 | destroyed.
00:04:16.880 | And I'm suggesting that there may be as much miscommunication that Ian is so concerned
00:04:23.600 | about.
00:04:24.600 | There may be as much miscommunication in the absence of that anger when conversing with
00:04:29.520 | friends as there is in the expression of the anger.
00:04:33.920 | So here are seven or eight provocative questions for Ian to ask.
00:04:41.800 | Number one, might this not—this anger, this appropriate anger—might it not show people
00:04:48.540 | how to be angry who have only had hurtful experiences of anger?
00:04:56.180 | It may be that our friends have never seen well-managed anger, anger that is real, well-grounded,
00:05:05.640 | yet not out of control, and therefore not about to hurt somebody.
00:05:10.980 | This may be a great gift to them and a great revelation to them.
00:05:15.300 | If the only anger they know is the explosive "beat your wife up" anger, your demonstration
00:05:22.960 | of another kind could be a sweet gift.
00:05:27.660 | Number two, might our anger show that good and controlled and righteous anger can rise
00:05:36.880 | from a concern for others and not just be owing to our own private lives, being frustrated?
00:05:44.220 | Most people feel anger when their personal plans are messed up by other people.
00:05:49.820 | And showing a measured anger over someone else being hurt—not me—may model for them
00:05:59.940 | something true that they've never seen before.
00:06:03.700 | Third, might our anger possibly show that there is an anger that goes hand in hand with
00:06:10.300 | love for those who we're angry at?
00:06:15.360 | My guess is that most people have never seen this or experienced it.
00:06:20.400 | Anger at someone combined with love for someone, that is, combined with the desire that they
00:06:27.840 | not be ruined—in other words, yes, brought to justice, but then find mercy from God and
00:06:34.120 | become our brother, our sister, spend eternity with us.
00:06:39.080 | Fourth, might our anger reveal the truth that righteous anger can coexist with sorrow and
00:06:47.400 | a broken heart?
00:06:49.000 | I'm thinking now of sorrow over the victims or even the perpetrators.
00:06:54.160 | This is not exactly the same as saying that love can coexist with anger.
00:06:58.840 | My point here is to show the unusual emotional experience of anger and pity coexisting.
00:07:07.160 | I think most people experience or see anger that consumes almost all other good emotions.
00:07:15.000 | It just devours them like a monster, so that the only thing that happens in the home is
00:07:20.920 | anger.
00:07:21.920 | You don't get anger coexisting with tenderhearted pity.
00:07:26.160 | That's just unheard of.
00:07:27.320 | But could we model that?
00:07:29.520 | Can we reveal that greater truth?
00:07:32.240 | Fifth, might our anger reveal the amazing truth that anger does not have to dominate
00:07:39.320 | or control the whole of life?
00:07:42.080 | I think most people experience anger in such a way that it infects almost everything they
00:07:46.200 | do.
00:07:47.200 | It sweeps through their day and affects all their relationships negatively.
00:07:52.240 | Could we reveal something different and show that there is a way to experience anger in
00:07:58.080 | a focused, limited way so that other parts of our lives aren't overflowing with anger,
00:08:05.760 | like when we get home?
00:08:06.760 | Can we play with our kids?
00:08:08.200 | Can we really play with our kids in a carefree, abandoned, with joy so that we don't take
00:08:14.620 | anything away from what they need, even though we've just seen something we hate on the news?
00:08:21.560 | Number six, might not our expression of anger over an injustice—let's just say abortion
00:08:29.080 | in this case—might not our expression of anger over abortion point to the goodness
00:08:36.440 | and the justice of God, whose prerogatives in the womb are being assaulted, so that the
00:08:42.600 | anger doesn't flow just from people being hurt, but from God being dishonored?
00:08:47.400 | My guess is most people have never seen anything like that.
00:08:50.640 | They don't have any categories for that kind of anger.
00:08:54.240 | In other words, our anger may bear witness to the character of God, who has created these
00:09:00.660 | little ones in His image and is knitting them together in the mother's womb.
00:09:04.640 | And when the lacerations and the chopping begins from the abortionist, it's not just
00:09:10.200 | the babies that are being shredded, but God is being assaulted as His knitting needles
00:09:16.120 | are pitched aside and His hands are being thrust back from what He's been doing there.
00:09:23.640 | Number seven, might not our anger over an injustice possibly expose the indifference
00:09:31.300 | of our friends who feel nothing?
00:09:35.320 | This might make them defensive.
00:09:36.800 | It might make them angry, yes, but it also may have a convicting effect when they realize
00:09:43.080 | you really care while they're all wrapped up in their video games, and God might be
00:09:47.920 | pleased to say, "I think my life is pretty superficial.
00:09:50.880 | I don't really care about what's going on in the abortion clinics."
00:09:55.720 | And finally, if we really have the mind of Christ in our anger, might not our anger be
00:10:02.480 | a witness to the fact that the justice and compassion that Christians feel is not just
00:10:09.680 | limited to abortion?
00:10:12.320 | If we expressed anger, appropriate, well-grounded, limited, controlled, real anger, not just
00:10:22.280 | over the horror of abortion, but say, "For the poor in countries where corruption in
00:10:28.440 | leaders lines the pockets of the rich but leaves the poor with no powers of productivity,"
00:10:34.640 | or anger at police corruption, when you see a man shot in the back by police when he's
00:10:40.240 | running away, or a woman tasered to death while handcuffed and shackled in prison, or
00:10:48.000 | any number of injustices in the world, if we show a suitable and suitably expressed
00:10:56.240 | anger, maybe we will be bearing witness to the fullness of God's concerns rather than
00:11:03.560 | show a narrow, partisan kind of anger.
00:11:08.240 | So I'm just suggesting to Ian that he not only ask how his anger might be misinterpreted,
00:11:17.240 | but also ask how the absence of his anger might be misinterpreted, and how the presence
00:11:24.880 | of well-managed anger, for all those reasons, might bear witness to more truth than he had
00:11:33.160 | thought.
00:11:34.160 | So good.
00:11:35.160 | That's excellent counsel, Pastor John.
00:11:36.600 | Thank you.
00:11:37.600 | And on a related note, we have a question from a group of Christian friends, a group
00:11:40.960 | of Australian women, who want to know how often they should express their opinions about
00:11:45.940 | homosexual sin online.
00:11:48.740 | How much is too much?
00:11:50.040 | How often is too often?
00:11:51.600 | Again, an excellent question.
00:11:53.380 | And Ian, thank you for your question today.
00:11:56.400 | Write up your perplexing questions and send them in to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org,
00:12:02.640 | or you can send them in from our landing page at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:12:06.080 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:10.680 | We'll see you tomorrow.
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