The River of Anger (Letters to my Sons)

(This is one of a set of letters I've been writing for my sons, as they transition from being boys to young men.)

My boys,

I see the river churning in you. Sometimes it is a raging torrent. Other times it is quieter but deep and full of dangerous currents. In places it becomes of a bubbling swamp, half-indistinguishable but full of murk and bitter bubbles. It spills out in flares of temper. It drags you into sullen silences. It cuts channels through your soul. I see all of this because I see it in myself, perhaps not as strong anymore, but still threatening to well up and flood out.

As human beings, and as men, we are often so angry.

Where does the river of anger come from? Some of it just springs from being embodied creatures. Adolescence, testosterone, adrenaline, the way our nervous system tells us we are unsafe and tells us to fight, even when there is no enemy—all of that gives rise to anger.

Some of it flows from real hurts, a recognition of life’s wrongness, and a longing for justice. More than many boys your age, you have been deeply hurt, and anger is normal part of how our souls respond to pain. Some of that is righteous, a correct declaration that things are wrong in the world. God is mad at the evil in our world—mad as hell. 

Other parts of hurt-anger are more complicated. Pain produces painful emotions: sadness, grief, helplessness. We don’t like those feelings, and anger can be a way to avoid them. In our culture you are also sometimes not given permission to feel those emotions. We don’t have vocabulary for or examples of grieving men or scared men, and so being an angry man is all that is left. Wrath can be a bandage we wrap around sorrow. It can staunch the bleeding, but we will have to remove it if we want the wound to be healed.

And I should add, there is also anger that is simply the result of sin. Our egos are bruised. Our perceived territories are threatened. Or perhaps most often, our hearts fail to trust God and, instead of waiting for Him, we take our place on His judgment seat and mete out our own. Part of the seductive allure of anger is that it can make us feel almost divine.

Crucially, all of these sources of anger flow together in our hearts. The tributaries become a single river. When we feel it, the whole weight of water behind it tends to rush in all at once. You might be aching from a deep hurt but then have that roar forth at a slight from a sibling or friend. You might be outraged at injustice in society, but somehow that also increases your rage when your pride is pricked.

So we are angry, for all of these reasons and more, all intermingled within us. Should we be? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. And even in the yes we can still sin, and even in the no, we are still human and cannot easily change our feelings. (Ephesians 4:26)

However, we must all be wary of the danger the river poses. It makes us a danger to others. A man ruled by anger can become a monster. He can commit the most heinous of acts and feel justified as he does them. Wrath easily overflows its banks, and the floodwaters destroy lives and whole cities in moments.

More importantly, while anger can be a danger to others, it is always a danger to us. A heart full of anger has no room for joy or repentance or rest. A life coursing with it will be worn down and eventually collapse, eroded into nothingness. The more the waters roar, the less we can hear the voices of correction, wisdom, or the Holy Spirit.

So what do we do with the river?

First, two wrong solutions. One is to try to dam it, gritting our teeth and applying self-control and discipline in an attempt to hold back the water, fully and forever. Certainly, there are moments when anger must simply be stopped, when we recognize it is swelling and must throw up a sandbag barrier lest it cause immediate and irreparable damage. But a life spent trying to dam the river will simply create an ocean behind the walls. We will become hard and bitter, and eventually the pressure will be too great and we won’t be able to determine when or where it bursts.

Another solution, better but still insufficient, is to try to channel it. We can harness our anger and direct it towards productive ends. There are times that this is a fine approach. The anger we feel at injustice might inspire us to stand up for someone being bullied or work towards some good cause. But if anger is the driving force behind a cause, even if it is a good cause, it will still lead to damage in the end. We will fail to be fair or wise or loving. “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20) After all, as we said, the river doesn’t discriminate between the sources of water, and it always flows with the force of all of them at once.

So what do we do with our anger? We must embrace a set of heart practices that calm the river. They will never eliminate it, but they can weaken its power. I think this is why Scripture’s call is not to “never be angry” but to be “slow to anger.” (James 1:19, Proverbs 19:11, Ecclesiastes 7:9)

First, we must let our anger be slowed through a prayerful attentiveness to our hearts. Those painful feelings that alchemize into rage—our deep sadness, our disappointment, our fear—we are invited (commanded!) to bring those feelings into the open in the presence of God. We can let His compassion and gentleness and presence give us enough security to admit what we are truly feeling. And we will find in that same presence a place to have our tears and hurts be seen and validated and to be sustained through them by our Father’s love. Just this habit will cut off a significant wellspring of rage.

Second, we must also learn to submit ourselves to the justice of God and to trust Him to bring it in His time. Scripture rests our call to not seek vengeance in our confidence that God will avenge (Romans 12:9). There is a squishy, romanticized approach to Christianity that robs God of all His wrath. He is all meekness and timid niceness. And it tells us that, to be like Him, we must give up any claim of our own to justice or vindication. This is a recipe for a deeply bitter soul. 

Our world is wrong. People wrong us. Things happen that should not happen. If we don’t feel angry and want justice to be done, we are calling evil good. Scripture doesn’t deny that evil needs is terrible or that vengeance is never warranted—it simply tells us that it is not our place to bring them. Because of our finiteness and selfishness and brokenness, we will be unjust judges and cruel avengers if we do.

Instead, it calls us to leave that up to God, trusting that He will make all right in His good time. That doesn’t mean we can’t take appropriate steps in this world to seek justice for ourselves, but when those steps can’t bring it, we are called to pour that part of the river out at the feet of our King.

And lastly, we must let the river of anger be slowly evaporated by the sun of grace. When something seems wrong to us, we can be correct about that fact but wrong in the strength of our response. Why? Often, we have too high a view of ourselves in the stories of injustice we tell. We make ourselves into martyrs and innocent sufferers and so magnify the wrongs done against us.

The gospel reminds us that while the sin of others deserves the wrath of God, our sin does as well. In the economy of anger, none of us would see salvation. This does not mean we shouldn’t grieve hurts or confront evils, but it does mean we must always grieve them as wrongdoers. We are robbers who have been robbed, liars who are being lied about. This teaches us a deep humility that allows us to feel justified anger but in a measured way.

And ultimately, the gospel reminds us that mercy is the currency of the kingdom of heaven. God’s mercy purchased by Jesus’s blood. As we receive it, we will start more naturally to extend it. If the cross of Christ is grace to us, then it must be grace to others as well. And such mercy says over the waters of wrath, “Peace, be still.”

None of this will make the river dry up fully. We won’t be able to walk the streambeds until the age to come. But as you let your Father see your hurts, vindicate your cause, and show you both your sin and His mercy, you will no longer be carried along by it and will find rest for your churning souls.

Dad