Look beneath anger, and you will often find grief and loss. But as we seek to speak into our experiences of anger in the face of loss, we need to be alert both to right and wrong expressions of indignation. It is right to feel indignant when our enemy death does his damaging work; that anger is right and proper and was shared on earth by Jesus himself. But there is also a wrong kind of indignation that we come to feel because we have forgotten who is on the throne and feel frustrated because our own sovereign plans have been disrupted.

The Complex Emotions Beneath Our Anger

We should take time to notice the way that other emotions are so often at work alongside, or underneath, our anger. We could begin, for example, by noticing how often we seem to enjoy the experience of anger. Anger can empower us, energizing us to face a threat or confront a difficulty. In our anger, we find the strength to resist a bully or the determination to launch a campaign. Instead of feeling weak and vulnerable, anger enables us to speak out against something that is wrong or act with courage in the face of injustice.

Because anger is so basic, and because it can also leave us feeling energized, it is an emotion that is relatively easy to slip into. We might say that it doesn’t take much effort to either get angry or express anger. Anger is right there, right away. That makes it different from a whole host of other emotions that are not only much more complex in nature but also much harder to identify and express. We will look at some of those more complex emotions below. First, though, consider anger’s close companion in the choice between fight or flight—the emotion of fear.

1. Fear

When we are angry, one key question to ask of ourselves (and others) is whether fear is present as well. For even though fear is just as elemental as anger, it can be rather harder to admit. Being angry will often help us feel strong, but admitting fear usually leaves us feeling weak. So we may need a little persuading before we are ready to admit our fear.

We might think of a husband who is angry at his wife for arriving home late or a parent who is angry with a child who has stepped off the pavement. What lies beneath the sharp word they express? Very probably fear. The parent is afraid that her child will be hit by a car. The husband, perhaps, fears that his wife’s late arrival home indicates some terrible accident or assault has taken place. Yet instead of expressing that fear, each expresses anger. Remember that it comes easily to us because expressing anger makes us feel stronger, whereas admitting fear forces us to confront our own vulnerability.

But while anger so often divides and disrupts relationships, fear can be much more constructive. If the angry husband with the late-arriving wife were willing to express his fear, then instead of being met with a barrage of accusation and complaint, this wife would arrive home to discover just how much she is loved by her husband and just how much that love led him to fret at the thought of losing her.

And it is not just horizontal relationships that can profit from the admission of fear. Our vertical relationship with God can do so too. Once we are willing to admit that we are afraid, we can begin to speak to God about that fear and also listen to the many ways God speaks into those fears.

We are afraid because we believe we are alone, persuaded that no one cares for us, no one provides for us, and no one is looking out for us. We live as functional orphans, as if we have no heavenly Father who cares for us. And that drives us away from an admission of fear and into an expression of anger. For if I am on my own, if it is only me who can defend myself against threat, if everyone and everything is against me, then I should, I must, fight. The world is far too scary for me to do anything else. In the absence of anyone powerful enough to intervene, I have to rely on me.

But the antidote to such fear involves remembering, bringing back to mind the sovereign care of the Lord. I must remember that there is a God who feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies and that this God also cares for me (Matt. 6:25–34). Our fear, and the anger beneath which it so often hides, arises when we have elevated ourselves and eclipsed God. But our fear, and with it our anger, will subside whenever we remember the character of our God and restore both him and us to the proper places.

Fear, however, is not the only emotion that the husband in our earlier example may be feeling. Suppose for a moment that his fear is justified, that there is some danger or threat. Yet in the absence of information, what is he able to do? His love may be prompting him to act, to care for his beloved, but he lacks the necessary knowledge to know how to act. Therefore, it’s not just anger he feels. Still another emotion lurks beneath his anger, and that emotion is frustration. It is to that feeling that we will now turn.

2. Frustration

Like kings suffering from the delusion of power, we believe that we should be in control, that getting what we want ought to lie within our compass.

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