It’s important to note that ignoring your anger is not the same thing as fighting and killing it, though both are attempts to avoid expressing that anger against others. The first will only cause the anger to build up until you can’t ignore it anymore. The second dispenses with it in a way that glorifies God and respects the people around you.
Our culture is angry. You only have to be on social media for five minutes to see this is true. And the amount of anger we’re seeing will only increase as the various sides of our culture move farther and farther apart from each other. The first response to disagreement, particularly online, is often anger, and herein lies a danger for all of us who are engaging people with apologetics: It’s easy to fall right into that cultural pattern in our own responses to people. This is something we need to fight.
Lest anyone think all anger must be expressed in order for one to be “healthy,” it’s important to note that ignoring your anger is not the same thing as fighting and killing it, though both are attempts to avoid expressing that anger against others. The first will only cause the anger to build up until you can’t ignore it anymore. The second dispenses with it in a way that glorifies God and respects the people around you.
We’re called to respond to people as Christ did, who “while being reviled…did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats” (1 Pet. 2:23). We’re to “malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.” Why? Because
we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy…so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:2–7)
In other words, we’re to do this “since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). We’re to do this so that we represent Christ well to the world—our very behavior when we respond with grace is an apologetic.
