The day following Palm Sunday, Christ entered the temple in Jerusalem. He didn’t like what he saw, so He took care of it. Over the years, I have heard people use this story as justification for “righteous anger,” or any “justified” anger. “I mean, since Jesus got angry…”
We should probably take a closer look – because it just isn’t there.
So, here is my request: Please show me in the scriptures where it says 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.
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. It says that He yelled in an angry rage, stomped about, whipping people, and was really, really loud and scary. Not really – I made that last part up.
But where is the anger? In all four accounts in the New Testament, none of them address Christ’s emotional state.
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 made a whip – but there were stock animals that needed to be cleared out of the temple. “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.” (Matthew 21:13), but it says he said 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.” Dieter Uchtdorf once taught, “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’s 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 on 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 believe Christ was angry when He cleared the temple.
But using this story as justification for anger is lame.
Happy Easter!
Looking good for Conference notes this weekend. Stay tuned!
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When soldiers clear a room, building, battle field, etc, they are brutally efficient at it, because they have already removed themselves. There is no anger, tension is high, but there is no emotion. Just do the job. The situation is already adrenaline inducing. Anger just adds to that. Anger also opens up the opportunity to make mistakes. I said that our soldiers are “brutally efficient” but they are also empathetically gentle in trying to ensure that nobody, who is innocent, is harmed in any way.
I believe that the Savior was simply doing a job that needed to be done. even overturning the tables was probably done in such a way that it didn’t panic the animals and gave the money changers an opportunity to withdraw.
We might also note that the Prophet Joseph declared “Whoso is angry without a cause is in danger of the judgment” is incorrect. According to the JST we are to omit the phrase “without a cause.”
My take has always been I have no idea whether the Savior was angry because there is no mention as you’ve stated. There are many references in the Old Testament and later Epistles warning against incurring the wrath/anger of the Most High. How that relates to Christ’s cleansing I’m not sure. Maybe all those OT and Pauline references are Prophetic hyperbole to make a point. I don’t know.
But here is one thing DO know. The Founding Prophet of this final dispensation has made it absolutely clear that there is no acceptable rationale for me to ever behave in anger. For me as a child of the New and Everlasting Covenant there is no such thing as righteous anger.
I’ll leave the question on the list of things that might be revealed some future day.
My personal thoughts – thanks for the conversation.
Enjoyed your comment, and agree
Something to consider — not claiming to be right, just a thought:
We read books and watch movies all the time and pick up on characters’ emotions without the author ever writing “and so-and-so was angry.” The actions show us. That’s just how humans are wired to communicate and receive emotion.
That said, whether Jesus was angry or not may be beside the point. Here’s what I think actually matters: anger itself isn’t the problem. It’s what we do with it.
I work with people on understanding and processing their emotions, and my take is that Jesus could feel every emotion we feel — but because of who He was, He didn’t react the way we tend to. He responded. Big difference.
Anger, when it’s processed rather than exploded, can actually move us toward good. Think about Candy Lightner, who founded MADD after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. I’d bet everything that anger lit the fire — but she didn’t rage. She channeled it into something that’s saved thousands of lives.
That’s the model, I think. Not “is the anger righteous?” but “what are you doing with it?”
Using the cleansing of the temple to justify anger in ourselves is wrong. Agreed.
And I’m not suggesting that Christ’s behavior was in a raging fashion. It was measured and controlled. But if Christ did not feel every emotion we experience in mortality how can he succor us in those feelings? Anger is the physiological response to the belief “that’s not fair.” And sometimes it’s not fair. We are recognizing a truth. The question then becomes how do I manage that anger? What is the appropriate response?
Christ’s response was not vengeful (He didn’t tell the money changers to quit doing their job or go after them personally), it didn’t go beyond what the law of Moses required (business out of the inner sanctum, that’s not what it’s for), and as soon as it was complete He turned back to that which was most aligned with the will of the Father. He wasn’t turning over tables because it felt good. We often act in anger because we have a mortals perverse delight in violence or the feeling of power it gives us. We want to “feel” right. Even when our actions are not.
Thieving is an inherently unfair practice. You don’t call people thieves without the response of anger in the body that comes from that knowledge. The difference is that Christ did not do any of what He did for His own satisfaction and when it was done it was done. And let those feelings go, in fact actively pushed them away. It’s very difficult (impossible even) to teach the word without the Spirit present.
There are plenty of places where Christ may have felt anger, but immediately put it in its proper context and did the next right thing: Judas’ betrayal, the mob that tried to throw Him off a cliff, the triple denial. More often than not, when Christ recognized unfairness, what could have been anger building became compassion inducing: the woman whose son had died, the daughter Jairus, the woman with the issue of blood who did not ask permission to touch Him. Recognition of unfairness and injustice is wired into our nervous systems. If the Lord did not want us to feel it at all He would not have built us so. But once we recognize the source of the anger we can choose to do the next right thing, as the Savior always did.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. Now replace the word “anger” with “lust” and see if the explanation still works.
Thank, Brad. I agree with you. I do think that the Savior had the authority and the power to cleanse the temple. And, like you, I think that he was in control of his emotions. I can imagine that it was frustrating and painful to see the temple desecrated like that, but anger is a reactive emotion, not a proactive one. It may be that it has been attributed to anger because often in the Old Testament, God’s anger has been spoken of many times.
If you have watched the Chosen, it is interesting to visualize just how much business could, conceptually, have been conducted in the courtyard of the temple and it was a desecration. But I think you are right, that it was a cleansing to honor the sacredness of the temple, rather than a reactive, uncontrolled emotion. (I could be wrong, too, but there we are.)