Anger’s Focus

Luke 10:18

The first time I visited Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in Poland, I was asked to pray at a large memorial erected near the crumpled ruins of the gas chambers. People around me bowed their heads, but I had to first ask the Lord to show me what He wanted me to say. After all, millions of people were put to death just a few feet from where we stood. What could — what should — I say to God?

I stared at a piece of rusted barbed wire at our feet, and considered the evil that fueled those gas chambers. All I could think of was my disgust for Satan and his hordes. So I wrapped my prayer around Psalm 139:21-22, “Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemy.”

There is an accurate focus for our anger over the injustice and violence in this world: Satan. He was the one who started the whole mess. He was the one who, because of pride, brought on himself — us included — every horror of the curse of Eden.

“Our struggle is never that we are too angry; but that we are never angry enough. Our anger is always pitifully small when it is focused against a person or object; it is meant to be turned against all evil and all sin — beginning first with our own failure of love.”* Turn your anger into action. It’s how organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Child Help, and Battered Wives Anonymous began, to name a few. Today, find a way to push back Satan’s darkness with deeds of mercy and love.