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The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling The Angry Christian: A Theology for Care and Counseling Andrew D. Lester Westminster John Knox, 308 pp., $28.95

To live in a world permeated with evil is enough to make you angry. Those we love can arouse deep anger within us as they purposely or unknowingly hurt us. People unleash enormous wickedness and suffering on the world at large, and suddenly we find ourselves sucked into evil's vortex. How should the Christian respond? Is it legitimate to become angry, either over our own pain or the suffering inflicted on others?

At first glance, the New Testament exacerbates the conundrum. Both Jesus (Matt. 5:22) and Paul (Eph. 4:27) teach that anger is inappropriate or at best should be short-lived (Eph. 4:26-27), but both clearly became angry at times (Matt. 22; Gal. 1). Our experience and the Bible both suggest that there is legitimate anger and sinful anger. How are we to distinguish them?

In this book, Andrew D. Lester, professor of pastoral theology and pastoral counseling at Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School, helps the Christian community reliably navigate the stormy waters of anger, offering a wise and practical "theology of anger."

Too many Christians, Lester believes, have been taught that anger is always sinful. "One friend said that he didn't hear this explicit message from the pulpit, 'but it is what I heard implicitly, a part of the air I breathed [at church] but never named with words directly'—a common report from the Christians with whom I minister." Therefore many Christians, Lester notes, assume that anger is sinful and should be absent from the spiritually mature.

Lester admits that "anger that is expressed destructively toward others, ourselves, or God adversely affects our spiritual journey. Anger's power can destroy our health, our relationships, our community, and our sense of God's presence and grace." Yet Lester argues that the capacity to become angry, an attribute of Jesus himself, is a significant aspect of humanness, rather than sinfulness. That is, when we read the Bible and historic pastoral theology carefully, study Jesus' life, and examine the results of neuroscience research, we will see "that anger has its origins in creation, not our sinfulness … Anger is connected to embodiment and is a basic ingredient in the imago Dei, actually a gift from God." How so?

Lester cites Genesis 1:31, where God blesses creation and declares that "it was very good." Included in God's blessing were "the visceral, affective, emotional aspects of our existence as embodied creatures." That is, before the Fall, human beings had the ability to become angry—a reflection of both their physiology and their moral character.

Lester is more than aware of the distorting effect of human sin on the blessings of creation. He also notes that anger easily becomes a tool for evil, rather than blessing, in a world inhabited by fallen people. Still, Lester insists, anger is a gift in at least three ways.

First, the physiological and psychological ability to become angry prepares "our minds and bodies for actions that contribute to our physical and psychological survival." Second, the ability to "activate our capacity for anger" in appropriate situations continues to protect and preserve our "physical, mental, and spiritual health."

Third, a proper anger—one that reflects Jesus' occasional angry responses to evil—motivates us to speak and act when we may be tempted to remain silent and unresponsive to the vast needs and troubles of a world infected with sin. Happily, positive character traits such as "hope, courage, intimacy, self-awareness, and compassion" are birthed as we exercise a discerning, holy, loving anger.

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January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1