Embracing the Anger: An Eternal Perspective on Loss

“I’m so angry! I don’t know at what or at who, but I’m just so angry!” Two weeks had past since I had held the lifeless, poppyseed size body of my first born baby in my hands. Now I sat on the couch crying out to one of the few people who had chosen to get on his knees and crawl through the valley of the shadow of death with me: My husband. Thankfully he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to “correct” my “unbiblical thinking.” He just listened. Being the woman that I am it felt necessary to determine a reason for my anger. As I looked at the world around me and considered the “help” of the secular and Christian communities one thing was constant. Deep loss brings anger that is often unexplainable. The secular community advocated that you embrace the anger as a step in healing. Many in the Christian community condemned you for feeling anger and concluded it was the result of a hidden resentment at God. Suddenly the pieces fell into place. I was angry and I knew it was not at God, my husband, or my circumstances. This cut much deeper to the very core of who I was. 

If you’re looking for controversy, you’ve come to the right place. In fact, some of you may walk away in strong disagreement. But maybe you aren’t looking for controversy. Maybe you too know this anger and are looking for answers. Some of you may know Christ as your Saviour. Others of you may view God like an essential oil, interesting but you aren’t sold on the idea. I pray, no matter your background, that you are willing to read this with an open mind and will find the hope and answers you are seeking. 

Defining The Anger

The root of our anger goes back to the beginning of time when Adam and Eve were in the garden. It was here that mankind rebelled against God’s command and, in so doing, made the unnatural natural. Genesis 3 tells the account of man choosing to defy God’s command and sin entering the world. The human who was originally created to live forever and never know death had now totally riddled himself with the worst possible condemnation. No longer could a Holy God have fellowship with the man that He had created as His holiness could not stand such utter destruction and the stench of decay. Man, who by nature was without sin, had made a trade and now stood by nature as a people under God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). The only possible result of this new nature was death (Romans 6:23). In addition, man was cursed so that this sin nature of decay and death would pass down through the generations to every human being who would ever exist, except One (Genesis 3:19, Romans 5:12). The bleakness of this truth would leave all men to be much pitied. Yet, just as sin and death entered into the world through one man, redemption and eternal life were restored through the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Being born of a virgin, Christ was the only human to exist without the sin nature which permeated everyone around him. This man Jesus lived the life we could not live, took all of our sin on Himself, and paid the penalty of death so that human beings could again have a relationship with God. He now holds this payment out as a gift to those who would believe in Him by faith. Unfortunately, while there is great hope in eternal life with God, the effects of physical death are not removed. For those who have trusted in Christ’s gift, the inner being is being renewed and flourishes every day (II Corinthians 4:16). However, the effects of sin still take their toll on our flesh. Our nature cries out with every loss and every death because something deep within every human being knows, this is unnatural. Death and loss are a constant reminder of our brokenness. There is a very real understanding that our bodies are tombs. They are decaying. They are failing. The woman who has lost a baby in pregnancy watches helplessly as her body rejects and destroys the life growing within her. The individual who loses a parent cannot stop the horrific spiral towards death. The friend who receives a cancer diagnosis knows that there is nothing she can do in and of herself to stop the decay within her body. The individual who battles MS can do nothing but live in the body which is attacking and mutilating itself. This is the intrinsic nature at from which our anger arises. This anger is not towards God (though we may wrongly direct it there), it is at its very essence an anger towards the unnatural state of our flesh as we watch the once beautiful creation, made in God’s image, decay and die. The anger and lament that is so perfectly expressed in Romans 7:24 as Paul states, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

So how do we biblically embrace this anger? 

By taking hold of it and pouring out our anger righteously on the sin which is destroying. On the death that is ripping families apart. On the decay which is marring those made in the image of God. For those who understand what I am writing it should be clear that I am in no way advocating that one act out their anger in violence, hatred of others, or damage of anything physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. Nor am I making a blanket statement towards all angers in general. This would only increase the destruction and embrace the sin which has caused such devastation. The reaction of mankind to death can only be completed correctly by those who have accepted Christ’s payment and redemption. We again see this exemplified by the apostle Paul as he continues, 

“But thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord…For God has done what the law. . .could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace…So then, brothers,we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. . .The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. . .What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? . . .Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?. . .No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 7:25-8:37

What then is our responsibility as believers?

To sum up the entirety of this lake of thoughts it is unbiblical for christians to push down, hide from and reject the anger that results from death and loss. From Scripture we have seen that it is fully possible to thoroughly embrace an anger towards sin and its unnatural results while obeying the command, “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). What better way to bring God glory in the midst of grief than to embrace a hatred towards the results of sin while keeping an eternal focus? When we truly embrace anger towards sin it is then that we are able to fully embrace the hope which is available to us through Jesus Christ. When we finally grasp the stench of death which radiates from our broken bodies we will also finally grasp the joy and victory that Christ’s death accomplished in freeing us to eternal life. 

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. . .” (I Peter 1:6-8) 

This is the great hope to those who are left aching with joy.