Is anger always bad, or can it be good? How should Christians handle it? That’s what Dr. Bert Ghezzi addresses in his new book, The Angry Christian: A Bible-based Strategy to Care for and Discipline a Valuable Emotion (Paraclete Press, 2018).
It’s an updated version of Bert’s mega-bestselling classic by the same name, which has sold 60,000 copies over the years. But the book couldn’t be more relevant and necessary today, in a culture simmering with anger. From politics to Facebook, families to the Church, we’re all upset about something. Yet this book teaches you the right way to conquer those feelings, and then how to channel them for good.
Bert is one of my closest friends and I was honored to write the foreword to this new edition. We recently sat down to discuss the book. Enjoy the interview!
Topics Include:
- 2:40 – Why this book is so needed today
- 3:31 – How anger can, in fact, be a gift
- 4:16 – Why suppressing your anger makes things worse
- 5:34 – How to distinguish between good and bad anger
- 7:05 – Getting control of your anger
- 9:34 – The biblical approach to anger
- 12:03 – How anger can make us holy
- 13:47 – How anger fuels social justice and evangelization
- 17:36 – Bert’s embarrassing story about anger
Book Description – The Angry Christian
This book shows how Christians can be good and be angry at the same time. That’s possible if we let the Holy Spirit strengthen us to get angry for the right reasons and to keep anger under control.
If we are seeking a secret that will simply eliminate anger, we’re pursuing a vain hope. Anger will surely be with us until we die. It may even go with us to heaven, where the Lord may allow us to share his anger at the evils that afflict his creation. But we can learn to increase good anger and to minimize the bad. That’s the Christian approach summed up by Paul when he admonished the Ephesians to “Be angry, but do not sin” (Eph 4:26). If used constructively, anger can even help us live a more Christian life.
This is not a psychology or self-help book. It presents a Bible-based strategy for caring for and disciplining a valuable emotion. It describes a method that helps us use anger successfully to overcome the obstacles strewn across the path of our Christian journey. The book contains questions for discussion, personal reflection and application which make it ideal for either individual or group use.
