Is anger a sin?

One of the things I love about my wife is her inability to hold beliefs without living them. The hard consequence for her is that sometimes she struggles with something the rest of us can shrug off. For example, several folks we know went through a Christian workshop in which they picked up the notion that anger is sin. It made enough sense to me at the time, given that often when I'm angry I do or say ugly things. It felt holy, too, to articulate a "higher standard" (lack of anger) to which Christians ought to aspire.

My wife really struggled with this, because unlike those of us who are content to philosophize, she couldn't help but trace this to its logical conclusions. "Does this mean," she asked me, "that Amanda [our friend whose husband molested some of their children] is in sin because she's angry at what her husband did to their family? If all sin is an affront to God, is He just as offended by people angry at molesters as He is at the molesters themselves?"

"No," I replied weakly, "but . . ."

But what, smart guy? What's the answer? It depends on whom you ask. Google "anger is sin" and you'll find professional and amateur theologians claiming that it is always a sin, that it's a sin unless it's anger at sin, that it's a sin if it lasts beyond some ill-defined point, or that it's a sin unless it's "righteous." Thomas Aquinas deduced that it was not a sin, because to have passion is to be human. John Calvin warned against the disease of lingering anger. Meanwhile, we've all heard the sermon on how we're guilty of murdering our brother when we are angry at him. Or maybe that's when we harbor anger for some amount of time that nobody can define. In other words, when you ask the modern Christian community whether anger is a sin, you don't get a definitive answer.

The reality is that we're all angry when we think about what this molester did to his family. My wife needed to know whether she is worshipping a God who, absent our repentance for it, holds that anger against us. I couldn't answer her. Neither could other people. One person earnestly advised her to quit polling people and just pray about it, as if such answers come via personal revelation.

I'm a dullard, but I love her enough to feel some weight on my shoulders when she is burdened. This is why my eyes teared up last night when she boldly posed her question to a deeply learned man of God we were sitting across from at a banquet table. His entire life has been devoted to the Word and the Church. She laid out the story and put her tough question to him.

"Forgive me," he replied, "but I don't think that's a hard question. Of course anger is not a sin. Why would the Bible tell us 'to be angry but sin not,' if it's impossible to be angry without sinning?" What's more, he noted, the Church has always taught that God gave the passions of men to them. They became diverted after the Fall, but they aren't inherently evil. Our anger can lead us into sin, but it's not itself inherently sinful.

It seems so simple now, but when there are so many voices claiming to speak with authority, and none of them speaking clearly or consistently, it's like cool water to hear someone say, "Here is what the Bible tells us, and that interpretation is entirely consistent with what Christians believed for hundreds of years." No hemming, no hedging, no "it's up to your conscience." There's what the Bible says and how the Church interpreted it for a thousand years, and that is that, by golly.

Thank God for the Word and the Church. Thank God we don't each of us have to figure it all out on our own.