Where does the concept of righteous indignation come from? Is it even biblical?
My friend Drew interviewed Brant Hansen a while back, and on his recommendation, I watched the video. Hansen proposes that righteous human anger simply doesn’t exist. We see God’s anger in the Scriptures, and obviously it’s righteous when He does it, but Hansen says humans simply cannot be righteously angry, and the only thing to do with anger is get rid of it.
There are problems with this proposal, which we’ll get to, but I want to commend the interview to you anyway. There’s a lot of pastoral horse sense on display there. Hansen very effectively skewers a number of the sins we commit around anger, and shows up our shabby excuses for what they are. It really is true that we want our anger to be righteous far more often than it really is, and Hansen has a lot to contribute here. I particularly liked his dissection of outrage at people you know well: “You really can’t believe your mom would say something like that? She’s been saying those things for 78 years! I think it’s time to believe it!”
So watch the interview for the pastoral wisdom and sharp observation, but don’t adopt his theology. Hansen’s proposal has three major problems, one exegetical, one theological, one physiological.
The exegetical problem: Hansen observes, correctly, that a lot of people seem to have the first half of Eph. 4:26 memorized (“Be angry and do not sin”), but neglect the last half (“Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”) That really is a problem. Anger goes rotten quickly, and God requires us to deal with it quickly. He’s not wrong about that. However, he tries to rectify the problem by attending to the second half and neglecting the first, which still says what it says (and is quoting Psalm 4, so there’s more Scripture to work through there as well.) Based on the command “Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Hansen argues that anger is sinful and the only thing to do is get rid of it. This is a bit like claiming that because we need to wash our clothes, it’s wrong to wear them to start with. The same author who said “put your anger away” in v. 26b and 31 also said to have it and not sin in v. 26a. In neglecting half the revelation on the topic, Hansen is just like the people he’s criticizing.
If the command is “Be angry and do not sin,” then by God’s grace there’s a way to do it. That means that there is such a thing as human anger that’s not sin, even if only temporarily. Psalm 4, which Paul is quoting, walks us through how to think and pray through the anger righteously and ultimately let it go.
Hansen will go on to build the rest of his whole case on the claim that there’s no *biblical* argument for human righteous anger—but the biblical case for it is staring him right in the face in Eph. 4:26 and Psalm 4:4.
The theological problem is that Hansen dismisses the biblical discussions of Jesus’ anger with the old “He’s God; you’re not” excuse. This is the practical version of a serious christological heresy. Jesus didn’t show us a life that’s unattainable for us because He’s God and we’re not; we can’t appeal to Jesus’ divinity to beg off following His example. He laid aside His divine prerogatives and showed us what a fully submitted human life actually looks like. If Jesus handled His anger without sin, then it’s my job to handle my anger without sin, too.
The physiological problem is with Hansen’s claim that “anything you can do angry you can do better not angry.” (Which he got from Dallas Willard, if I’m recalling correctly.) They’re just wrong about this. Susceptibility to this error is a function of class. If you live your life behind a keyboard, anger doesn’t do much for you: it clouds your higher critical faculties and fine motor coordination in a way that’s not helpful when you’re trying to use your words. Talking or typing, anger isn’t a big help, and calm goes a lot further.
But all of life is not talking and typing. Anger gives an instant shot of raw physical strength that isn’t easily come by another way (especially for men; the effect is different for women—less pronounced, but lasts a lot longer). People who don’t understand how that could be valuable are blessed to have never needed it. As a trauma therapist and self-defense instructor, I regularly work with people who have needed it, and for some of them, it’s saved their lives.
Hansen is an acute observer of the human condition, and his errors in this area have made him an especially unsparing critic of our sins around anger. In this, he is performing a valuable service to the Body, and I would encourage you to listen to the interview and absorb what is useful in it. We really do sin with anger often.
That said, God made human anger. Anger is a reflection of the divine nature in us; it is a potent gift as language and sexuality are potent gifts. Like them, anger hurts us when we don’t attend to the instructions God gave about how to handle it. That’s no excuse for dismissing it entirely.
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