When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. (John 11:33-35)When I was younger and got angry, I would tend to do foolish things. Usually I would break something or hit something. The hitting stopped when I hit a door one day and it dislocated my wrist. I decided that I might could deal with the anger in a better way.
Today I don’t get as angry. I am not sure why, except for the fact that as I get older, I get more in control of some things. I still eat too much, but some things have finally gotten to where I can handle them.
The anger you feel at some problem is real and is not to be dismissed. There are those who would say that a Christian doesn’t get angry.
That is garbage. Jesus got angry. And he not only got angry, he also cried. The anger was from something he couldn’t do anything about. God never intended for people to get sick and die. But here Jesus was with someone he loved who were in grief over another friend of his who had died.
Now Jesus came to raise him back to life. But the whole grief thing got to him. It was just too much. He got angry at all of the trash that was happening in the world. The rage at how unfair things were got to him and he wept because of it.
He even knew one day he would stop it through the power of his resurrection. But it hurt now. He was angry now. He wept now.
But what he didn’t do was put his fist through the door, or yell at people, or break coffee pots (all my older pursuits). He just did what he could and looked to the future.
He also tried to comfort other people. He knew they needed the comfort. And he also knew there was no one to comfort him, but he did it anyway.
He got angry, but angry didn’t get him.
The key is to use the anger to something constructive, to not let it control you. Only a weird person never gets angry. And usually he is lying if he says he didn’t.
Be angry if you need to, but do it like Jesus did. Use it to fuel your desire to do something to change what you are angry at.
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