Matthew 21:12- Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. (NIV)
As a leader of a missions trip for collage aged students, one would assume I am trying to promote such ideals as love, peace, justice, joy, patience, etc. You know, all the pretty things that everybody expects a participant to learn while they are on a mission trip. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but lately I have been teaching and actually encouraging people to get angry and ticked off.
Too often as Christians, we embrace the “turn the other cheek” method to things that we really shouldn’t. There are many injustices in the world that should invoke the same kind of anger that Jesus had when He witnessed the defilement in the temple.
An example for you… Right now one of our teams in Chiang Mai is going through the process of trying to rescue a boy that is at risk of being sold into prostitution by his uncle who is a ladyboy. The boy is only five years old. The team has not been able to locate the boy or his uncle since they received word of the situation about a week or so ago. The gravity of the situation is enormous. At this very moment, this boy’s life is at one of the biggest crossroads anyone could ever face. Down one path leads to a life of slavery and injustice that he has to fight for the rest of his life. The other path leads to freedom and being brought up in a safe environment at a house for at-risk children that the team’s contacts own. How you react to this situation is up to you, but I really hope that it does make you angry. If we turn a blind eye to the injustices of the world, and never let our anger materialize into action, then these injustices will continue to rule our world.
Although there are many injustices in the world, there are some in our own sphere of influence that we must deal with before we seek to right all that is wrong with the world. As Christians we allow the things of Satan to torment us, when the Bible explicitly tells us repeatedly that we have power over those things, and that those things are not of the Lord. Things that we accept in our own life are things like fear, shame, regret, guilt, etc. All of these things are not of the Lord, and we were not created to live with those things in our life. So many times Jesus said that we have power over these spirits (Luke 10:17-20, Mark 16:15-18, and John 14:12, that list could go on for a while about the power of the Holy Spirit). How does this relate to getting angry? Well, sometimes some of these things we have lived with are stuck to us like glue and the only way to loose ourselves of them is to get angry. It is ok, and sometimes necessary, to approach the Lord with a righteous anger and implore Him to answer your requests. He is your Father and He commands us to approach Him with confidence (James 1:6-8).
I firmly believe that when believers (myself included) learn to actually approach the Father the way He wants us to, then things in this world will really change. Give it a try, get mad at something that is not of the Lord in your life, approach the Father with that anger, and see what happens. What’s to lose?
