The Breastplate: In Context

"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place..." —Ephesians 6:14

It's an incredibly familiar passage. Most of you probably wanted to keep on reciting, moving on to verse 15 and laying out the glorious list of armor, that impressive inventory of all the tools we have been given in our battle against the enemy. Images of noble Roman soldiers float through our heads, sharp noses underneath that striking red-crested helmet, glistening swords, tall sandals standing erect on a dusty road. We imagine ourselves in that armor, every piece polished—and, of course, intricately decorated with the word that Paul assigned to designate it—our heads held high, and our own noses tilted in just the right direction so that the photographer can get the perfect shot.

Or maybe a different image pops into your head—a medieval knight, perhaps. But, if you're anything like me, this passage is almost always just that: an image. Paul's vivid description calls up the stories of blood and dust and victory that used to fascinate us in our youth—and probably would still fascinate us now if we could drag them far enough out of the cobwebbed corners of our rigidly-scientific, grown-up minds.

It's a cool thing to think about. And I think Paul's analogy here was written to carry some of these very images. I think he wanted us to envision the armor, to attach the word "truth" to the concept of a "belt" and the idea of "faith" to the "shield," to see the Christian life as a battle—because, in a lot of ways, that is what it is.

At the same time, though, my own familiarity with these images sometimes messes up my reading of the book of Ephesians. (I blame myself for this, of course, not Paul.) I catch myself reading through the rest of the epistle quite nonchalantly, reading it (at best) as a flimsy stage for the dramatic battle at the end. As I read, my thoughts wind up like this: Yes, yes. Jesus. Yes, yes. Church. Mmhmm. Okay. Oh, love. That's cool. Jesus, church. Commands...ugh. Okay, yep. Um. Oh! There we go. Roman soldiers. Then it ends. Well, that was nice.

What is this? Is chapter six some odd climax to a bunch of nothingness? Is it even a climax? Do we get anything from this imagery? Are these final verses a fancy picture to remind us that the Christian life is a battle and (yawn)...What a nice cloud in the sky...Oh, wow. That one looks like a soldier...

I hope your reading of this actually beautiful epistle has been better than mine. But if not—if the words keep going over your head and the elusive images of sword-fights and statues keep pulling you from a thorough grasp of why this passage (and the context of the letter in which it sits) is so foundational to our life with Christ and with His church—then I invite you to sit with me on just one thing. Let's rest here, on just one piece of the armor, and look at it through the lens of all that Paul has written beforehand. Let's start with the breastplate of righteousness.

Our first question is pretty obvious: What is a breastplate? The answer is pretty obvious too. It's the piece of armor that covers the chest—all the vital organs from the neck to the waist and, most importantly, the heart. The Romans actually used to call it a "heart guard."¹

So what is it that Paul wanted to make sure guarded our heart? Righteousness. Righteousness. And I don't think he meant our own, because we've never been all that great at being "righteous." I think he meant Christ's righteousness. I think he meant that our hearts should be guarded by an identity that is sure not because we earned it but because our Savior shed His own blood to give it. The breastplate, the heart guard, is Christ's righteousness on our chests.

Why is this important? I think Paul knew as well as we all do that Satan's favorite target is our identity. If he can convince us that we are dirty, miserable sinners whose future is inevitably a repeat of our past, we crumble. We stop fighting, we stop serving, we stop loving, and we stop believing. But if the crux of our identity is Christ's righteousness—if we realize that, because of His death and resurrection, we are called holy (Eph. 1:4, 5:3, 5:25-27)—then we can stand firm (6:14).

The heart of the epistle to the Ephesians, you see, is anchored in the concept of identity. Read it! Look for this! Paul is telling us that, because of Jesus, we are chosen (ch. 1); we are saved and adopted into a family that is united by the Spirit and called the church (ch. 2); we are loved more than we can possibly imagine (ch. 3); and we are empowered to "live a life worthy of the calling [we] have received" (4:1), a life that makes sense in the light of those truths (chs. 4-6). And at the end of it all, there really is a climax—not one that gives stale imagery but one that tells us to watch out. The "armor" tells us that everything that Paul has so diligently explained to us will be under attack.

You see, Paul says, we need to wrap the identity that Christ has made true of us around our bodies as if our lives depended on it—because if we forget who we are, all bets are off. Will we lose? Not necessarily. But we'll be bearing a whole bunch of aching wounds that we would never have even felt if we had let Christ wrap us in His armor.

So the breastplate? It's just one piece. It's just one protector of our identity. But I wanted to focus on this one so you could see just how much we need this armor—how much we need all of it.

What's the enemy telling you today? What lies is he whispering into your ear? What dagger is he thrusting into your heart? Is he telling you that you're dirty? that you're hopeless? that no one wants you?

He's lying. Don't believe a word he says.

Rest in this instead: Your Lord has shed His blood for you to tell you that you are forgiven and clean (I John 1:9). You "were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (I Cor. 6:11, NIV 1984). There is "now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1, NIV 1984). In the words of MercyMe, "No matter the bumps, no matter the bruises, no matter the scars, still the truth is the cross has made you flawless."²

The whole point of the epic conclusion of Ephesians is to tell you that it is finished. Christ has won. While we wait for the knees of the rest of the world to acknowledge that reality, we must stand firm. We must remember who we are because of who He is. The breastplate gives us one facet of that identity: We wear His righteousness on our chests.

How do we "get" this? How do we understand it? How do we bury this truth deep in our souls so that it guards our heart against the relentless attacks of the enemy's lies? Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21 seems to give us the answer. We begin to understand our identity in Christ by the power of the Spirit and in the Church. Yeah, I said it. We can't do it on our own. We need the Spirit. And we need the Church. 'Cuz you know what? All those people sitting beside you in the pews? the ones who have called on His Name just as you did? Yeah. He called them holy too. We wear the armor together, and it all begins in the bottomless love of Jesus Christ. This love enables us to know who we are, and this love enables us to live how we were meant to live. When we get this—together—we've got the armor, and we can stand firm.

Cue Paul: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen" (Eph. 3:17b-21, NIV 1984).

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¹ Hollis, Benjamin. “Tools of War: Armor & Shields.” The Roman Military. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 June 2015. romanmilitary.net.

² MercyMe, “Flawless” (2014).

Christianity Beyond Crusoe

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the story of Robinson Crusoe—that fictional hero who, as the sole survivor of a nasty shipwreck, managed to live for 28 years on an island before he was rescued by pirates. Apart from the strangely exciting lists of supplies, the detailed descriptions of his efforts to survive, and the accounts of his battles with nature and cannibals, much of this story consists of Crusoe's highly philosophical reflections on the Bible he had saved from the wreck and his relationship with the God who wrote it.

One of the major themes of these reflections is Crusoe's loneliness; he had been, after all, devoid of all human companionship for longer than I've even been alive. But he finds a remarkable truth even in this, writing:

"I gave humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me even that it was possible...that He could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by His presence, and the communications of His grace to my soul—supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon His providence here, and hope for His eternal presence hereafter."

This really is amazing. 28 years of solitude, and Crusoe found that God was enough. And he was right: God is enough. If we had no one else in the world, God would be enough. The truth in that is astounding and sure.

But I think there's a problem here—a huge one. In our Western world, the truth that Crusoe found has too often been distorted. It has been taken too far, misapplied to the extent that we read in it a gruesome lie that threatens to destroy our very selves. Perhaps we didn't tear this lie from the musings of this particularly reflective castaway, but, regardless of where we got it, we did paste it exuberantly on the banner of our prideful hearts, holding it up and chanting in excitement as if it was an essential part of what we'd like to call our "identity." We did let it ride along with our ideals of individualism, giving both free reign as if that was how the world was meant to be. And we throw it in the faces of our neighbors and our Lord; we let it blind our eyes until we are convulsing in our own misery.

What is this lie, you ask? It's the idea that Crusoe's Christianity is a model for us as well. It's the idea that the solitary Christian life, the quiet walking with Christ and no one else, is a viable option—the idea that, even though there are thousands of churches we could join and millions of Christians around the globe, it's perfectly okay to ignore them all. It's the idea that following Christ is something we can do on our own.

Don't get me wrong: If we were stranded on an island for years without another human in sight, God would still be enough. Crusoe's Christianity could be a fantastic model for the person who does indeed find himself companionless.

But the thrill of Crusoe's story comes from the fact that this is not how life is supposed to be. We read his story in excitement not because we relate with his plight but because we deeply wonder what will become of a human who is living in a way no human should have to live. And this particular human finds that God is enough. God is enough.

But the presence of Crusoe's angst is a testimony to the fact that his story is not ideal. Yes, God is enough to satisfy us completely. But He created Adam with the astounding assertion that "it is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18, NIV 1984). And instead of reminding Adam that he was not alone (for he had indeed the company of God Himself), God made Eve—another human.

What I'm trying to say is that God is enough—He always is enough. But He has given us other people for a reason. He has adopted us into a family. The Christian life can happen in solitude, if it must, but it is meant to happen in community. Somehow everything makes more sense in a place where every person is living with the full knowledge that God is enough and choosing to live in that together.

The early church understood this. They faced persecution so awful that we can scarcely wrap our heads around it. They had to meet in secret. They knew that every gathering they held could be their last. But they did it because they knew something that we have forgotten in our comfortable, technology-mediated lives: that we can't do this thing without our brothers and sisters.

You see, without community—without family—we miss the beautiful opportunity to know and be known. We miss the chance to be known and loved simultaneously. We never get to taste and to practice God's love. We forfeit the chance to teach and be taught. We throw out the idea of the fruit of the Spirit or the gifts of the Spirit. We risk all sorts of heretical interpretations of Scripture. We dive headfirst into a loneliness that will do nothing but destroy us—and all because we got the idea that we can do without the church. We become the eye that says to the hand, "I don't need you" (I Cor. 12:21).

What better lie could the enemy tell? How better to stop the power of the church than to convince its members that they're better off with their heads in the dirt, ignoring one another and trying desperately to live life on their own? We can't live like this. And, really, why would we want to?

A life in a community that humbly and diligently follows its Savior and Lord is the best life we could ever have. Will it be easy? No. Not in the least. The closer you are to people, the more you butt heads. But how else are we going to learn what love is?

What I'm saying, friends, is that God is everything we will ever need. And He adopted us as His children, drawing us into a family that is meant to live out His love in every imaginable way (Eph. 2:19-22; John 13:34-35). We need each other. And there's nothing better. There's really nothing better. It's a blessing to walk through life with a family—with brothers and sisters all relentlessly pursuing more of Christ. Once we've tasted this—once we've spent even a few seconds in a real community—we'll never want to go back to "going it alone."

So let us follow the example so passionately expressed by the early church. Let us dive deep into a community of believers. Let us know and be known in a place that's safe, a place that's really following Christ. Such places do exist! "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (Heb. 10:25, NIV 1984).

It's a difficult call to follow, but we have an opportunity Robinson Crusoe never got. We get to step into a life without masks, a life where we share each other's burdens, and a life where we shout God's praise together at the top of our lungs because we've seen just a glimpse of His great love. Let's do it.

Postscript: Fear and the Eyeglass

I've never done something like this before, but I feel as though the conclusions reached in my last post (Anger in the Eyeglass) could use a bit of clarification—not as far as anger goes, for I think I covered my thoughts on that pretty completely. But there was another emotion that I mentioned repeatedly in my discussion; it lent considerably to my points but was, I regret, dealt with far too casually. This emotion, which I now aim to discuss more diligently, is fear.

I believe my last post explained well that emotions are responses to our perceptions of reality. In light of this, we can come to a pretty adequate definition of fear (as if one were needed—we know it so well!). Fear is that worrying terror, that agonizing and uncontrollable uneasiness that we feel when we perceive something frightening or uncertain, threatening or unexpected. In his book, Fearless, Max Lucado defines it this way: "Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control." I think he's right. Fear is that shaky feeling that tells us there's something out there that stretches beyond our own expertise.

With this definition in mind, I think we can begin to deal more appropriately with this powerful emotion.

Now, allow me to do something a bit unconventional. (Yes, I'm sure you're right. Most of what I do does tend to fall under the vast reaches of that word. Bear with me.) I'd like to share my conclusion with you, bluntly and without context, before I explain my reasoning. I want to do this mostly because I feel that, if we were having a conversation about this face-to-face (such things do still exist, by the way), that's how it would come about. Also, I think this conclusion is pretty necessary for you to see how the points I will make actually relate to one another. So, here you go:

Like any emotion, fear tells us something about the world as we perceive it, but I am convinced that no case exists in which fear is telling us that we are perceiving the world rightly.

There, I said it. Now, if you would, join me in reasoning through this.

First off, let us examine what it is that we can possibly fear. What reality exists that we can perceive and respond to fearfully? I think, to classify broadly, that there are two essential categories of things we might fear: creation itself and the Creator who made it. And if we really boil this down, it seems much more logical to fear the One on whom all creation depends for its existence than it is to fear that creation. Because the Creator rules over His creation, if we're going to be fearing anything, we'd best be fearing Him.

This idea is mentioned quite often in Scripture. The command to fear God is definitely common (see Deuteronomy 5:23-29, 10:12-13 and I Peter 1:17, 2:17 for just a few examples). The command to not fear other things is probably even more common (see Moses' command to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 31:6 and to Joshua in 31:8 [cf. Joshua 1:6-9] and the confidence expressed in Hebrews 13:6).

Jesus Himself even seems to make this point. In sending out His disciples in Luke 12, He argues that the fear of men should not be a concern in light of the fact that God is over all. In His words, "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him" (vv. 4-5, NIV 1984).

He seems pretty frightening, doesn't He? An omnipotent God standing up there with His long beard and longer staff, dictating His sovereign will and punishing any who refuse to comply?

But don't get carried away with this picture. This isn't God at all. How do I know? Well, Scripture is pretty clear on that point. And, Jesus wasn't finished. Read Luke 12:6-7 (which comes, if you'll notice, right after verses 4-5): "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (NIV 1984).

So, in total, what do we have here? Jesus has given two commands: Fear God, and do not be afraid. They're not contradictory. Rather, they form the inexplicably beautiful paradox that surrounds the relationship between the human and the divine.

You see, there is good reason to fear God, to tremble with terror before Him. The Israelites sure did (Exodus 20:18-19)! An all-powerful Being beyond our control is a scary thought, and reverence for and humility before this omnipotent King is an absolute necessity. But what the Israelites learned, what Jesus is saying, and what we need to hear today is that trembling before God isn't the end of the picture. Yes, we must respect Him. Yes, we must realize how great He is. But the fullness of His identity also involves the truth implied by Christ's second command: that this all-powerful King has lavished immeasurable grace on His people, that they might know Him and truly not fear. How does this work? It works because this God loves.

But, wait. It gets better than that—for two reasons.

1. Note that the concept of God's love seems to have two facets in Jesus' discussion in Luke 12  (and, really, in the rest of Scripture). First, God intimately knows that which He is loving. He knows the sparrows; He numbers even the hairs on the heads of His people. He knows everything about us—even better than we know ourselves. We shudder sometimes to think of that. But let your heart rest, for this second part is also true: In His knowledge of us, He considers us worth loving. We're "worth more than many sparrows." It's an understatement. He created us—so carefully—into His image, using every bit of His creativity in fashioning us—each one of us—exactly as He wanted us to be. He doesn't "love" us out of pity or something. No one loves like that because that's not what love is. He looks at us—He never takes His eyes off of us, actually—and says, "Child, you're worth loving." And the scars on His hands prove it. Are we messy? Yes. Undeserving? Oh, yeah. Yet, by His assessment, we are worth loving.

2. The picture gets even more beautiful when we realize that God doesn't just love—He is love. This is true because of the truth of the Trinity. (For more on this, pick up Frank Macchia's The Trinity, Practically Speaking; it's life-changing.) The Trinity means that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a circle of perfect love that has existed from all eternity. In His self-relation, God loves; therefore, in His nature, He is love. And the beauty of the Gospel message—and, really, of all of Scripture (even the Old Testament!)—is that this God who is love has opened His arms to include us in that love. We are welcomed into His circle of love, and there is nothing that can separate us from it (Romans 8:38-39).

I think there's no better way to wrap all this back around than to turn to I John 4. What do we see? God loves us (vv. 9-10), "God is love" (vv. 8, 16), and "perfect love drives out fear" (v. 18).

Do you get it, friend? Do you see? God reigns, and God loves. This is reality, and, in this reality, fear is only a signal that we've lost focus, that we've adopted an eyeglass that doesn't match up with the way the world really is. God reigns, and God loves. Nothing can happen to us apart from His loving plan. We have nothing to fear.

Why? Because we've been given a new eyeglass and a new name. By God's grace, we've been given a gift that is beyond comprehension. "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" (Romans 8:15-16, NIV 1984).

God's children. Sons and daughters of a Father who loves perfectly. Can you believe it? His love is one so great that it "surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:16-19), and, again, it's a love from which we can never be separated (Romans 8:38-39). Really and truly, this love "drives out fear" (I John 4:18).

All in all, Christ's work leaves us with the beautifully overwhelming truth that we are loved unconditionally and perfectly by the God whose strong arms are holding and guiding all the world. This love is the ink with which He writes the grand story of that world and the stories of our individual lives.

When we really "get" this—when we look at the world through eyes transformed by the truth of His lordship and love—fear dissipates. Peace reigns. And this, my friends, is the proper eyeglass. It is an eyeglass without fear.

Anger in the Eyeglass

I've been thinking a lot lately about anger. I'm not all that sure why. Questions just keep coming up, floating incessantly through my own mind, bubbling off the lips of others, reverberating off walls, and always piping up when I feel the flame of that powerful emotion in my own chest. What is it? What causes it? What should we do with it? What did Jesus do with it? What does that mean for us?

As with most things I write about, I'm no expert on this topic. I've got no series of capital letters behind my name, no claim to have done any research at all on the stuff I'm about to write. But I am human, and anger is no stranger to me. Why not work through it? Why not embrace the questions that keep popping up? A great deal of thought and prayer has resulted in a few conclusions. I'll explain them below. I may be right. I may be wrong. I welcome as much dialogue on this as you care to provide. Feel free to comment below. But please read first, if you would.

Perhaps the best place to begin is to introduce you to the context which fueled—but certainly no longer aligns with—my own thinking. Over the course of my life—and even more so recently—I've heard three statements about anger that just don't seem right. There are more, I know. But these are the ones I've heard repeatedly, and these are the ones that sparked my thinking. Perhaps you've heard them too:

1. Anger comes from fear.
2. Anger is an emotion, but it's a very bad emotion. We need to stop feeling it.
3. We can be angry. We can even cultivate anger. It just has to be "righteous" anger.

There's no chronology to these statements. There's no relationship at all, really. They are just three statements that prompted my thoughts—three statements I heard from multiple sources and couldn't quite believe to be true.

The first has to do with the source of anger. The suggestion of many: fear. This sounds great at first. It even comes with its own fancy formula: Find your deepest fears, work through those, and knock out your anger at the same time. I decided to try it. I thought through some of my fears, considered some instances that had made me angry, and tried desperately to find a connection—any connection—between them. But I couldn't find anything. The stuff that made me angry often had nothing to do with the stuff that I feared. In fact, I found that, in many cases, it was easier to be angry when I was not afraid. There were some instances, however, where I noticed fear and anger arising simultaneously. This, I found, was the key to the whole thing.

You see, fear does not cause anger. Put the other way, anger is not a result of fear. Rather, both anger and fear are emotional responses to something else; both are triggered by a perception of what is happening in the world at a given instant. We encounter reality, and our emotions, in a large way, let us know how to respond to it. Perhaps I can illustrate this by pulling at your emotions a bit.

Imagine with me a tattered, coarse, brown cloth—woven tightly years ago but clutched by so many desperate fingers since then that the threads have separated, leaving tiny holes in the once-beautiful fabric. Dark smudges of soot speckle its surface—probably left from those same clinging hands. Despite these flaws, the aged cloth rests in gentle and lovely folds on the shoulders of an old woman. Her long white hair, arranged in a careful braid, lies limply among its folds—snowy purity starkly contrasting with smudges and tears. The plainness of her hair and her garment, however, are not matched by her eyes. Emerald flames searching deeply, lovingly, the depths of every soul which meets her gaze, her eyes must forever be remembered. They express the depths of her own soul: the pain of loss, the weariness of days of hunger, the strange spark of hope despite the odds against its existence. She lowers those remarkable eyes, and her thin lips part—making way for a scarcely audible rasp: "Some bread, please? Anything will do."

Now try this one:

Think of the same tattered cloth—not on the stooped shoulders of an old woman this time but crumpled on the floor of a dark and damp basement. The light from your flashlight reveals its dirty surface, making its folds seem harsh and set. You rub the back of your neck, wishing the box you were looking for could be anywhere but down here. Slowly, you inch your foot over to the cloth, hoping to move it quickly to the side so that you could step by it to continue your search. You slip the toe of your sneaker under the closest corner and kick the cloth away. Your heart leaps into your throat in an instant. Something black and hairy had been lying underneath. You clap your free hand to your mouth, trying desperately not to scream, and aim the beam of your flashlight—as best as you can with a trembling hand—down towards the dreaded arachnid.

And one more:

Same cloth. Same flashlight. Same dark and hairy speck crouching treacherously in the shaking light. But then you notice something. It's not moving. You peer closer. Dead? No. Ugh. Plastic. Your cruel little brother.

What have I done? I've given you three events. You encountered them, in your imagination, of course; and I can bet that each one triggered some emotional response. The first? Probably compassion. Maybe annoyance, if you're pestered by that sort of scene too often. The second? Fear, undoubtedly. And the third? Anger.

My point? Emotions in general are the result of perception. Fear and anger are both emotions. When you realized the spider was a fake, it was not your fear that made you angry. It was the fact that your brother had played a nasty trick on you.

Anger, then, is not the result of fear. It is the result of a sense of injustice. This explains why we can feel just as angry about the Holocaust as we can when someone insults us—not because we are afraid of either event but because we feel, deep down, that what happened should really not have happened. We get angry because we sense that the world is not right. Understood this way, anger is a good emotion; it's a signal that something's not how it should be.

This knocks out our second statement. It is dangerous to never be angry. It means we've lost sensitivity to perceiving injustice. It means we've lost the ability to care whether things are right or whether we are okay. More than that, if we say that anger is a bad thing, we run into serious problems when we look at the life of Jesus.

But here is where the waters get a bit murky. Two comments are helpful. First, although anger is a response to a perception of injustice, just because we feel that an injustice has occurred does not mean that one actually has. We can be totally mistaken in our perception of injustice and/or our definition of justice in the first place. Anger is a signal of what we believe to be injustice, but we may not always be right.

Secondly, just because it is good to feel anger does not mean we can cling to it. The Bible is extremely clear on this point. In Ephesians 4, Paul writes, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" (v. 26) and, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice" (v. 31, NIV 1984). What Paul is saying is that the proper thing to do with anger is to dump it. Right now. All of it.

This wipes out our third statement as well. Notice how often this statement is the passionate declaration of someone who is keeping anger in a tight hold, stroking its fur with an evil grin, and waiting anxiously for the day that bottled fury can be released to wreak havoc on every deserving individual. "It's righteous anger I feel. I have a right to feel this. I need to hold onto it for a little while." Aw, knock it off! Paul said to get rid of it. ALL of it. There's no such thing as righteous anger, and we have no right to hang on to it. Dump it.

So what does all this mean? What do we do now?

First, know what anger is telling you. Let it show you where you are perceiving injustice. But that's it. Let it simply prompt the question, "Is something wrong here?"

Then, give it up. Give it to Christ. If something is really wrong, He may teach us to use our anger as fuel to make it right. How will we know? Because our anger is never to be our focus. Jesus Christ is. Anger tells us something. So does fear. So does compassion. So do all the other emotions. But we aren't to focus on these. We aren't to cling to these. We are to cling to Christ. When you look at Him, everything else falls into place.

Why? Because Christ is our focus and our lens. The more we look to Him, the more we see the world as He sees it. Our perceptions of reality—and the emotions that serve as a response—become ordered. They reflect the world more truly.

The conclusion, then, is this: Anger is not bad. It can show us really well where things aren't what they should be. But the only way we'll be able to see this rightly is if we are looking at Christ. And, once you look at Christ, you'll see something so beautiful that you'll find there's no point to holding on to anger anymore. Seriously, all you'll want to do is hold to Christ.