I was stirred by an article I read this morning on the essential-ness of anger from Paul David Tripp, a wonderful author and pastor in Philadelphia. I confess I have not always known what to do with anger. I generally have taken a pragmatic view towards anger believing that there isn’t much that anger can accomplish except for bad things. But that’s not the Bible’s position on anger and nor is it Tripp’s position. He writes:
In a fallen world, people of character and conscience will always be angry. Perhaps our problem regarding anger is not just that we are often angry for the wrong reasons, but that we are not angry often enough for the right reasons. Perhaps our problem is that the things that should make us angry and thereby move us to action just don’t make us angry anymore. So we get used to political corruption. We get used to homelessness. We get used to the perverse morals of the entertainment industry. We get used to how many broken families are around us. We get used to the daily reports of suffering and disease that infect every continent on the globe. We get used to the fact that the church is often a place of compromise and division. We get used to our own complacency and hypocrisy. We get used to marital stresses and childhood rebellion. We get used to a world that has been broken by sin. Even pastors get lulled to sleep. Even with lives committed to ministry, we are all too easily satisfied. Things that should distress, concern, and upset us become the things we either no longer see or that we’ve become used to.
As I read through the article, I was both convicted and “angered” by my lack of anger at the sinful things in this world and in my heart that I have grown indifferent to. As a Christian and a pastor that is committed to seeing the transforming power of the gospel change lives, I must continually ask for gospel sensitivity to the horror and pain of sin in my life and the lives of others. If I become desensitized and lose my sense of anger at the way things are, I will be less inclined to pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
brett eubank | unfinished 