I said in the last post that in the judgment, no one will be told by God “You weren’t angry enough.” I mentioned this to my wife and she commented that there is such a thing as righteous anger. Agreed.

How’s this for a definition? Righteous Anger: Anger that is permissible, correct, non-sinful, right.

I agree that this exists. It can at times be useful. It can at times drive you to good action. Still, I don’t feel that a lack of this will be called out in the Day of Judgment. Rather, I think what God will call sin is the lack of action.

“You saw injustice and did not act against it”
“You knew that innocents were being harmed and did not speak up”

God will do this. This is what we should fear. But a man who sees harmful things happening, and works to stop them, and never gets angry in the process – he doesn’t need to fear God’s judgment (about that one issue.)

So once again, it’s not the instinctive emotion; it’s the response, it’s what you do, it’s how you take action that is the important thing.

And once again, in any case, I think it most likely that your anger against your two year old (or seven year old, or twelve year old) is best described as “Not Righteous”.

Question: Do you agree or disagree?

Next: The real reason you are angry.

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

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