What are You Mad About?

Scripture Reading: Jonah 2-4; Micah 1-2; Revelation 14

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry...And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

Sometimes there are good reasons to be angry. In the Bible, anger is never categorized as always a sin. It isn’t like adultery. Even in Jonah chapter four, the Lord isn’t condemning anger outright. Instead, He is asking Jonah if is the appropriate response to what happened. Is Jonah doing well by being angry?

The context is, of course, the missionary concerns of the book of Jonah and the Christian way of seeing the nations of the world – especially the overtly pagan and evil ones.

Still, I think there is a wider principle in play here that we can learn from.

By simply asking ourselves the same question that God asked Jonah – Am I doing well by being angry - we might save ourselves a lot of grief and trouble in life. Here are some ways we might want to pause and reflect about what is making us angry before we go further with it:

“Is my anger really justified—or just understandable to me?”

“Does this anger honor God, or only protect my pride?”

“Am I angry because something is truly wrong, or because I didn’t get my way?”

“Would I still call this anger ‘right’ if God were asking me about it?”

“Why am I angry—really?”

“What outcome am I demanding?”

“What would repentance look like in this moment?”

Again, there is such a thing as justified anger, but we feel it less than we likely believe.

When anger rises in your heart, stop…

Pause…

Ask, “Am I doing well to be angry?”