I’ve been told that I’m a fairly calm person, rarely given to eruptions of anger. My easy-going and relaxed demeanour may mean I’m less likely to give myself a heart attack or a stroke. But if you scratch beneath the surface, the truth is EVERYONE gets angry - we just express it in different ways; some of us bottle it up, others let it flow.

The reason we get angry is because we love. When something endangers what we love, and there’s a threat to someone or something we care about, getting angry is a legitimate and logical emotion that courses through us. And it can be a right and godly emotion but…

…all too often we love ourselves and our idols too much, and God and his priorities not enough. Our anger ends up being selfishly and idolatrously disordered. Ephesians 4:26 says to “be angry and do not sin” (ESV), which paints the possibility that we might actually be able to feel and then channel our anger towards righteous ends, and responsible words and actions that properly deal with the threat to what is good and right.

So when was the last time you got properly angry at something in our broken world that you really should be angry about? We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, and care more and more about things that actually matter – training our anger to fire when it should, at what it should.