I wanted to clarify some of the thoughts in the last post – ideas that might not have been completely clear because of the levity in it.

1. The Cleansing of the Temple.

There is a law written somewhere that you can’t discuss the topic of anger in Christian circles without bringing up what Jesus did at the Temple. I find this a little odd, because it never says that Jesus was angry. We just assume he was because of his violence. But not all choices for physical destruction are a result of anger.

To illustrate – I’ll use the example in the last post with more detail.

Imagine this setting – a person in the care of an infant walks into the nursery to find a large dangerous snake about to attack the baby. And further imagine there is a machete in the room. I do not hold high odds on the snake coming out well in that confrontation, even if the person is a non-strong, usually timid fourteen-year-old girl. Now when you picture the caretaker inflicting violence on the snake, do you picture her as acting in anger? No, she is acting with the motivations of protection and justice. I call this wrath, not anger.

And I see these kinds of motivations behind Jesus’ actions in the temple. He wasn’t (to employ the stated definition) acting out of “a feeling of belligerence or displeasure, accompanied by an impulse to retaliate”

I’ll admit that Jesus might have been angry in this situation. Will you admit that it’s possible that he might not have been? And if there is a reasonable chance that he wasn’t angry in this situation, should you use it as a defense for your own anger?

And whatever you were last angry with your kids about – it wasn’t as bad as what the sellers were doing at the temple.

Next post – the time that Jesus did get angry.

Click here to see the list of posts in this series.

(And by the way, perhaps I should have titled this blog series: “Christian Dads and Anger”, or “Bible Believing Dads and Anger”, because most of my reason for believing what I’m writing is based on scripture. If you don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God, then there will be little reason for you to believe what I’m saying.)

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