God doesn’t want angry worshipers.

Matthew 5.23-24.

No doubt you’re familiar with angry Christians. There sure are a lot of them. Too many of them. So many of them, certain pagans are pretty sure we’re all that way; it’s the only kind of Christian they’ve ever met. They grew up around angry Christians, and as far as they can tell, it’s our default setting.

Since anger is a pretty obvious work of the flesh—whether you call it wrath, ill temper, fury, rage, or “a brutal temper” as The Message puts it Ga 5.20 —why is this? In my experience angry Christians go out of their way to justify their anger as best they can. It’s “righteous anger,” directed against sin or injustice. Of course, in practice it’s never just directed towards those abstract concepts; it’s directed towards the people who commit ’em. And since everybody sins, and most people are unjust, it’s directed towards a lot of people. Particularly political opponents.

And in practice, it’s never all that righteous. Jesus forgives sinners, and orders us to forgive sinners, and love our enemies. Do angry Christians do this? Nope! At best, they’ll shun their enemies, and be apathetic towards them, but too often they do this passive-aggressive, “I’m fighting you because your defeat is ultimately what’s best for you, and ultimately that’s love,” only it’s not.

Not only does Jesus not want his followers to live in anger, he orders us to be rid of it, and make peace with our enemies, before we worship. Yep, that’s in the Sermon on the Mount too.

Matthew 5.23-24 KWL

23“So when you offer your gift on the altar,

if you remember, right there,

your sibling has something against you,

24leave your gift there before the altar

and first go be reconciled with your sibling.

Then come back and offer your gift.”

Christians tend to skim over this teaching because we don’t do the same sort of ritual offerings as the ancient Hebrews. Usually we do good deeds, or contribute to our churches, and figure we’re doing ’em for Jesus, and that’s our offering. This “gift on the altar” thingy—lots of us don’t even know what that is.

What it is, is an act of love. The Law commanded the Hebrews to perform certain ritual sacrifices throughout the year, which represented their continual formal relationship with the LORD, and his forgiveness of their sins. But gift offerings weren’t required at all. You didn’t have to do them. They were spelled out in the bible because people wanted to do them—they loved the LORD and wanted to do more for him. So the LORD spelled out to Moses what acts he considered appropriate and appreciated, and these are the gift offerings. They’re not done for show; God’ll ignore those. They’re not done so God will owe us a favor; he’s not a petty pagan god who does that sort of thing. They’re purely done out of people’s love of God.

Now, that’s something Christians can relate to: There are plenty of things we do for God that are done purely out of love for him. We’ll sing to him more. We’ll do more good works for him. We’ll put extra money in the offering plate. We’ll create art for him—good art, not those kitschy paintings of Jesus hugging people. We’ll write music for him—good music, not pop songs that are actually meant to give us a music career. We’ll ask him what more we can do, and the Holy Spirit will give us some ideas.

But before we do anything extra for God—before we go above and beyond our usual Christian obligations—Jesus instructs us to go be reconciled with your sibling. And lest you think Jesus only means our Christian sisters and brothers, remember the Sermon on the Mount was originally preached to an audience of Jews, not Christians, and their “siblings” were their fellow Jews—religious or not. Go restore your relationship with your neighbor—and then come back and give your love-gift.

Otherwise God doesn’t want our love-gifts. Because if we refuse to love others like Jesus tells us to, we clearly don’t love him enough to obey him.

A lifestyle of love, not anger.

The other, more obvious reason Christians skim over this passage, is because Jesus is telling us to do something we don’t wanna. Once again he’s telling us to love our neighbors… regardless of the special exceptions we’ve carved out for them because they’re sinners. Once again he’s emphasizing how important it is to love others, even though we figure it’s vitally important to hate some—particularly our opponents in the culture war.

But here, Jesus takes it another step further: If we don’t reconcile ourselves with people we consider our adversaries and opponents, God doesn’t want our worship. He doesn’t want us to delude ourselves into thinking we have a healthy relationship with him. We don’t. We’re defying him, and hating people he loves. Some of us have even deluded ourselves into thinking he hates them too—’cause doesn’t God think the very same way they do? And if we’ve reimagined God as an angry God who demands angry followers, he definitely doesn’t want us worshiping that.

As is typically the case when Jesus tells us to do something we don’t wanna, Christians have devised convenient loopholes which get ’em out of obeying. The usual one I’ve heard about this one, is there’s no more temple; there’s no more altar of sacrifice; the Romans destroyed them in the year 70; there’s nowhere to put these gifts. That they’re part of the old covenant, but Christians are under the new covenant. Doesn’t apply to us anymore. Even though it’s one of Jesus’s teachings; even though it’s in the gospels, not the Old Testament. History has nullified this scripture for us. Isn’t that handy?

So they cling to their anger instead of Jesus. Keep on hating sinners instead of loving them. And no, they don’t wonder why the world keeps getting worse as a result of their actions; they’ve usually embraced the popular End Times belief that the world is supposed to keep getting worse—which is all Satan’s fault, not theirs. They’re still fighting sin. Well, sinners. Same thing.

These are not the followers Jesus wants. He wants people who will do for the strangers, the sinners, the criminals, the lost, the broken, the mentally ill, the sick, the needy. You know, like he does. While Pharisees stood back and figured, “Their sins are why they’re miserable,” Jesus took time to cure them of their miseries, and proclaim the good news of his kingdom to them.

And in his kingdom, you don’t get to worship until you’ve worked out your differences with others. You don’t get to pretend things are all right with God when they’re not. Drop your offering, go make peace with your neighbors—however long it takes, and if there are really old grudges, it might take a while!—then worship.

Angry Christians aren’t the only ones who have a lot of amends to make. Really, we all do. But that’s what Jesus expects of his followers: People whom nobody can say anything against (which is mandatory for the bishops who supervise it 1Ti 3.2), who have good character and produce good fruit. People who act like Jesus, and love those he loves, i.e. everyone. Anger stops us from loving, and it’s why we have to be rid of it.

So if you’re an angry Christian, repent. Get that anger out of you. Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven. And don’t be surprised if your ability to worship God doesn’t substantially improve.