Thinkers much brighter than I have said that all sin, at least most sin, is rooted in good things. I guess a simpler understanding is that sin is good things gone bad. I think the most obvious example of this is love becoming lust. A small seemingly inconsequential and honest flame can become a forest fire very quickly. I think most of us know when we have crossed the line into lust. We know when we have flirted inappropriately. We know when we have looked at things we should not have looked at. Even the thought of sexual relationships outside of marriage is a sin… period. Unfortunately not every line in the sand is so clear, and I believe this to be true about anger.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty is that anger is often against unrighteousness. Being cheated or wronged makes us angry because it violates our sense of fairness (beyond the act itself). Seeing the guilty go unpunished or the innocent victimized violates our sense of justice. Being lied to, bullied, or otherwise manipulated violates our sense of belonging and human value. We can read numerous Psalms rooted in an understandable anger. All this and anger can seem good.
St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger”.
I do not have the knowledge to understand what exactly St. Paul meant when he wrote “Be angry and do not sin”. But it is obvious what he meant by “do not let the sun go down on your anger”: we are not to hold on to our anger and dwell in it. In the positive, we are to actively put it away, without sinning in the process.
This is where the line is so blurry, anger against unrighteousness seems so – for lack of a better term – righteous. Yet, we are directed to get rid of it. At the heart of all this might be the understanding that we need to do more than let it go. We need to engage in positive actions to alleviate our anger. Perhaps this is reconciliation. Perhaps this is personal development. Perhaps this is simply being honest that we are angry. But we are tasked to not let the sun go down while we are angry.
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