Is It Right For You To Be Angry?

Is It Right for You to Be Angry?

—Jonah 4:4

It is one thing to become angry when bad things happen to good people. But in Jonah’s case, his resentment turned to anger when some good things happened to those he considered very bad people. It is of little wonder, then, that God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah is to be commended, however, for revealing himself as he really was.

When seventeenth-century British military and political leader Oliver Cromwell sat for his official portrait, the one that would display his likeness for all future generations, he instructed the artist to paint him just as he saw him—in his own words, “warts and all.”

Since that day, the expression “warts and all” has been used in the English-speaking world to refer to a true representation of a person, to reveal the weaknesses as well as the good points. Jonah, the runaway prophet, concluded his small book in the Bible by doing this very thing: in chapter 4, he pulled back the curtain of his heart to show his true self, warts and all. Most of us, had we been writing this book about ourselves, would probably have closed with chapter 3’s account of the mighty outpouring of revival upon the city of Nineveh. But Jonah didn’t. He added another chapter and included God’s rebuke: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah’s wart was his spirit of resentment: he could not tolerate the fact that the Ninevites had received God’s blessings. Jonah’s own pride may have been a bit bruised because he had earlier prophesied, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). But it wasn’t. God spared them. So Jonah went outside the city and fumed with resentment. He had lost all sense of perspective and wallowed in his own anger . . . not because something bad had happened to someone good, but because something good had happened to people he considered unworthy.

Such anger and resentment can have their own devastating and destructive effects on us. They will destroy our peace, divert us from our purpose, diminish our productivity, and distort our perspective.

RESENTMENT DESTROYS OUR PEACE

One would think that after all Jonah had been through and after all the lessons he had learned, he would be praising God for sending revival to the people of Nineveh. Instead, we read that God’s mercy “displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry” (Jonah 4:1). The Greek word angry means “to burn.” Jonah was fuming; smoke was pouring out his ears. This is the first by-product of harboring resentment and anger: it takes away our own peace of heart and mind. Conversely, evidence of one who is filled with God’s Spirit is love, joy, and peace.

RESENTMENT DIVERTS OUR PURPOSE

Anger has a far more debilitating effect on us than on the one who is the object of our anger. It not only destroys our peace, but it also diverts us from our God-given purpose. Jonah’s pride was hurt because he felt God had discredited him. He became so self-centered that twice in chapter 4 he said, “It is better for me to die than to live” (vv. 3, 8). The prophet didn’t hide his self-centeredness: “It is better for me!” His anger caused him—as it does all of us all too often—to make decisions on a what’s-best-for-me basis. No longer was he concerned about God’s purposes in his life or in the lives of the Ninevites.

RESENTMENT DIMINISHES OUR PRODUCTIVITY

Twice we read that Jonah sat down (Jonah 4:5). Before, we found him taking God’s message to the streets of ancient Nineveh, obeying God’s commands, and powerfully preaching His message. He was so effective that the entire city came to God as a result of his preaching. Yet in the aftermath we find him just sitting on a hill outside the city, half hoping it will fall so he could say, “I told you so.”

Look at Jonah. Like the four lepers we met earlier in 2 Kings who were sitting at the gate of Samaria, Jonah was now just sitting. The city was exploding with joy over God’s great mercy, renewal, and revival, but Jonah was not joining in. And people filled with resentment are typically like this: they become touchy and quick to take offense. They always talk about their rights and seldom speak of their responsibilities. Why? Because anger has its own way of robbing us of our productivity and sense of purpose. We lose our sense of mission.

RESENTMENT DISTORTS OUR PERSPECTIVE

A loss of perspective is one of the most damaging results of resentment and anger. And Jonah lost his perspective on the goodness of the Nineveh revival. Jonah became obsessed with complaints about a small plant, a vine that gave him shade and then withered (Jonah 4:6–8). It seemed that Jonah could not have cared less about the thousands of people in Nineveh who had just repented of their sin and turned back to God. For Jonah to sulk about a vine at a time such as this was sheer folly, but this is what resentment will do. Resentment and anger shift our values and make us focus on ourselves.

Thus, God went to Jonah and asked, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (v.4). Some counselors might have said to Jonah, “You are absolutely right to be angry!” hoping he would get past his resentment by feeling justified in his anger. Other experts would say, “You are wrong to be angry.” There are people today who thrive on being told how wrong they are; for some unexplainable reason, they love to feel guilty. But God did not condone sin, and He did not condemn. He simply asked, “Is it right to be angry?” And that question got Jonah’s attention.

God responded to Jonah’s anger with grace and pardon. This is amazing condescension. God might have offered a stern reminder: “I could have cut you off when you sailed for Tarshish. I didn’t have to provide the fish to protect you. I responded to you with patience and now with pardon.” But instead God confronted Jonah: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock?” (v. 11).

Jonah’s story ends there, without our ever knowing what happened to him. Did Jonah carry his resentment to the grave? The shadowy ending to Jonah’s book is most intriguing and leaves us to our imagination. Perhaps it ends as it does because each of us can be like Jonah. Perhaps the Lord wants us to look at our “warts and all” so we can see God’s grace in our own lives.

So did Jonah learn his lesson? I am convinced he did. And I think the fact that he didn’t end his story with chapter 3’s great revival is evidence of his growth. He went on to show us himself “warts and all.” And, as R. T. Kendall has reminded us in his classic exposition, he let God have the last word.

Q & A: “Is it right for you to be angry?” The obvious answer—for Jonah and for you and me—is a resounding, “No!” Anger eats at us like a cancer while almost never affecting the one to whom it is directed. So deal with anger just as you would any other sin: confess it and forsake it. And let God’s grace and pardon transform your perspective through new eyes. And, like Jonah, let God have the last word!