: Christopher Ash, Steve Midgley
: The Heart of Anger How the Bible Transforms Anger in Our Understanding and Experience
: Crossway
: 9781433568510
: 1
: CHF 9.10
:
: Christentum
: English
: 224
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
How should Christians understand anger, evaluate it, and respond for good? We all struggle with anger at times: Our plans suddenly fall through, we lose a prized possession, or our reputation is called into question. More often than not, when anger knocks at the doors of our hearts we easily allow it to take over. But what if getting to the heart of our anger also reveals the way to transform it? Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley address this question by bringing to bear what the whole Bible has to say about sinful anger-revealing that anger is the sinful response when something we value more than God is taken away or threatened. They reflect on biblical portraits of human anger, God's righteous anger, and how only the gospel of Jesus Christ brings true freedom-transforming a heart of anger into a heart filled with the love of God.

Christopher Ash is writer in residence at Tyndale House in Cambridge. He previously served as a pastor and church planter and as the director of the Proclamation Trust Cornhill Training Course in London. He and his wife, Carolyn, are members of a church in Cambridge, and they have four children and numerous grandchildren.

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Anger and the Human Heart

The triggers that setoff anger vary. But the rage that is triggered always reveals in some way what the angry person truly values and treasures. Anger rises in my heart when something I value is either threatened or taken from me. If I feel I may lose it, I become angry in anticipation of loss; if I have lost it, I am angered by actual loss. The Bible particularly highlights four kinds of treasure whose loss or threatened loss triggers anger.

1. Control

I make plans. I dream dreams. I want to be able to fulfill my dreams and accomplish my plans. I want to get somewhere quickly. I want to run my department. I want to shape my marriage the way I want it to be. I want to control my family, to be the one in charge. When you get in my way, I get angry. I am angry because you frustrate my control.

In the book of Daniel (and indeed in history) King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is a very angry man. In Daniel 2 the king has a troubling dream. Because he is suspicious that his Department of Magic, his counselors, are pretty good at making up interpretations of dreams, he insists not only that they interpret the dream but that they first tell him what he has dreamed. That will prove they are genuine magicians! When they protested that this was unreasonably difficult, “the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed” (2:12). In other words, “Here I am, emperor of Babylon, the most powerful man in the world. I am in control, or supposed to be in control, of every man in my empire. But my civil servants are not competent; they say they cannot do what I command.” And so, in deep frustration at the limits of his control, he flies off the handle in an explosion of rage. He draws the sword, and in his anger he strikes, commanding that they all be killed.

In Daniel 3 Nebuchadnezzar demonstrates his awesome control by erecting a huge golden statue and commanding that all his citizens bow before it and worship this image as a demonstration of their submission to his control. But when three Jews refuse to bow to his control, “Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that” they be brought before him (3:13). When they stood before him and refused outright to do what he said, “Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed” against them (3:19). His burning fury is expressed in the burning fiery furnace into which he throws them.

A rather different expression of anger triggered by a lack of control is found in the account of King David bringing the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. He is at th