“Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Come here.’ And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.” — Mark 3:1-5

There is exactly one place where the Gospels say Jesus was angry, and it isn’t when he upset the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple. It’s here in Mark 3. And the very next word, both here in this translation and in the original Greek, is grieved.

Christians, it’s time we let ourselves be angry and grieved like Jesus.

A Time for Anger

It’s time we let ourselves be angry. Really. It’s okay.

It’s time we let ourselves be angry. Really. It’s okay. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. Why is it a time for anger? Just look at what’s going on!

• Because two professors in Arizona told a student he couldn’t read the Bible at his desk before class started. That’s outrageous. It disturbs me. Why shouldn’t I be angry about that?

• Because a commenter on my Thinking Christian blog thinks this is a good idea:

  If the world woke up tomorrow and we somehow found ourselves with a billion unwanted pregnancies all at once, my stance would be: “well that’s weird, we need to figure out how this happened. in the meantime, time for a billion abortions.”

  He thinks a billion abortions could be just fine. That makes me boil.

• Because a city in Texas is trying to criminalize “discrimination” based on sexual identity and orientation. They’re calling wrong right and right wrong, and they want to enforce it that way. That upsets me. Badly.
• Because racial tension and prejudice really is a problem, and the world is going about “solving” it in ways that divide us even further. What they’re doing is mad, and it’s maddening to me.
• Because Christians are being persecuted around the world. Being beheaded. That’s horrifyingly wrong.

Because Anger Gets Us Moving

Why be angry?

Because anger wakes us up. It gets us started.

You know what you do when you get angry: you get moving. You can’t sit still. Energy bursts out of you. Anger gets us up off our seats and drives us to do something; and by God and in His name (I say that in all reverence) it is time: we have got to quit watching the world go by and start doing something to fix it.

Evil is winning because good people are too content to let it win. We’re not standing in unity in conviction and power to cry out “No! It’s wrong!” We’re not putting our lives on the line for what’s right. The time has come when we should be.

Fear of Anger

But I suspect some of us are angry enough; we’re just afraid of our anger. We bottle it in. We pace the room, we mutter about how bad things are, then we sit down again, fuming uselessly about it all.

There’s good reason to be afraid of anger. It’s got a bad history connected with it. It leads people in ungodly, destructive directions.

That’s because anger doesn’t just motivate us, it can also blind us, and blind energy is dangerous energy. Anger has a way of distorting our vision, causing us to see other people as problems or as obstacles to be done away with. It darkens our eyes to the reality that the other person is still a person, made in God’s image and loved by Him as much as He loves the greatest saint. So in our anger we do rash, harmful things.

A Time for Grief

There really is such a thing as righteous anger, and the key to it might just lie in the word “grieved.”

But Jesus was angry. It can’t be all wrong. There really is such a thing as righteous anger, and the key to it might just lie in that next word, grieved. If it is time for anger (and it is), then it is equally time for grief.

Why grief, you ask?

• Because two professors in Arizona are so disconnected from God’s goodness they can’t see the goodness of His own Word. They’re lost. That’s worth weeping over.
• Because a commenter on my blog is so confused about life and truth he can’t even get a glimpse of the worth of a baby. He suffers a very tragic sort of blindness.
• Because council members in Plano, Texas, have so lost sight of reality that they think right is wrong and wrong is right. They’re completely confused about the whole shape of reality. It makes me think of the “sheep without a shepherd” on whom Jesus felt such compassion in Matthew 9:36.
• Because lost people are trying to correct the tragic racial tensions with hopeless solutions.
• Because the same spiritual lostness and blindness and confusion play out in all the wrongs done all over the world.

And especially for this reason: While anger can blind us, there’s something unexpectedly clarifying about tears: they have the power to wash the scales of anger off our eyes. With grief we can see again. With grief we can be angry without falling into destructive sin (Eph. 4:26-27).

To See Clearly Through Our Anger, and to Act in Love

Grief lets us see we’re dealing with human beings like ourselves; that no matter our differences, still we have so much in common. We really are all made in God’s image. We’re all loved by God. We’re all in this mess together.

Grief lets us see other people not as dehumanized, objectified “problems” or “obstacles,” but as persons to be loved, even as we seek to right the terrible wrongs they perpetrate. God loved us while we were yet enemies, after all (Romans 5:6-10). We who follow Christ must seek to do no less.

The bad news will keep coming. People will continue to call wrong right and right wrong. Abortion advocates will keep on wanting to kill babies. Blacks and whites will still have trouble getting along, and misguided people will keep on giving foolish advice for solving it.

So be angry. Go ahead! It’s okay: you have permission to let things bother you. Let them bother you so much you’ll rise out of your easy chair and get moving! Do something to help solve whatever it is that disturbs you most. But keep your vision clear. Be angry with tears, as our Lord Jesus Christ was.

Tom Gilson is a senior editor with The Stream and the author of Critical Conversations: A Christian Parents’ Guide to Discussing Homosexuality with Teens (Kregel Publications, 2016). Follow him on Twitter: @TomGilsonAuthor.