Today’s sins in our Lenten series are anger and resentment. That doesn’t mean we’re going to practice displaying them, but rather that we’re going to try to understand them as sins and figure out how to avoid them as much as possible. And I’ll warn you right now, these two are tough because they often wear disguises of righteousness and truth with a capital T. But a disguise doesn’t change the fact that they are, in fact, sins.
Judmentalism is an ugly sin. And judgmentalism leads to other sins like jealousy, bigotry, oppression, and even murder, as in the case of lynchings in the American south and the Holocaust in Europe. Judgmentalism is dangerous, but not only for the world, also for our own souls.
We hear throughout Scripture that God alone is Judge. Jesus reminds us of this in the parable of the woman caught in adultery and also in the story about the log in the eye versus the speck. Judgment is God’s job, not ours. Yet we have a terrible tendency to fall into judgment, whether we go with our eyes open or back in and find ourselves there. And, unfortunately, Christians can be among the worst sinners when it comes to judgmentalism.
Judgmentalism about Christian doctrine led to the first skirmishes among believers in the Bible. The battles over circumcision and dietary laws being examples of judgmentalism in the early church. Each side in both battles was trying to be faithful, trying to protect the truth, but in the end the issues over which the disagreement occurred were not important enough to warrant the sin of judgmentalism and schism.
Judgmentalism over Christian doctrine led to the eventual split in the church at the Protestant Reformation and the loss on both sides of some great people, beliefs, and practices, not to mention actual bloodshed. There were wars fought over doctrine and many, many people were put to death for heresy through the years. The notorious Spanish Inquisition was a direct result of judgmentalism: believe the way we say you should or die a tortured death.
In modern times, the judgmental debates rage on. “I would never be friends with someone who would do that!” or “How can he/she speak/dress that way. We should teach him/her a lesson!” I’m sure you can think of more examples….Judgmentalism is the sin that leads to bullying and hate crimes. Judgmentalism leads to harsh and destructive criticism. It fosters division and polarization rather than peace and unity. Judgmentalism is, in many ways, the act of living out the sin of pride. We believe that we know best – that we have the one right answer - and that all others should see or do things our way. But as James reminds us, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Judgmentalism leaves no room for humility.
While there are times and issues on which we truly must take a stand, like those that are made unquestionably clear in Scripture such as the Ten Commandments, most of the time our judgmentalism is destructive and sinful. God alone is supposed to judge and when we sit in judgment of others, we are usurping God’s place, not only engaging in idolatry by putting something else in the place of God, but making ourselves idols since it is ourselves we are putting in His place. It is kind of the ultimate sin of pride taken to an extreme.
In order to combat the sin of judgmentalism, we must focus on humility, holding our tongues rather than speaking words of judgment. James tells us, “Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?” If we will focus on humility, we will realize it is not our place to judge, but only to share the love of Christ and to speak the truth gently in that love. If we will be humble enough to admit that we may not know perfectly or understand perfectly or have all the right answers, we will make space in our hearts and minds for the possibility that another way or idea may just be as acceptable to God as our own. Humility, unlike judgmentalism, fosters peace and mutual understanding.
A close cousin of judgmentalism is anger. Very often, judgmentalism is a root cause of anger. We become angry when we feel we have been judged unfairly. We anger others when we decide that we know the only right position and it isn’t the one they hold.
Anger affects everyone everywhere and poisons us all. You can’t escape it. It damages close relationships. But it is part of all humans in a fallen world. Anger is so difficult that there are classes in managing anger, but not in curing it. It is one of the most destructive forces known to man, the thing that starts almost all wars, motivates almost all crimes, breaks almost all broken relationships, and at least indirectly causes almost all abuse. Anger is not merely an emotion, but instead is “often accompanied by sinful emotions, words, and actions hurtful to [others].”
Sometimes people cloak their sin by calling it righteous anger, and there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it is extremely rare. As one website defined it, anger is only righteous “if our outrage results in restoring people into loving, healing relationships with Jesus….”1 Generally speaking, anger is not righteous but is sin. Even if anger is a reaction to the blatant sin of another, and the actions it leads to might be legally or even morally defensible, the anger itself is most often still sinful. Anger is more often rooted in our own pride, selfishness, control issues, or other personal flaw than in righteousness. It is a selfish thing – a response to not getting what we want or to feeling injured by something beyond our control that leaves us feeling like we have been wronged.
There are two ways people typically deal with anger. One way is to vent it like steam from a pressure cooker. The valve opens, steam goes out. The other way people deal with anger is repression, which tends to lead to build up. In a pressure cooker, if the vent fails to function and let steam escape, eventually the pressure cooker has catastrophic failure, leaving both contents and vessel ruined. Such blowouts can happen with repressed anger, as well. Neither venting anger nor repressing anger is really safe.
When we vent our anger, we can cause great injury, just as escaping steam from a pressure cooker vent can cause injury. If we are not careful to find constructive rather than destructive ways to vent our anger, it can lead to physical, or mental or emotional injury to ourselves or another. It can take the form of “bitterness…wrath, slander, malice, obscene talk” or a host of other despicable sins.2 Whether physical or emotional, anger vented inappropriately leaves lasting scars.
When we repress our anger it comes out eventually, often in ways that are out of control. Repressed anger often transforms into resentment which may well lead to a much greater injury, not only to those who are in the path of the eventual blowout, but also to the one who harbors the anger. A blowout from repressed anger is most recognizable as the response that is completely out of proportion to the immediate situation. For instance, repressed anger that ferments into resentment and explodes in hatred and malice is the kind of thing that has led to the tragedies of school shootings.
So what are we to do with our anger? The simple answer is a whole lot of patience followed by repentance and forgiveness. Simple in terms of words, but not so much in terms of actions. The process of repentance and forgiveness is neither short nor easy. But it is what we are called to. When we feel anger, we should take a moment to collect our thoughts, acknowledge how we feel, examine ourselves to see whether the root cause of our anger is a selfish one, and if so, repent of the anger, of the sin that led to it, and of any damage we may have caused by expressing that anger. If our anger harms another, we must seek that person’s forgiveness. If the root cause of our anger is truly not a selfish one, then the Christian response is to forgive the one who harmed us. That’s not easy stuff, but it is biblical. Our Ephesians passage today tells us, “31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” That’s the biblical response to anger.
As we get better with dealing with our anger, we can live out the rest of the passage, diminishing or managing the problem of anger. We can learn to put off our old selves, our falsehoods and deceitful desires, our selfishness and unwholesome talk. We can replace these bad things with good things, putting on instead righteousness and holiness, truthfulness and charity, talk that builds up instead of tearing down. But we can’t do any of this alone. We need the help and counsel of God, much prayer, and the accountability of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Anger management is not like riding a bicycle; it’s more like running a marathon. You may not forget how to run any more than you’d forget how to ride a bicycle, but if you don’t train regularly, you’re certain to struggle mightily to finish the race. Anger management takes regular training, regular self-reflection, repentance, and forgiveness. It requires regular exercises in humility as we seek forgiveness from those we have harmed with our anger. Like training for a marathon, it can be grueling. But like I would imagine winning a marathon would be, the results of successful anger management are well worth all the effort and discipline.
We have heard it said “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We have also heard it said, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Both quotes are biblical. Both are good advice. And both are critical to helping to spread the love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ in a way that is humble, effective, and honest. We must learn to deal with our own sins of anger and judgmentalism for only then will we be able to truly live out our faith in humility and draw others to Christ.
- http://www.christianitytoday.com/biblestudies/questions/theology/righteousanger.html?start=2 3/20/11.
- Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate (NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colorado 2007) p. 129.