Resolution 15

Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings.

"As with all emotion, which exist before words and independently of words, anger is hard to define with words. But we should try because evidently there are different experiences called anger, some of which are sinful and some of which are not. For example, in Mark 3:5 Jesus himself is angered by religious leaders who do not want him to heal a man on the Sabbath. "He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart." And Jesus repeatedly referred to God's anger either directly as the wrath of God in judgment (John 3:36; Luke 21:23) of indirectly in parables (Matt. 18:34; Luke 14:21).

"A standard English dictionary defines anger as "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually antagonism." The reason the phrase "as strong feeling of displeasure" can't stand by itself is that we don't think of really bad tasting food as awakening anger, even though there may be strong displeasure. That displeasure needs another component before it is experienced as anger. If someone keeps feeding us terrible food, and we sense that they are doing it intentionally then we may get angry. Anger seems to be more of less strong displeasure about something that is happening willfully and, we feel, should not be happening.

"Of course, we do sometimes get angry when that is not the case. If we trip over a root, we may turn around and kick the root in anger. If we bump our head on the kitchen cabinet, we may smack the cabinet door in anger. But in our best moments we look at those reactions as foolish. We intuitively sense that we are imputing willfulness to the root and the cabinet, as of they did something to us on purpose.

"This is why the young Jonathon Edwards resolved not to get angry in inanimate objects. His Resolution #15 said, "Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger towards irrational beings." Therefore, the difference between anger and other emotions of displeasure is that anger involves strong displeasure with something that is happening intentionally that we think should not be happening."

-John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World