Righteous Indignation

Jesus is God in the flesh, and it is true that God (Jesus) is a loving God, but he is also a God of anger, justice, righteousness, and wrath. We are called by scripture to pattern our life after Jesus and imitate him as our moral standard.

What is righteous indignation:

 "A reactive emotion of anger toward evil, mistreatment, injustice and or malice... In Christian doctrines, righteous anger is considered the only form of anger which is NOT sinful."

We can know for sure that our anger is righteous when it is directed toward what angers God Himself. Righteous anger and indignation are justly expressed when we are confronted with sin. Good examples would be anger toward child abuse, pornography, racism, abortion, and the like.

Verses that show Jesus had Righteous Indignation:

(Mark 3:5) -  He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts

(John 2:15) - So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

Verses that show God had Righteous Indignation:

1. God drowns the whole earth.
In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns.

2. God kills half a million people.
In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500,000 of their fellow Israelites.

3. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn.
In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn.

4. God kills 14,000 people for complaining that God keeps killing them.
In Numbers 16:41-49, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14,000 more of them.

5. Genocide after genocide after genocide.
In Joshua 6:20-21, God helps the Israelites destroy Jericho, killing “men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” In Deuteronomy 2:32-35, God has the Israelites kill everyone in Heshbon, including children. In Deuteronomy 3:3-7, God has the Israelites do the same to the people of Bashan. In Numbers 31:7-18, the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they take as spoils of war. In 1 Samuel 15:1-9, God tells the Israelites to kill all the Amalekites – men, women, children, infants, and their cattle – for something the Amalekites’ ancestors had done 400 years earlier.

6. God kills 50,000 people
In 1 Samuel 6:19, God kills 50,000 men for peeking into the ark of the covenant. (Newer cosmetic translations count only 70 deaths, but their text notes admit that the best and earliest manuscripts put the number at 50,070.)

7. 3,000 Israelites killed for inventing a god.
In Exodus 32, Moses has climbed Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. The Israelites are bored, so they invent a golden calf god. Moses comes back and God commands him: “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.” About 3,000 people died.

8. The Amorites destroyed.
In Joshua 10:10-11, God helps the Israelites slaughter the Amorites by sword, then finishes them off with rocks from the sky.

9. God burns two cities to death.
In Genesis 19:24, God kills everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from the sky. Then God kills Lot’s wife for looking back at her burning home.

10. God has 42 children mauled.
In 2 Kings 2:23-24, some kids tease the prophet Elisha, and God sends bears to dismember them. (Newer cosmetic translations say the bears “maul” the children, but the original Hebrew, baqa, means “to tear apart.”)

11. A tribe slaughtered.
In Judges 21:1-23, a tribe of Israelites misses roll call, so the other Israelites kill them all except for the virgins, which they take for themselves. 

12. 3,000 crushed to death.
In Judges 16:27-30, God gives Samson strength to bring down a building to crush 3,000 members of a rival tribe.

13. God helps Samson kill 30 men because he lost a bet.
In Judges 14:11-19, Samson loses a bet for 30 sets of clothes. The spirit of God comes upon him and he kills 30 men to steal their clothes and pay off the debt.

14. God demands you kill your wife and children for worshiping other gods.
In Deuteronomy 13:6-10, God commands that you must kill your wife, children, brother, and friend if they worship other gods.

15. God incinerates 51 men.
In 2 Kings 1:9-10, Elijah gets God to burn 51 men with fire from heaven to prove he is God.

16. God kills a man for not impregnating his brother’s widow.
In Genesis 38:9-10, God kills a man for refusing to impregnate his brother’s widow.

17. The coming slaughter.
According to Revelation 9:7-19, God’s got more evil coming. God will make horse-like locusts with human heads and scorpion tails, who torture people for 5 months. Then some angels will kill a third of the earth’s population. If he came today, that would be 2 billion people.

Jesus calling people names because of their evil and sin:

Jesus called many people out of their name. That is a given. No one argues that. We are to pattern our life after the life of Jesus. He is the moral standard of goodness and how we are to deal with evil. He has shown that it is NOT a sin to call people out of their name who do evil. 

1. Ye blind guides (Matt. 23:16).

2. Ye fools (Matt. 23:17).

3.  ye are like whited sepulchres…full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness (Matt. 23:27).

4. Ye serpents (Matt. 23:33).

5. Ye generation of vipers (Matt. 23:33).

6. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! (Luke 11:44).

7. Ye are as graves which appear not (Luke 11:44).

8. A  child of hell as you are. (Matthew 23:15)

**Was Jesus calling people names wrong? Of course not. He is the son of God, perfect, and can do no evil. 

Have a look at what John W. Robbins says on this topic.
Click the following link and see if he agrees that name calling is bad.
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=8

Deductive Argument:

P1: Jesus expressed Righteous Anger

P2: We are to pattern our lives after Jesus

C: We can express righteous anger

Verses that warn against Unrighteous (sinful) anger:

"Fools quickly show that they are upset, but the wise ignore insults" (Proverbs 12:16). 

In other words, do not quickly get angry over simple insults.

"My friends, do not try to punish others when they wrong you, but wait for God to punish them with his anger. It is written: 'I will punish those who do wrong; I will repay them,' says the Lord" (Romans 12:19).

We are not to punish, just like we are not anyones ultimate judge. God will be the one to repay people and punish them. Righteous anger however is not a repayment or punishment, it is an initial moral reaction to evil. 

"When you are angry, do not sin, and be sure to stop being angry before the end of the day" (Ephesians 4:26.)

In context this verse is referring to having unrighteous anger. This verse is also careful to throw mention, stop being angry before the end of today.  Righteous indignation however is an "initial reaction" towards evil and sin. In other words, once your reaction has passed, stop being angry.

"Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:19–20.)

The righteousness of God and Jesus have already been patterned for us...It has been given to us in the examples of their moral standards and responses. Just like God was slow to burn Sodom and Gomorrah, we should not be quick to anger either. It should only be when terrible evil or injustices happen that we express such emotions. 

**Having righteous anger toward sin, evil, injustice, and mistreatment is a sign of having a heart like Jesus. A sign that you are are living the Christian life. If anyone claims your righteous indignation is a deal breaker for them, what they are actually saying is that you being a Christian (and patterning your life after Christ) is a deal breaker. **