It is nary impossible to have a discussion about anger without someone bringing up the story of Christ clearing the temple. Sure enough, within 5 minutes of my first anger post, I received this comment:
Okay. Then please explain Christ’s anger in the Temple, since he never sinned. Having anger and expressing it are different in my eyes, and so I’m curious how feeling anger is a sin, but feeling sad is not? Or is it? P.S. please note that my greatest weakness is also verbal anger, so I’ll be following your ideas very closely.
It was followed by several others, saying basically the same thing. It deserves to be addressed. I will wade in, armed only with the New Testament and my opinion. (Remember – this is my opinion. Key word: OPINION.)
So, here is my request: Please show me in the scriptures where it said Christ was angry when He cleared the temple – either time? (It was twice, you know.) In fact, please show me in the New Testament ANY reference as to the Savior’s emotional state when He cleared the temple. I challenge you. Better yet – I dare you!
Wait! I’ll even make it easier for you. Here are the accounts from all four of the Gospels:
Matthew 21:12-13
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Mark 2:15-17
And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;
And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Luke 19:45-46
And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought;
Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.
John 2:13-16
And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,
And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.
Yes, Christ turned over the tables and scattered money. Yes, He made a whip and drove out the animals and the people. Yes, it says that He yelled in an angry rage and was really, really loud and scary. Not really – I made that last part up.
But where is the anger?
What got me thinking about this is from watching too much TV. Now I am not a cop, and I have not served in the military, but I think there is an example here that might be, well, exemplary. We’ve all seen shows where the police or soldiers kick down a door and burst into a terrorist den, or a meth house. They arrest all the people, destroy or shut down the equipment, and get the job done with ruthless efficiency.
Or, here’s another option: Say you are out of town with your spouse, and your wayward teenage son decides to have a blow-out party at your house. It goes late into the night, and some of the kids brought alcohol and illegal drugs. Finally one of the neighbors calls the police. When the cops get there, they go through the house, room by room, and clear out the teenagers.
Do you think those cops are angry when they do this? Or just serious and efficient? My guess is that an angry cop is a dangerous cop, and they are trained to function beyond those types of emotions. Sure, the adrenaline might be pumping, and the enthusiasm high, but I don’t think anger would factor in – unless people fought back. When you have proper authority, and can back it up with power, you can go about your business, with much less resistance.
That is my parallel. Christ had ultimate authority, backed by unlimited power. Yes Christ had a whip – but there were stock animals that needed cleared out of the temple. Yes, He said “Ye have made it a den of thieves,” but it says he taught it, not screamed it. I see the Savior as someone who was always in complete control of Himself. Both thoughts, actions and emotions.
If find it interesting that after the cleansing, Christ sat down in the temple and taught and healed people. Obviously a Spirit-conducive environment. It would also seem that if this had been an aggressive, angry, violent rampage, the Romans never would have tolerated someone disturbing the peace in such a manner.
When we use the example of Christ in the temple as a way to justify our own anger, we tend to use the term “Righteous Indignation.” In his talk The Mericful Obtain Mercy last April, President Uchtdorf said “But when it comes to our own prejudices and grievances, we too often justify our anger as righteous and our own judgment as reliable and only appropriate.”
If I’m mad – it is righteous indignation. If you’re mad, it is sinful anger. Right?
It would seem that the determining factor between the two would be the presence of the Holy Ghost. We know the Holy Ghost departs when contention arrives – so unless the Holy Ghost is actively involved in our righteous indignation, it is probably just plain old anger. My guess is that righteous indignation isn’t legit nearly as often as we would hope.
There you go. My thoughts on anger and Christ clearing the temple. I remind you that this is my opinion – based my reading of the New Testament. And I am aware that I am swimming upstream against thousands of years of tradition when I say that I don’t think Christ was angry when He cleared the temple.
Let’s not bring it up again as an excuse.
JST Ephesians 4:26 Can ye be angry and not sin? (Unllikely, so best avoid anger, a common precursor of sin.)
James 1. 19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (Whereas the wrath of God DOES work the righteousness of God.)
Proverbs 22. 24 Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go:
25 Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul. (Even/especially if the angry/furious man is yourself, for the reasons stated above.)
So the reason why anger is a sin and sadness is not is because anger is a secondary emotion, unlike sadness which you can’t help but feel in a sad situation. You don’t feel anger first. First you feel hurt or embarrassed etc. and then choose to express that initial feeling with anger. It’s not possible to go straight to anger. Therefore, anger is a choice.
I’ve heard it said that “righteous indignation is the most addictive drug”
Thanks for your comment. Little children wouldn’t be in trouble because they can’t sin.
But it is obvious from your comment, and several others, that we might need to dig deeper into the “sin or not” idea soon.
Love this assessment of the cleansing of the temple. I think righteous indignation is more restrained than anger, and like you said, has the spirit behind it. It reminds me of D&C 121 when it talks about the correction of others. After the correction there must be an increase of love lest they esteem you to be their enemy. That’s a great reminder to me when I want to correct/complain about someone else. Am I doing this to help them because I love them and I’m truly concerned for them, or am I doing it for MY benefit and/or ego?
However, I do disagree with anger itself being a sin. Emotions aren’t sins or else all little children would be in trouble. Having a parent who’s whole family views feeling and expressing anger as something shameful, let me tell you, it leads to a LOT of problems and weird passive-aggressive behavior that can be just as damaging as overreacting. Anger is important, but we have to think about it and use it carefully. It’s a sign we’re invested in something or someone. If I found out a family member was abusing my baby girl, I would be a little more than “frustrated.” If I told people I wasn’t mad about it, they would probably wonder if I was a good parent, because if I care about my baby, wouldn’t I at least FEEL anger if someone was hurting her? I don’t have to shoot them in the head, but anger in that circumstance shows my concern for my child and motivates me to an action that will protect her and stop the offending behavior. On the flip side, anger is also really useful for identifying my own weaknesses and biases. If someone cuts me off in traffic and I’m really angry about it, is it because I’m just tired and having a bad day, or do I have a deeper problem I might need to address (like being easily offended because I feel insecure)?
Beautifully stated. This is the very reason I read mmm
I”m not sure I believe feeling angry is a sin, I believe Acting in anger is a sin and committing angry thoughts to your heart is a sin But, people have to be able to process their feelings or they can become very repressed. Anger as an emotion is as a warning to tell you that something must change or something is not right. Innocent little children get angry all the time the thing that usually has to change with them is a better understanding of the situation bringing in compassion and stretching them beyond their own immediate desires. As children of God I am sure he wants us to learn the same lesson when we are angry about not getting our way or someone taking our toy. I dare say as a human with a body Christ may have felt angry but as he never ACTED in anger he did not sin, all manner of thoughts and feelings enter our minds it is if we dwell on it and if we act poorly upon them that angry or bad thoughts become or lead us to sin in action or in our hearts
If we. Were told by a prophet of the Lord, which we were, that anger is a sin then, I believe it and It doesn’t really matter what it says about it anywhere else.
primary, secondary emotions- that’s psychology talking. Emotions are emotions. A bishop or Stake President will tell someone they are a sinner and do it with out anger, frustration. They do it with the spirit hopefully.
Knowing what Jehovah or the Christ of the New Testament felt will be fascinating in the next life or maybe totally simple.
perhaps it one or the other or both, or something completely different than this- Angry at Israelite’s for not keeping the commandments, or disappointed with intense sadness- in tears (see Moses ch 7 I think) for his children not having enough faith to keep the commandments and follow him and therefore loose their inheritance and throne with him.
I just know that that goal is to NOT GET ANGRY, NOT FEEL ANGER therefore not having to act and then sin- usually by hurting someone else and hurting ourselves because it draws us further away from God.
Helaman 5:30
30 And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul—
The Lord doesn’t need to get angry, his voice ” doth pierce the soul”….I want that voice.
well said Mormon Man and EMM!
I’m not a Greek or Hebrew scholar, but I did struggle with understanding the apparent “anger” of the Lord – especially in the Old Testament. How could the God who simply told the woman caught in adultery in the New Testament to “go and sin no more” be the same God who told Moses to put the man to death who was gathering sticks on the Sabbath Day? (Numbers 15:32) Granted, in these two cases the scriptures do not talk about the Lord being angry, but it certainly does in many other instances. So I wanted to understand what God was actually feeling when our accounts say He was angered or angry. In my studying I happened upon a obsolete definition of the word “anger.” (listed in The American Heritage Dictionary) It meant trouble, pain, affliction. THAT made sense to me! Of course, God feels troubled and pained when His children are disobedient and Jehovah feels the same when His brothers and sisters choose not to follow Him.
Sweet! I love it.
Awesome, EMM.
TOTALLY, COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOU!! I hate it when people say Christ was “angry” in this scene. Absolutely not.
I think sadness can be a sin if it takes the place of Christ in our lives. Really any emotion can become sinful if it becomes out of balance or keeps us from obeying the commandments.
But on another note, I once taught a lesson that included a quote about anger being a sign of weakness. I always thought of it as “If you are angry you are too weak to control yourself” or something like that. But a sister raised her hand and said that she was more likely to become angry when she was tired or hungry or in some other way “weakened”. I had not thought of it in that way. Since then I have realized the truth of her comment. I, too, become angry when I am weakened. This realization helps me recognize the underlying cause of my anger and control it better.
Anger is always a secondary emotion. It stems from other things such as fear, rejection or grief. I believe that Christ was capable of acting out solely on the primary emotion without allowing it to pass to anger. It grieved him to see what was happening in the Lord’s house. So he acted on the situation and corrected it. He taught that what was going on was wrong.
I would add PRIDE to that list. So often anger is a result of things and people not working out or reacting the way WE think they should.
I would even offer that most hurt and rejection is merely a way to express that our pride haas been bruised.
It has been suggested – that Chirst has not angry here- he was cleansing the Temple to provide a space for his followers to particiipate in Temple rites. We know they did this. The scriptures tell us that they whorshipped in the temple until the last day they had to leave Jeruselem. HOwever, they needed their own concecrated space for ordincances. Christ made one. Also- There is no word for Anger in Hebrew. Alsmost all words for any emotion in Hebrew are rooted in action. Example: Chembah or Joy- outward expression of joy or Chembah is defined by fasting. So What Christ was doing was NOTHING to do with emotion, it was action, ordinances, priesthood authority. Plain and simple.
I agree with Becca that anger is usually expressed as a secondary emotion. I know that when I’m the most angry, it’s usually because I’m exhausted physically or distracted by something else (depression, sadness, frustration, pain, overwhelmed, stress, etc.). Doesn’t excuse the anger, just helps figure out where it comes from in order to eradicate it.
I believe that anger is a secondary emotion. That is, we don’t feel anger first. Usually we feel another emotion, like hurt, embarrassment, frustration, loneliness, sorrow, etc. If we don’t know how to deal with the primary emotion, or we don’t like the primary emotion, we usually turn to anger to either hide our primary emotion, or to “deal with” our primary emotion.
The best example I can think of is a man who is hurt because of something another guy says to him. Because men “aren’t supposed to have feelings”, rather than express the hurt (either to the person who hurt him, or to a trusted friend) the man acts out in anger, hurting the other person either physically or verbally.
I think that learning to be okay with our emotions is a step toward never acting out in anger.
We teach our children that any emotion they feel is normal. However, with that we teach them how to deal with emotions. For example, it’s normal for our 3 year old to feel frightened when our 5 year old corners her with a foam sword (yes… it happens… such is the life of boy and girl siblings, eh?), however it is not okay for her to bite/scratch/hit him. (which is what usually happens, because being frightened is an overwhelming emotion – for anyone, let alone a 3 year old – and so she acts out in anger)
My husband has some anger management issues that he has been working on, and he has learned that most of his anger comes from feeling hurt – because he doesn’t think he deserves to be hurt by other people (he has been hurt a lot by people in his past, and it’s hard for him to let go of that hurt). When he is hurt, rather than express the pain, he gets angry and acts out. He has come a long way, and now he will talk to me about the hurt, rather than getting angry. He is so much less angry.
He came home from President Hinckley’s conference talk about anger dejected and frustrated because that talk was before he realized that he was getting angry because he was actually hurt.
I think it is important when you have an “anger problem” to figure out what the real problem is. It may not be so much the anger as it is being easily offended, or not dealing well with stress, or, or, or.
It’s hard to understand how to deal with anger if we don’t really know why we are angry.
I do believe anger can lead to sin, although I don’t believe that feeling angry is a sin. Certainly it is part of the natural man, but so is feeling sorrow, feeling hurt, feeling frustration, etc. Emotions are natural, normal, and helpful in understanding our human condition.
When Paul said, “Can ye be angry, and not sin?” I don’t think that he was saying that being angry is a sin, but rather that being angry can cloud our judgement and cause us to sin.
But again, I really like your analysis of the cleansing of the temple, and I agree with all your points about it. Great work. As usual 🙂
There you go. That was what I was having a problem with in the discussion. I don’t think that anger itself is necessarily a sin, since the scriptures often talk about the Lord’s anger (Alma 8:29, for instance). How we choose to express our anger, however, is where the sin comes in.
Becca & Angie: I am going to completely disagree with the premise that it is OK to feel the anger, and the sin comes in when we express it. Would you say the same thing about lust, or greed? I also completely disagree with the premise that certain emotions are acceptable because they are “natural”. Enemy to God, anyone?
But, you are going to have to wait to hear me explain my views in more detail. Then you can decide I’m nuts. 🙂
I liked and agree with this comment. Thanks, Becca.
For me It seems so simple. If we’ve been commanded not to get angry then we’ve been commanded not to get angry, right? I trust Christ is not a hypocrite. I always just thought we aren’t supposed to get angry because of our severe lack of ability to control those emotions. He is perfect. I am not.
Exactly.
Also, Christ understands motivations and circumstances PERFECTLY which we do not . . . To judge perfectly (and responding in anger IS a judgment) one must understand perfectly, as well . . .
We are SO flawed in our perceptions of what is going on around us . . . I find it much easier to be patient and understanding when I am well rested and not already stressed about other things . . . I also judge more leniently with people I know well and care about than those I do not care for or do not know . . .
If Christ gets angry — or responds in anger — his response IS righteous and justified . . . he is not simply having a bad day or feeling under the weather or worried about an unexpected bill he cannot pay or stressed about whether he is still going to still have a job in a month . . . Even in anger, he would not have lost control OR lost his eternal perspective . . .
Those are significant differences . . .
Thank you!
I agree – I don’t believe Christ was angry. (He was perfect, and I really like your analysis of his power and authority.) However, since we are not perfect, there are times when we feel anger.
This reminds me of the old phrase, “You can’t stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can keep him from building a nest there.” I think anger is an emotion that comes naturally. That doesn’t mean we should keep that feeling or allow it to reside within us, but it happens. And when it does, we should use our self discipline to push the anger away and feel a more appropriate emotion.
Thanks, MMM.
I agree completely with your analysis. However, the scriptures do say that Christ was angry at times. Here is an excerpt from Mark 3 (note verse 5)
I believe that the word anger here is probably a mis-interpretation (I don’t read/speak Hebrew, and so can’t resort to the original text), because it is immediately followed by “being grieved for the hardness of their hearts”.
Nevertheless, the word “anger” is ascribed to Christ’s feelings here.
1 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched [it] out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
No question that the scriptures say that Christ was angry at times, and as the Old Testament Jehovah, it seems that he was angry most of the time.
My main point was that the “go-to” defense of clearing the temple might not be such a sure thing.
If any of you readers are scholars that could enlighten us as to the original/intended meanings of the word “anger” in the N.T., I would be fascinated.
And again, the Doctrine and Covenants has several references to the Lord being angry with his people, either collectively, or individually …
I should have said “Greek” in my original post, not Hebrew, as obviously the NT was written in Greek. I don’t read/speak either, unfortunately. 😉
It does say in scripture that the Lord is angry. Meanwhile, he is constantly telling us through his prophets that we shouldn’t be. Double standard? Or, perhaps, He is God, and we are mere “natural men”?
Or, is it possible that the Lord experiences a righteous emotion which we can’t understand, but our closest analogy is “anger”?
Or maybe it’s simply frustration. I get frustrated with my children a lot –but I don’t feel anger (well, at those times).
Well, I looked it up in our Greek/English bible and didn’t make a lot of headway, but I found a simple explanation by some random dude on the internet that may or may not be correct. If you look here: http://www.remnantreport.com/cgi-bin/imcart/read.cgi?article_id=513&sub=24
and scroll down to were it says “Greek-Not English” there is a concise explanation of three different Greek words having to do with anger and the subtle differences. Very interesting!
There is not a Hebrew word for Anger. That is our equivilant. there is contmept and frustration. not anger. Adn actually- thr orrt of both of those words means love or peace or acceptance. I have more to say in a comment below.
One other thing. Our New Testemnt was translated from Greek. This was a language that was more universally accepted and used in trade and commerece at the time the NT was written. HOwever, schalors to have earlier copies written in Hebrew. The Jews/Christains- they were not Christains until later- would have known the words even written in Greek as being rooted in Hebrew. The NT would have been written to a Hebrew knowledge based people.