Anger. Or the lack thereof.

“Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. Hate leads to Suffering.”

– Master Yoda

Anger is a complicated subject. 

Have too little or none of it and we’ll wonder where we have sent the voice that speaks for justice, for honesty, for dignity and pain.

Have too much of it and we become blind, self-obsessed, itching for a fight, always living on the verge of burning the world to the ground.

The picture painted for us in scripture seems paradoxical: be angry but do not sin (Ephesians 4:26), God has a righteous anger but mankind's anger is often out of alignment (James 1:20), it resides in the bosom of fools and yet can be called upon when needed (Ecclesiastes 7:9, Psalm 103:8)... yeah. Complicated.

I’ll speak personally here, as I so often do, in an attempt to lead with confession that you might find courage in your own work. Anger has been a longtime friend. A longtime enemy. I am grateful to say that I feel connected to it in a way that feels like a new frontier, but it was not always that way.

Anger often stepped in to make sure that I had a voice. It was etched onto my face, when I wasn’t paying attention. If I had had the clarity to connect with it, I think it would have told me that I felt a lot of pain, especially from other people, and that it wanted to protect me.

If it was really honest it would have said that it hated me most of all.

Because I needed it. Because I couldn’t control it. Like a boy in the kitchen who keeps cutting himself on the knife he is using to chop the vegetables.

So often my anger stepped in when things were not as I felt that they should be: I am speaking and not being listened to, I am pushing myself to excel and those around me are not (yet they somehow seem peaceful), this person nearly caused me harm (or did), someone I love or something I believe in is being harmed…

I won’t pretend to have the formula for attaining the righteous anger of the Lord and letting go of human anger. What I do have is an invitation to consider how anger has shown up lately:

For those of you that have shoved anger down, perhaps because we believe that what we experienced was justified or because we were only ever shown the kind anger that rages, I invite you to begin by listening today for the voice of dignity. What does it sound like? What gives it strength?

For those of you that have felt the cutting harm of using anger all-too frequently, I invite you to check in with that voice.

I want to paint a picture of the future for you: there is a way for you to hold onto all of the truth of what you know and learn to offer your strength in a way that does not consume you.

The first step? You must understand what anger (or the lack thereof) has been trying to do for you.

— Sam Eldredge, May 2026