Psalm 37
"Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil."
Goodness, it's an election year. How much fretting is going to lead to evil? How many followers of Jesus are going to refrain from anger and forsake wrath?
I would never use Psalm 37:8 to shush a prophet. Righteous anger is necessary and needed. But a diet of anxiety and anger is corrosive. So much of the spiritual life is learning to keep anxiety and anger in their proper places.
And step away from politics for a moment to look at the skyrocketing anxiety among our young people. They are a fretful generation, and it's not taking them anywhere good.
Personally, I have a lot of feelings about a lot of things. Consequently, much of my spiritual life is experienced within this emotional sandbox, battling with my strong emotions. But one of the reasons I'm a Christian and not a stoic is because Christ calls us to emotional investment. Christianity, unlike Eastern religions, is an inherently emotional faith. But caring, this is hard. Caring comes with feelings. And these same feelings, preaches Psalm 37, can lead to evil. This, as best as I can see, is the ballgame. Learning to love, learning to care, learning to be emotionally invested, learning to have all these feelings, yet keeping these feelings managed and appropriately directed.
Loving fiercely, but not letting my emotions lead to evil.
What an important point. The Eastern religions all seem to encourage a self-suicide--a forsaking of one's feelings, emotions, and thoughts to the point that the self is obliterated.
The Eastern practices can be confused with Biblical instructions to "put to death the old Adam." But we put to death our sinful nature, and the Holy Spirit creates a New Man. It's an upgrade, not annihilation. The New Man isn't a blitzed out and disembodied consciousness. The New Man is human--more human, better human, more fully human--emotions and all.
Christians like to toss around this term “righteous anger”, but for humans, does that even exist? Since “there is no one righteous; not even one”, how could any of us have righteous anger? Of course, we do get angry, just as we worry and feel anxious. But none of these are good and certainly not “righteous”.