Anxiety in Evidence: Anger

Anger has often been my first reaction to a whole range of situations and fears. In researching Bible examples of fear and anger, I came upon the story of Moses striking the rock twice for water. I have to admit that I never read carefully enough to understand why Moses was then punished. I just knew he was punished. But now, I figured out that was because there are two stories of Moses striking the rock to bring forth water, Exodus 17 and Numbers 20.

So, we already have muddied waters. This is the second time (Numbers 20) that Moses hears the grumbling of the Israelites about lack of provision by God. This time he is told to go to the rock to bring forth water. But when Moses goes down to the rock, he hollers out to the people that they are rebels and asks them what he should do about it. He gets so caught up in his anger that he disobeys God. What was he angry about?

Feelings behind Anger

You see, with anger we always have to explain it. If I am happy or sad, there may something that caused it – we received a gift, lost something, or talked to someone we haven’t seen in a while, etc. But anger has an underlying feeling associated with it. We are angry about something. Was he angry about his lack of control? Inadequacies of leading this group of rebels? Afraid God would cut them off now? Afraid he would never be enough for this group he led? I think there was a ton of fear, beginning with the fear of speaking when he was first called at the burning bush. And in the end, all that fear got him excluded from the land of milk and honey. I think fear was a factor here too.

Anger and Anxiety

Peter has got to be one of my favorite Bible guys. He made every mistake (read: sin) possible and Jesus loved him and accepted him all the same. The one that I am thinking is relevant to this discussion is, ‘ He began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know this man you’re talking about,”’ (Mark 14:71). I think we can agree that ‘calling down curses’ qualifies as an expression of anger. What was Peter angry about? In verses 66-72, we have the account of Peter’s denial of Christ. Why deny him? He was afraid. Fear. Anxiety. Who knew what they would do to him if he was associated with the man being tried, soon to be crucified? He was afraid of the association. He was afraid of being rejected by the people around him and perhaps afraid for his life. His anger came from a base of anxiety. But the outward emotion is anger. We have to dig deeper to find the underlying one.

About Anger

First, there are some things to clarify about anger. Jesus got angry too.

1) Anger is not negative; it simply is an emotion. Jesus drove money lenders out of the Temple in John 2:13-17, with a whip. In his case, the underlying emotion was not fear. It was the owner of the house cleaning out the riff-raff. Could we say it was disgust that drove the anger?

2) Anger is not always an indication of anxiety. Here was one example of Jesus in no. 1.

3) I find that anger is often a mix of several underlying emotions. We have Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:1-16. Many say that Cain was jealous of Abel and killed him for that reason. Perhaps there are other reasons: I think he was jealous and also worried that God might reject him for his inappropriate sacrifice (see v. 7a, ‘If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?’). The key that we can take from this story is what God told Cain, the second part of verse 7, ‘But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’ It is what we do with our anger that is sin.

4) Anger can lead us into sin but is not sin itself. And the actions, and potentially sin, that come after are the reason we need to dig into the situation and emotions.

This post has gotten a bit long, so I am going to split it into two posts. We will look at digging behind the anger on Wednesday. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, why do you think Moses was angry? Share or comment below. Thanks!