As we study the scriptures, we learn that God was angry many times with his Jewish children. Most of these were caused by someone choosing someone or something over Him.
In the gospels, Jesus was also angry several times. He once went to the temple to worship only to find that it had been turned into a flea market. He braided a whip and drove out the money changers, all those that were buying and selling, and the animals as well. He then said to those that sold doves, “Take these things out of here; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.” (John 2:16)
Those that have studied the anger of God know that it is a righteous indignation brought on by seeing wrongdoing elevated above His will. It was Aristotle who once said, “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”
One who lives in constant anger is a fool and desperately needs to repent of that sin. Henry Ward Beecher said, “A person that doesn’t know how to be angry, doesn’t know how to be good. One who doesn’t know how to be shaken to his heart’s core with indignation over things evil, is either a fungus or a wicked man.”
There is a long list of things that should bring us to the threshold of a fit of righteous indignation. Some of the most offensive of these might be:
- An entertainment industry that is bent on polluting the minds of an entire world with their own sex-crazed, profanity-filled depictions of their perception of paradise. (Matthew 18:6)
- Those that would seek to rob any person of their God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by whatever means. (Galatians 5:1)
- One that presents himself as friend and teacher of the brethren, but is a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to lead many away from the one true God. (1 Peter 2:1-22)
I suppose the one verse that sums up the entire matter best is Isaiah 5:20. It says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” These are the things that should always provoke believers to become righteously indignant. When that ceases to happen, then we ourselves are in danger of the judgement.