IT’S RIGHTEOUS ANGER, RIGHT?*

You may insist you never experience road rage but, if so, I suspect you haven’t yet begun to drive, are super-phlegmatic, or have nothing much to do or nowhere really to go. I think road rage, like all anger, is pretty much part of the warp and woof of our fallen humanity. I began this article contending rage’s universality so that you might not be too hard on my admission of it. Once, I was in a rush to make visitations at two different hospitals with the necessity of making it to the last one at a set time. At the first hospital, before I even got to the parking garage, I found myself behind a lady intent on talking to her passengers rather than driving. She was driving two mph or less. Once in the garage, though it seemed impossible, she slowed even more. There were no parking spaces available on the first levels. I was forced to follow her. Being in a hurry, I felt that anger slowly beginning to percolate from somewhere deep within. “Can’t she tell that someone is behind her? Doesn’t she care that she is holding someone up?” You know that feeling. You are hurling down the road at the 55-mph limit, and someone pulls and turns out in front of you forcing you to lock up the brakes; and, then, the infringer never accelerates past 25 mph—that feeling. Perhaps, at your sanctification level, you are beyond ever experiencing anger. I’m not. Later, listening to a talk radio host discussing the presidential orders, Supreme Court decisions, and current political candidates’ propagation and support of perversion and sin under the guise of equality, I began to feel the same type of anger I did when the slow pokey driver had impeded my driving. Were the experiences of anger related? I think so. We could take a lot of time to discuss the exceptions, and we could attempt to justify some anger by calling it righteous anger. However, I still believe this about most anger: My anger is my frustration of not getting my own way, of having something interfere with me, my way, my thoughts, my schedule, my work, etc. My anger rises from what is done to me. I use the same arguments as others that my disgust and anger I feel about things like the transgender bathroom use is righteous wrath against the unrighteousness and encroaching darkness. And I would like to believe that is all it is. Yet, I still suspect that political rage is a close cousin to road rage and most other rages. MY country is being altered and ruined. MY beliefs are being maligned, MY freedoms are being trampled, MY political convictions are being marginalized, and MY candidate is being beaten. Mine is righteous anger, right? I could justify my anger by calling up the example of Moses who waxed hot with anger when he saw the people dancing before the golden calf. But I cannot leave it there because Moses’ anger soon was replaced by his earnest intercession to God that He would not destroy them. Jeremiah had been sorely persecuted for his chastisement of the people for their sins. He could have been very angry. Yet, Jeremiah shed many tears for the same people. Back to Moses and the golden calf. It could be pointed out that anger is justifiable since in the same incident it is noted that God was angry with the people. Perhaps I can use God’s anger to justify mine. But, rarely is my anger pure anger like God’s. Most human anger is true of the nature I wrote of above. Beyond that, I keep being reminded of what James told us. “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” If it is truly the unrighteousness that upsets us, we must not only become angry at it. That will never change unrighteousness into righteousness. Intercession can. Weeping can. Not anger. If I am truly concerned about my country, I will intercede, I will weep; I will not simply rage. If you feel a little angry over what I have written, intercede. Weep. Don’t rage. ----Pastor Hurst *Written before the 2016 elections.