Read: Proverbs 19:11 NRSV
Those with good sense are slow to anger, and it is their glory to overlook an offence.
What do you do when you feel disrespected? Belittled? Mocked?
Nobody would blame you if you rose up with righteous anger and spoke up for yourself, maybe giving the offender a piece of your mind. You might even feel justified in throwing around some insults and putting that person back in their place.
Yes, you might feel proud for sticking up for yourself, and your friends might applaud you for “telling it like it is,” but is that how God wants you to respond? What precedent for righteous anger can be found with a happy ending in Scripture? Samson didn’t fare very well with his temper. Moses shattered the ten commandments in his wrath. Moses killed a man.
The characters that most closely resemble God are the ones who let things roll off their back and chose to speak with gentleness. David, “a man after God’s heart,” soothed Saul in his rages, and later spared his life when he had every justification to kill him. Stephen prayed for those who were stoning him to death. Jesus, the master of the universe, did not even offer an argument in response to the questioning of Pontius Pilate before being crucified.
I do think that Christians can have righteous anger, but the wording in Proverbs and the examples throughout Scripture give us helpful clues about the compatibility of faith and wrath.
Citing Jesus flipping the tables of the money-changers in the temple as your justification for screaming at someone who treated you with contempt is a weak argument. Jesus was capable of anger, but his anger was reserved for the benefit of the weak, those who were being exploited by the money-changers in his Father’s house. He wasn’t angry because he felt personally insulted. He prayed for those who insulted him as he hung from his cross.
