23 February 2024 Matthew 5:20-26
Anger is a pretty normal response to pain, but not all pain. We don’t get mad at the doctor who gives us an injection, or sets a broken bone. Those things hurt, but we know what the pain is for. We don’t get mad at the dentist who performs a root canal to remove an infection. It hurts, but we know what the pain is for.
That’s not the pain that makes us mad.
The pain that makes us mad is the kind that is undeserved and unjust, the kind that is disrespectful and disproportionate, the kind that is malicious and mean. Anger at that pain is completely justified, and everyone understands it, everyone feels the desire to get even.
That is why it is completely useless.
It is useless because there is no getting even, and deep down everyone knows that. And the greater the injustice, the more malignant the meanness, the more true that is. There is no way back to the way you were before. There is no going back to a time when you didn’t know what being a cuckold felt like, when you didn’t know what it felt like to be lied to, bullied, robbed, cheated, hated.
It’s understandable when people give in to that anger, and for a while they get a lot of support. Eventually, however, the anger becomes a habit, and then a lifestyle. You become the “angry guy,” the one that puts everyone on edge, never knowing what is going to set you off. Over time, your completely justifiable anger makes people avoid you. They don’t want to hear the awful, awful story again. They figure you should have gotten over it by now. You wonder why you seem to be sitting alone so much, suspect that people don’t really care about your pain, and you resent them for it, which stokes the anger even more. You’re the person who is always doing a slow burn, the fire that never goes out, the fire that burns without purifying, that never destroys what you want to get rid of, a fire like Chernobyl, that creates a wasteland where no one wants to be.
Useless.
There is only one way to avoid the wasteland of anger, and that is to forgive.
Forgiveness means you forego the desire for vengeance, because you know vengeance doesn’t work. There is a reason why God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). It is that God doesn’t repay with anger, because He has none. All He has is love. All He is, is love. It is love that makes it possible for the wounded to say, “You cannot make me hate you. You cannot make my life a wasteland. You cannot set my life on fire, because there is nothing in me any longer that burns. The only thing left in me is what lives forever.”
Forgiveness gives us power over anger, over the ones that make us angry, and the greater the injustice, the more malignant the meanness, the greater the power. Forgiveness is not the insipid whimper that says in the face of unmerited suffering, “Oh, that’s OK.” That misses the point entirely – the whole context of forgiveness is that something is not OK. Forgiveness says that there is a power greater than our outrage, a power that heals us at the same time that it can heal the person who caused the anger in the first place. That’s why Jesus says run to be reconciled with your brother (Matthew 5:24). Forgiveness means that we choose that over anger: “You cannot make me hate you. You cannot make my life a wasteland. You cannot set my life on fire, because there is nothing in me any longer that burns. The only thing left in me is what lives forever.”
“Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22), and the judgment is that he chooses a power less than the power of God.
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