Years ago, I worked full-time for my parents’ marriage ministry. Working with family is never easy—yet God was accomplishing remarkable change in the lives of hurting couples.
But the ministry took a turn for the worse.
In response, as a young leader, I made mistakes. Family relationships grew strained. My wife Erin and I eventually made the tough choice to strike out on our own.
This decision ushered in a dark season. Forgiving my parents felt difficult—to the point that I became depressed. I told them that though I was confident we’d resolve issues down the road, I needed time, without contact, to process my grief and pain. During that time of separation, I struggled through what had felt like mistreatment followed by rejection.
I couldn’t let it go.
I feared if I “let them off the hook” and forgave them, they wouldn’t take responsibility for their part, which would leave us disconnected long-term.
Can I tell you I didn’t manage my emotions well? Overwhelmed, I withdrew from Erin and the kids and self-isolated in my man-cave. Erin had every right to feel alone. We were both hurting, and my response took a substantial toll on our marriage.
Years ago, I might have attributed my post-forgiveness anger to my own unrighteousness or lack of forgiveness—which, let's face it, are both realities and worthy opponents.
But over and over, God has shown me He’s set the bar so much higher than checking the box of forgiveness.
He’s after my heart. I’d like to suggest anger indicates another area I can invite Him into—and not just to make me un-angry.
I’ve Forgiven. Can I Still Be Angry?
Have you noticed that anger can make Christians nervous?
It’s understandable. Anger’s such an activating, powerful emotion. Unlike, say, the debilitating exhaustion of pure grief, sometimes you’ve practically got to put anger in a headlock to hold it back.
But a few key points on anger help us treat it as it deserves.
First, understand that anger guards something valuable. So if you’re angry following forgiveness—do you know what your anger is seeking to guard?
And also—anger is almost always a secondary emotion. Anger forms the part of the iceberg we see, while sadness, disappointment, rejection, hurt, fear, shame, jealousy, or injustice could hover beneath the waterline.
Christian culture sometimes assumes a linear progression around emotion: I’ve forgiven, so I can’t be angry. I’ve grieved, so I should move on.
But our hearts simply do not progress linearly. They’re organic. Not some sort of machinery.
A surge of anger shouldn't be a time for immediate judgment—Dagnabbit! I shouldn’t feel angry!—but compassionate curiosity.
Think for a moment. Why are you feeling angry? And why now? What emotion lies beneath your anger?
Like David does through his anger in the Psalms, view your emotion as something to draw into the sanctuary of your time with God. It’s not just a malfunction to shove down until it leaks out in other ways, undealt with and not truly yielded to Him.
The Choice Is Yours (No, Really)
When someone treats you poorly, you have two primary options for remaining trustworthy to yourself.
- Build a Wall: Sometimes, the best course is to distance yourself and temporarily deny access to your most vulnerable self. You can still be cordial, but you don’t have to let them in emotionally. This protects you. But it can make deep connections difficult.
- Draw a Line in the Sand: Clearly state that their behavior is unacceptable while giving them the chance to regain your trust.
Each time you welcome them back, emphasize that consistent honor and caring behaviors are required, like genuine concern, listening, validation, empathy, supportive action, and apology. If they forget, you'll need to take a step back again.
Your sense of safety in relationships depends far more on your ability to trust yourself than on the behavior of others. If you can’t trust yourself to recognize and protect your own value and vulnerability, your well-being becomes dependent on others remembering your worth.
And that’s a precarious position to be in.
But Wait! There’s Brain Science, Too
In God’s goodness, there’s neuroscience behind this. Naming what’s going on within you, just as God labels Jonah’s anger, or Cain’s (Jonah 4:4, Genesis 4:6), carries the power to transfer that emotion out of your brain’s amygdala to your prefrontal cortex.
Maybe that sounds like no big deal. But your amygdala is the gut-level center of emotion, the center of fight/flight/freeze. In contrast, your prefrontal cortex, where so much of the image of God in us is embedded, coordinates our thoughts and actions with our internal goals. (Yes, like forgiveness.) It’s also the place of conscious decision-making, moderating behavior, dealing with conflicting thoughts, and determining good or bad.
Rather than amygdala-anger irrationally driving us without discernment or intentionality, we want our anger in that prefrontal cortex. It’s how we make wiser, more loving choices and take deliberate action.
Your prefrontal cortex is also the place emotion can be processed and humanely cared for. Along with anger, the grief or rejection are slowly defanged.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
I’ve found that confronting our pain—like the pain behind anger—is a little like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, ignoring the huge, projected face of the Wizard, with all his belligerent, bellowing smoke and fire.
This little dog runs up to the “man behind the curtain,” a frail old man working furiously for the presence and attention he longs for in the world.
What I’m not saying: If you can’t forgive, what you need is a terrier. I’m saying if you’re struggling to forgive, grant yourself a tender curiosity for those emotions behind the curtain.
Because when we can’t, won’t, or don’t, often there’s good reason.
Be compassionate and tender with yourself, as God is with you and commands you to be with others (Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:12). Demonstrate tenderness and patient shepherding to your own heart as He does toward you—with the goal of transformation rather than performance.
On Staying Soft
In Psalm 73, an ancient worship leader, Asaph, pulls us through his own legitimate fury—an emotion he names. He dissects this for us, explaining his anger is due to injustice he’s witnessed and the apparent uselessness of his faith.
Check out how he describes what this anger and his dark questions have done to him: “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (vv. 21-22).
That is, he says, “until I went into the sanctuary of God” (vv. 16-17).
Rather than banishing his anger outside his faith, Asaph finds peace in dialoging with God about it. We watch as he surrenders his rage and confusion into God’s control. He encounters God as his “refuge” and “counsel” even when his own body and heart fail or aren’t trustworthy. He accepts God as the one who will accomplish justice (vv. 1, 17, 23-28).
It’s almost like we’re watching Asaph’s heart melt in the presence of God’s responsive, receptive care for him. God is Asaph’s safe place when life is explicitly wrong.
And isn’t that the true battle of anger and those parts of us reluctant to forgive? It’s as if anger flags down our attention, asking us to do the hard work, the heart-work, of pulling God into our most injured, inflamed spaces.
Tending Heart and Soul
Done properly, this process is not at all navel-gazing. It’s simply tending to the first order of business. God’s first and greatest commandment, after all, is to love Him entirely. We can't do that well without tending to our hearts.
It’s what drove me to eventually find a good counselor to help me process my hurt and pain toward my parents. Months later, I was able to forgive, and we reconciled.
So don’t settle for a surface-level God says I have to forgive. What other choice do I have?
Allow Him the deliberate, inside-out transformation of your heart, so you can experience all over again the powerful, self-sacrificing, redeeming love in sacred spaces of pain and loss.
RELATED CONTENT: 8 Prayers for When Forgiveness Takes Time
Dr. Greg Smalley develops and oversees initiatives at Focus on the Family that prepare individuals for marriage, strengthen and nurture existing marriages, and help couples in marital crises. He is the author of 20 books including “Reconnected: Moving from Roommates to Soulmates in Your Marriage” and “9 Lies that Will Destroy Your Marriage.” He and his wife Erin co-created “Ready to Wed,” a complete premarital curriculum for engaged couples and the online Focus on Marriage Assessment.
