We American Evangelicals have become an increasingly angry people.
Once on top, we are now on the bottom.
Once in the majority, we are quickly becoming a hated minority.
Once honored, we are now despised.
Once protected, we are now being attacked more and more.
All this loss and all this hostility can and does produce a lot of anger.
And because there is no easy or quick remedy, our anger is not easily resolved by correcting the wrongs.
There is little we can do. We have little choice but to bear with much we don’t like.
So how can we avoid serving the tyrant of anger?
How can we be freed from being anger-driven, anger-controlled, and anger-colored in all we say and do?
How can we avoid becoming angry people who damage our own families and the cause of Christ?
Right in Front of Us
In my own recent journeys, I realized that I still had some buried anger from an unjust situation from a few years ago.
It was lurking within, chocking off my heart’s freedom, and had turned inward into depression.
The Spirit of God put His finger right on it and exposed me as an person carrying a load of unresolved anger.
My only choice was to get open about it, or to continue to bury it and turn my anger inward.
If anger was one-dimensional, it would be easy.
But anger can go outward–being taken out on others.
Or it can go inward–taking it out on ourselves.
It can be hot and eruptive, or icy and buried deep.
But whatever our style of anger is, admitting we are angry is the necessary first step.
So many of us are trained that all anger is bad, and all anger must be concealed and we must therefore pretend it’s not there.
But God isn’t fooled by our mask. He rips off our masks and outs our angry selves.
So my first step was to admit the obvious–yes, I was angry.
The second step was to let Christ carry the load of injustices and the wrath that those who wronged me deserved.
I rehearsed the biblical teaching that Christ bore the wrath of God against all sin on the Cross.
He experienced the full force of divine punishment in His person for me.
He resolved all injustices there, and exhausted all of God’s anger there.
So there is nothing left for me to carry.
I had this load of unresolved injustice, of wrath without a good outlet, upon my own shoulders.
It was crushing my spirit, weighing down my soul, and flattening my countenance.
It was an anger turned inward–which is a major source of depression.
My depressed state was actually a disguising a load of piled up anger that had no outlet. So I took it out on myself and put myself on a twisted cross.
It was a horrible tyrant.
But God opened my eyes
So I transferred this load to Christ and let Him be my wrath-bearer.
It was extraordinarily freeing.
The weight was lifted, my heart woke up and could feel again, and my mind cleared.
It was not an intellectual discovery. I had mentally known this truth for years.
It was a heart transaction–I surrendered emotional ownership of my load, and emotional responsibility for resolving it, to Him.
For many months, I had under a growing conviction that the urgent task of our times was to entrust our loads to Christ, exchange sin’s side effects for the blessings of His righteousness, and thus encounter His love.
And now it was my turn to personally apply this truth to my own soul in an area of life called anger.
So I don’t write this as a moral superior, but as a rescued captive.
Until the American church collectively repents of its Christless anger-bearing and transfers it to Christ, and until we individual Christians do this personally, our religion-fueled anger will eat us alive and destroy our witness.
Though it sounds like a cliche, Christ really is our only solution.
He has already shouldered all the wrongs that others have done to us, every bit as much as He did for all our own wrongs.
He has already carried the wrath these wrongs deserved, leaving no wrath left for us to carry.
And that’s really great news!
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