New Book: The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling

[Michie]

Angry Like God?
The Angry Christian ignores human fury's biological essence.

The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling
By Andrew D. Lester (Westminster John Knox Press 2003, 2007)

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." Eph. 4:31-32The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling is one in a genre of books that has appeared in recent years determined to sanitize anger by redefining and stripping it of all its nasty bits. While it is written from a pastoral theology perspective and is designed to take anger off the list of Seven Deadly Sins, many of its assumptions and conclusions pose problems for me as a Christian clinical psychologist.

Continued- http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/novemberweb-only/145-24.0.html

[Michie]

As with many books in this vein, The Angry Christian turns to the concept of "righteous anger." He believes that "In many situations, anger is the most loving and, therefore, the most Christian response."

Not in my life or those around me! I can think of scores of people who would jump at this idea just to take out their revenge on others.

Stehan W. Hinks addressed such thinking by writing, "Our hearts and minds are deceptive, and we need to think at length through this issue. Can we not deceive ourselves into validating our angry response by believing it has a righteous cause?" Yes, we can.

Sounds like a very interesting read. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard justification for anger by Christians.

I understand being angry. Believe me. But I think there are more productive ways to express it.

What do you think?

[Joykins]

I think a lot of people justify their anger by calling it righteous anger, rather than actually trying to make it righteous.

There are things that rightly make me angry...child abuse, genocide, things like that. The question is what to do with it that achieves God's purpose.