The Constructive Displeasure
of Mercy
by David Powlison
One of the ways we grasp anything in life is
by contrast to other things. In the previous article
we looked directly at anger’s essential DNA:
“That matters, it’s wrong, it offends me, I want to
destroy it.” Now let’s look in the opposite
direction. What is the opposite of anger? Anger
has many antonyms. We will consider three. The
first two, indifference and pleasure, are commonsense simple. We will look at them only briefly.
The third opposite is complex. It is grasped only
by revelation. The constructive displeasure of mercy
means the redemption of world. It is the glory of
God and the love of God. It is God’s intention in
re-forming us into His image.
Three Opposites of Anger
Imagine something like the Richter scale for
earthquakes, but operating in both positive and
negative directions.
Imagine your displeasures operating on a
scale from -1 to -10 (see figure 1). When I don’t
like what’s happening, my dislike might register as
mild complaint escalating up to explosive wrath.
That’s obviously the anger part of the scale. We
feel negative about something. But there are
other numbers on the scale. Each of anger’s three
opposites lands on a different part of the scale.
Indifference
First, if something doesn’t bother me, then I
don’t feel angry. I don’t care or don’t notice, so I
don’t react. The most obvious antonym to being
angry is not being angry. Our scale lands on 0: no
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offense taken. For example, in a traffic jam, some
people might rocket straight into -7 road rage.
Others don’t work themselves up much higher
than a bit of -1 disgust. But there are people who
accept the inconvenience, wait patiently, and pop
some good tunes in the CD player—absence of
anger. This doesn’t mean that such non-reactors
enjoy traffic jams, or wouldn’t rather be cruising
along at 65 mph. But they aren’t bothered by a
commonplace interruption. They don’t take it
personally. They don’t seek to impose their will
on the traffic-flow pattern of the universe. Things
that provoke some people to explode, and others
to mild irritation, prompt a blithe non-reaction
and acceptance in some.
Many zero reactions are simple good sense.
To over-react in traffic simply proves that I’m
going through life with an entitlement attitude. Is
it really a big deal that the restaurant ran out of
the crême brulée and you’ll have to order a
different dessert? If my team lost the football
game, fair and square, should I rant and rave?
From God’s point of view, whether I rant and rave
is a far more significant issue than sports or
dessert choices. Grumbling is a capital crime on
His scale of values.
But absence of anger contains darker
possibilities as well. There are forms of ‘bad zero’.
A bland insensitivity or cultivated indifference
can express one of the more subtle disguises for
anger-gone-bad. A non-reaction might express
indifference towards real problems and needs. If
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
-10
-1 0 +1
+10
Figure 1 “Displeasure – Pleasure Scale”
you don’t see a problem or don’t want to see, then
you can’t care. You couldn’t be bothered, and you
won’t do anything about it. Because anger is the
moral emotion, then to the degree my value
system is distorted, then I won’t—can’t—react to
true wrongs.
Cynicism is a settled expectation that
people are bad and everything goes wrong. Cynics
don’t expect anything anymore from anyone, so
they don’t get angry. People get cynical when
they’ve gotten tired of getting mad. Stop caring
about what happens, and you stop reacting. You
shrug and stay cool. Though the emotional scale
might register 0, this reaction shares DNA with
bad anger. It’s like a fire that has burned down to
cold ashes. No heat remains, but the residue is all
about an oxidation process that consumes wood
fiber.
Another bad zero is the cultivated stoic
calm. Many cultures idealize some form of
impenetrable, unruffled, laid-back cool.
‘Whatever’. Don’t worry, be happy. Que sera sera.
Fatalism. Hakuna matata. The detachment of
meditative
tranquility.
Become
more
philosophical. Unreactive calm is the goal of
many philosophies of life, religious practices, and
psychotherapies. Live serenely above the fray.
Maintain an ironic detachment and
uncommitment. If all else fails, alcohol, drugs or
prescribed medications can take the ragged edge
off of life by creating a chemical flattening of
unruly passions. Most people rightly see that
being volatile, temperamental, and histrionic is
morally immature and causes innumerable
needless problems. But many people wrongly
think that some form of stoic tranquility is the
solution.
As we’ve seen, many zero reactions are
simple good sense. But many of the more
complicated zero reactions express a serious
deficiency. Not knowing how to ever get good and
angry is like walking color-blind through a world
of dazzling colors. The optical nerve works fine,
but you lack receptors to discriminate some very
important wavelengths.
Pleasure
Anger has a second simple opposite. Just as
anger’s displeasure operates across the negative
scale from –1 to –10, so pleasure spans a range,
from mild preference (+1) to ecstatic delight
(+10). If I like what’s happening, I’m pleased, not
displeased.
Like anger, pleasure is a moral emotion:
whenever I make a positive evaluation of
something or someone, of course I don’t get
angry. But when I approve, then I’m glad, not
mad. Many pairs of antonyms capture the
nuances and degrees of difference: anger-delight,
love-hate, please-displease, approve-disapprove,
admire-despise, attractive-repellent, favordisfavor. My anger always disapproves; my
pleasure proclaims that I approve.
Commendation is the direct antonym to the
condemnation that operates in anger. The purest
and highest form of anger’s polar opposite is
delight, praise, gratitude, worship. You act to
promote and enhance what pleases you, not to
demote and destroy.
I’m not saying one set of emotions is bad
and the other good, in any absolute sense. Not at
all. God has wired us with every capacity, and
called the sum ‘very good’. We need both in order
to live wisely in the real world. Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn famously commented, “The line
dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of
every human being.”1 That line runs through
every emotion. Both love and hate, pleasure and
displeasure, approval and anger, can go bad, and
both can go good.
God gives many good gifts, intended to
delight our hearts and bring us pleasure: knowing
with all your heart that Psalm 23 is true. Walking
on a cloudless October day in New England,
when the air is crisp and the maple leaves are in
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17
full color. Successfully finishing a major project at
school or work. Taking time for a fine, leisurely
dinner with good friends. Doing family chores
when everybody cooperates, pitches in, and
cares. Freely giving to someone in need.
Discovering that your bank account is
surprisingly healthy. Experiencing the return of
energies after illness. Watching a loved one grow
up in faith, love, joy, wisdom, and fruitfulness.
Traveling when there’s an easy traffic flow up the
I-95 corridor. Finding that someone you trust
lives up to that trust—true friend, good doctor,
deft parent, wise pastor, competent teacher,
caring counselor, loving husband. Singing
“Amazing Grace” with 500 others who really
mean what they sing. None of these provoke
anger. These, and countless others, are the ‘solid
joys and lasting treasures’ that the living God
freely gives.
But there are bad pleasures. When
someone delights in a successful scam or
seduction, finds pleasure in inflicting pain,
experiences drunken parties as the apex of having
a good time, loves coming up with the perfect
put-down… then the pleasure-displeasure
compass has been turned upside down. God
describes the phenomenon the following way,
revealing His displeasure and its deadly
consequences:
Woe to those who call evil good, and good
evil; who substitute darkness for light and
light for darkness; who substitute bitter for
sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those
who are wise in their own eyes and clever in
their own sight. (Isa. 5:20f; cf. Rom. 1:1832).
There are people who think there’s nothing
wrong with salesmen lying to customers, or
routine verbal abuse of family members, or
ingestion of a polypharmacy of street drugs, or sex
with whoever’s willing and available. I want to do
it; everybody does it; what’s the big deal? We live
in ‘bad positive’ when we delight in what ought
to upset us.
The Constructive Displeasure of Mercy
We’ve now looked across the whole
spectrum of the -10 to +10 scale: from negative
displeasure, to zero indifference, and on to
positive pleasure. But there’s one more curiously
powerful and oddly beautiful antonym to angry
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displeasure. It is something quite different from
either indifference or pleasure. It traverses the
exact same ground as raw anger, the -1 to -10 part
of life. It is a different kind of displeasure that
does not act like the typical hostilities. This third
opposite to simple anger is complex, even
counterintuitive. Like simple anger, it says, “That
matters, it’s wrong and offensive, I want to do
something about it.” But unlike pure anger, it
says, “That’s wrong—and I will be constructively
merciful.” I will call this the constructive displeasure
of mercy.” Mercy is a whole different way of
reacting to offenses, to things we think are wrong.
Mercy operates across the negative scale. It’s not
a non-reactive indifference, because it cares. And
it’s the furthest thing from approval. Mercy
includes a component of forceful anger—but
anger’s typical hostility and destructiveness don’t
set the dominant key. Mercy contains a
combination of attitudes and actions that
proceed in an essentially constructive way. Mercy,
including its component of constructive anger, is
the highest form of love. It’s how we love in the
face of something wrong. Irritation, arguing,
hostility, violence, and resentment are not the
only ways to react to a wrong. They aren’t the
only ways to get angry. I can know something is
wrong, even terribly evil. I can hate it. And yet I
can act constructively. Indifference or approval
are not the only alternatives to destructive
hostility.
Let me give an example. We’ve all known
people who bristle at the slightest hint of
criticism. (Too often we know that person all too
well, up close and first person personal.) But have
you ever seen someone respond well to unfair
criticism? I’ll never forget watching a public
speaker respond when he was sharply attacked by
someone in the audience during the Q&A
session after his talk. The critic erupted with
venomous hostility. She made an outrageous
caricature of what had just been said over the
previous hour. She ranted, accusing the speaker
of arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence
(because she disagreed with one particular
implication of his politics). Her behavior was
completely out of line. Even if there were
legitimate grounds to disagree (I didn’t
completely agree with the speaker either), her
way of disagreeing was outrageous.
But that speaker did something amazing,
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
something I’ve always remembered. He did not
take the tirade personally. He didn’t get
defensive. He didn’t counterattack. His words in
response were clarifying. He even identified and
acknowledged valid concerns that were hidden
within the hostilities, distortions, and accusations
we’d all just heard. In fact, he argued her case
better than she did, noting its strong points! He
was personally conciliatory: “Let’s talk more later.
Come seek me out after the meeting breaks up.”
He didn’t back down, but he didn’t get his back
up. He defended what he’d said, but not
defensively. He argued with her arguments, but
was not argumentative.
The verbal attack had prompted an
awkward moment for the whole group of some
300 people. People were squirming during her
rant. But our speaker deflected some of the
awkwardness with a bit of gently self-deprecating
showed the woman mercy, the constructive
displeasure of mercy. What was it that he did? It
was the opposite of the typical hostilities. This
complex opposite of anger burst with vitality,
purpose, alertness, and emotional energy, just like
what operates in anger. But it did something
wonderfully constructive.
I will discuss four aspects of this complex,
paradoxical thing that I will call the constructive
displeasure of mercy. Each of these four, like anger,
implies active disapproval of what’s happening.
But unlike the vast bulk of anger, each breathes
helpfulness in the ways it addresses what it
perceives as wrong. These four characteristics are:
• patience,
• forgiveness,
• charity, and
• constructive conflict.
The actions and attitudes that express this constructive
displeasure of mercy happen to be exactly how
the Bible portrays one of the hands-on ways that
God tackles tough problems.
humor. She said, “What gives you the right to
stand up there and pontificate?!” He answered,
“Well, our hosts did invite me to speak, and I do
hope they’ll pay me, even though they now know
what I think.” That bit of gentle humor took the
attention off of the critic, who by now looked like
she felt embarrassed that she’d made such a
scene. As far as I could tell, the speaker was a 0
on the personal anger scale, and marvelous on
the constructive response scale. I admired him.
That public speaker gives us some hints
about this curiously merciful way to stand against
someone. He didn’t react in the ways that come
so easily to us all. He didn’t bristle or retaliate on
the –1 to –10 scale. At the same time, I’m sure he
did not approve of her venomous attack on him.
He certainly wasn’t anywhere on the pleasurable
+1 to +10 scale. It was a tense moment. He
disagreed with her accusations and with the way
she accused him. I’m sure he wasn’t at 0! It was a
very unpleasant public scene. He was certainly
not indifferent to being publicly caricatured and
maligned. He was not shrugging it off. Instead, he
We usually lack a rich sense of exactly what such
varied aspects of mercy actually do and mean. We
miss the realities that these words intend to
communicate. We understand displeasure. We
understand indifference. We understand
pleasure. But we lack a category for the
constructive displeasure of mercy. But it is the key
to becoming both sane and humane.
Those four terms sound ‘religious’, for good
reason. The actions and attitudes that express
this constructive displeasure of mercy happen to
be exactly how the Bible portrays one of the
hands-on ways that God tackles tough problems.
These four characteristics picture Jesus. They
describe the lifestyle of a thriving, wise human
being who is growing up in the image of Jesus.
These four activities describe supremely beautiful
necessities—given the sort of world we live in,
given the sort of people we are. We can’t live
without them.
The ‘religious’ overtones of these terms can
make them too familiar to us. We can gloss over
the intended force and payoff. You might agree
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19
too quickly, nodding, rather than really hearing
what is meant. These words describe rare
qualities, difficult to do. Impossible to do, unless
you actively experience how your Father Himself
is doing these very things with you. When you are
treated this way, you learn to treat others this way.
This complex thing that we are calling the
constructive displeasure of mercy rolls up its
sleeves. It tackles the toughest problems you will
ever have to face in life. It tackles the toughest
problems you will ever face in yourself.
Let me give these four terms a street-level
relevance and fresh force. You must grasp the
workings of merciful displeasure in order to think
deeply and carefully about anger. How does the
inworking of such mercies into your experience
change the way you feel displeasure, or
indifference, or pleasure? How does their
outworking in how you live change the way you
face life’s provocations, disappointments,
frustrations, and betrayals? These four things put
a qualitatively different spin on -1 to -10. All four
necessarily go together. If any one of them is
missing, you’ve lost something crucial. Put all
together, they embody an exquisite and powerful
logic. The constructive displeasure of mercy
expresses the most powerful interpersonal
dynamic imaginable. It is the Word becoming
flesh and dwelling among us, full of grace and
truth.
In it for the long haul.
Patience is a curious opposite to anger.
When you are truly patient, you agree with the
moral evaluation that anger makes: “That’s
wrong. What you’re doing does not please me. It
offends me. It hurts people.” True patience is not
aggression and attack mode, of course. But true
patience is not about passivity, indifference, and a
placid tolerance of evils. You do not peacefully
put up with bad things. It’s not an easy-going
tolerance and neutrality. It does not accept
anything and affirm everything. Patience hates
what’s happening, and rolls up its sleeves to
redress what is wrong.
Patience sees wrong, but it is ‘slow to anger’.
That is a prime characteristic of God: Exodus
34:6. It is a prime characteristic of love: 1
Corinthians 13:4. God is love. He intends to
make us like Him. When you are slow to anger,
you are willing to work with wrong over time.
“The Lord is not slow about His promise as some
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count slowness, but is patient” (2 Pet. 3:9). God
chooses to work over a scale of moments, days,
years, decades, centuries, millennia. It reveals this
characteristic of who He is: a thousand years and
a day are all the same to Him (2 Pet. 3:8). He will
accomplish what He has set out to do.
Patience is an intelligent, feeling act. In
fact, when you are patient, you often see the
wrong more clearly. You often feel its knife-edge
more keenly. You actually notice more wrongs,
deeper wrongs, truer wrongs than when you react
resentfully. Our resentments are often petty. But
patience takes personally wrongs that don’t
necessarily slap my private agendas in the face; it
notices others’ sufferings. Patience hurts. You
struggle within yourself. But you are slow to anger.
You don’t react right away. You don’t have a short
fuse. You don’t act the same way anger reacts,
though you see (and feel) the wrong. You put up
with difficult people and events, not out of
indifference, resignation, or cowardice. You are
driven by a different purpose. Rather than
sounding the alarm, calling up the troops, and
leaping into hostile action, you carefully take a
different approach. You bear with people, rather
than counterattacking. You are willing to work
slowly to solve things. You are even willing live for
a long time within seemingly insoluble evils.
One component of patience is forbearance.
We don’t often hear that word either discussed,
and don’t often see it lived out. To forbear means
to hang in there with people or events that
remain wrong and hurtful. This is more than
brute endurance. It does not mean to just keep
on keeping on, to merely grit your teeth, resigned
to the inevitable. It is committed to change the
world—slowly—not simply to endure the world.
And forbearance is very different from being a
doormat, passively absorbing abuse, even inviting
abuse. A doormat psychologically drowns in the
sense of powerlessness, victimhood, cringing fear,
self-pity, and self-condemnation. But forbearance
is courageous and clear-minded. It exhibits the
dignity of a choice. Forbearance is powerful, but
non-retaliatory, even while continuing to
experience pain and unfairness. Patience
forbears, while never losing either the hope of
altering or the intention of repairing what is so
wrong. It does not reach the end of its rope like
impatience. It does not explode like destructive
vengeance. It does not give up in exhaustion,
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
disgust, or despair. The willingness to work over
the long haul is the first piece of the constructive
displeasure of mercy.
Willingness to not get even.
Forgiveness is a second mercy, another
curious and complex opposite to anger.
Forgiveness also looks wrong in the eye, names it
for what it is, feels the sting. Then you
consciously act ‘unfairly’ in return. Anger is
always all about fairness (however accurate or
distorted our perceptions of fair). But forgiveness
is mercifully unfair. You choose not to give back
what seems only fair, just, equitable, reasonable. If
I throw a china teacup onto a slate floor, I deserve
that it shatters. If I betray your trust, I deserve
your wrath. But if that teacup bounces and
remains whole, I receive back a most astonishing
and undeserved gift. And if you forgive me, you
do me an uncanny kindness. Forgiveness is a
courageous, clear-minded choice to be mercifully
unfair. It doesn’t ignore what’s wrong. It doesn’t
excuse what’s wrong. It doesn’t pretend that the
person didn’t really mean it. It doesn’t say, “Oh,
that’s OK,” when it wasn’t OK. It doesn’t just
tolerate what’s wrong. Instead, recognizing I owe
you, you forgive the debt.
What is the dynamic? Psalm 103 says that
the Lord forgives our iniquities. He does not treat
our sins as they deserve. We deserve sickness and
death. He does us an incalculable kindness:
mercy after wrongdoing, mercy after mercy after
mercy for our compounded wrongs. Having been
given to, in painful need, we become able and
willing to give. Having been deeply forgiven, for
real moral wrong, we become able to forgive
rather than take revenge. Mercies needed and
received, with heartfelt thanks, make for mercies
to give away.
Real forgiveness does not fall for the cheap
substitutes. We’ve all heard (and probably done)
the counterfeit. For example, let’s say Johnny
forgets that he and his girlfriend Joannie had
plans to visit her family. His string of lame excuses
reveals that he could care less. Joannie reams him
out, lashing him with all his present and past
faults. She recounts the details of his many sins in
excruciating, videographic outrage. She charges
him with every sort of nefarious, infernal, and
malicious motive. His latest crime against
humanity is only one of a string of perpetual
iniquities (global accusation is a typical pattern in
angry people): “You always ____. You never
____.” She shouts expletives, calls Johnny names,
invokes divine wrath, smears him with obscene
dirt, and pronounces curses (five more typical
anger strategies). She trumpets her own cosmic
righteousness (again, how typical): “I would
never do that. When I promise to do something
for you, I do it. I always remember our
appointments. I make the effort with your family,
and I never diss your parents.” Then she stomps
out in a huff. Raw anger explicitly or implicitly
kills. It’s the violence emotion. By rejecting and
abandoning Johnny, she leaves him to squirm in
guilt, and kills off any present-tense relationship.
Later, however, Joannie feels bad for getting
so riled up. She goes back to Johnny and says,
“I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. I was
just overtired and a bit frazzled.”
He answers, “That’s OK.” They kiss, and
make up.
End of incident? No. That’s not forgiveness,
either sought or given. Nothing has been
forgiven. She did mean what she said (though
now she regrets it and wants to make up). And
it’s not OK (though now he also wants to let it go
and patch things up). They are both making
excuses.
True forgiveness (both sought and given)
looks wrong in the eye. It makes no excuses. But
it does not hold the offense against you. It lets you
go (when it could hang on). It covers over (when
it could hold it over you).
Joannie: “What I said was wrong. I am so
sorry for my cruel and hurtful my words. I
exaggerated in order to hurt you. I was selfrighteous. Please forgive me.”
Johnny: “I do forgive you. Thank you. And
please forgive me for not following through
on what I said I’d do. I’m sorry for hurting
you by my carelessness, excuses, and selfpreoccupation.”
Joannie: “I do forgive you. Thanks.”
They kiss, because they’ve made up.
True forgiveness is not cover-up. It doesn’t
pretend that everything’s OK. It doesn’t excuse
what’s wrong. It does not believe that “to
understand all is to forgive all”; “I know Johnny
was tired, but he means well, and his dad was not
very considerate, so he never had role models”; “I
know Joannie was just having a bad day, and she
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
21
was probably hormonal.” That turns extenuating
circumstances into a whitewash, rather than
helping people face hard, liberating realities in
the midst of circumstances.
Forgiveness is a conscious choice. It clearly
recognizes that what happened was wrong . You
did what you should not have done, or I did what
I should not have done. It makes no excuses for
what happened. And then it lets it go.
Undeserved acts of kindness and generosity.
Charity towards the person who does wrong
is the third aspect of mercy. Anger operates out of
a strictly punitive sense of fairness and justice.
Charity agrees, “That’s wrong,” but then does
some undeserved generous act of kindness. It
comes from the hardest confrontation of all with
ourselves: “Love your enemies.” Hard to do.
Impossible. It’s an unnatural act, to see wrong,
and do right. You’ll need help. This, too, is the
image of God. This, too, pictures the life of Jesus
generously towards a wrongdoer, rather than
claiming your pound of flesh. Anger thinks this
way: “I’ve been wronged, so I will deal out fair
and just punishment to the malefactor.” Patience,
forgiveness, and generosity are “unfair.” You treat
with kindness someone who treated others badly.
Constructive anger
Patience makes you hang in there through
the process. Forgiveness makes you let go of
getting even or of holding on to bitterness.
Charity makes you generous to those who do not
deserve kindness. But these three mercies don’t
make you ‘nice’. They make you the right kind of
tough, able to do the fourth mercy: constructive
anger. The displeasure of mercy enters forcefully
into conflict in order to redeem. There is no one
word summary for this most rare form of
goodness, this forthright problem-solving that
goes about seeking to right what is wrong. It
means to step into wrong with conviction and
The displeasure of mercy enters forcefully into
conflict in order to redeem.
Christ. The Bible says that the Lord is full of
steadfast love, faithfulness, compassion, and
goodness. The Bible shows the Lord does what
He says He is. We experience that He is true to
what He says. Every good thing comes from His
generous hand.
To actually do good to someone who does
wrong, who has hurt you or others, this is a
marvel. It’s so much easier to give back in kind:
“Return evil for evil, an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth. If you do me dirty, I do you dirty.”
Charity does what someone doesn’t deserve.
Someone deserves nothing from you, or even
deserves payback because they did you or others
wrong. But you do love: the form of love that
bears the name ‘charity’. The piece of folk
wisdom that says, “Love the sinner, but hate the
sin,” is one attempt to capture the constructive
displeasure of mercy. In fact, you can fiercely
disagree with a person and actively dislike what
he or she is doing—all the stuff of anger—and yet
you can still do genuine kindness. Anger grips
tightly onto a wrong, points it out, prosecutes it,
punishes it. But it is also possible to act
22
force, tackling evils head on. It means a
willingness to start a conflict and to go through
the process of conflict, with evident constructive
purposes. You raise the problem that wrong
creates. Do that in the right kind of way, and you
create the right kind of trouble. The technical
term for all this is ‘redemption’! Jesus was a
troublemaker. Truth is always a troublemaker,
because it shakes up the wrong of what is. To
actually make peace, where open wrong, hostility
and destruction now operate, is the hardest and
best work in the world. It involves saying true
words that others might not like to hear: “That’s
wrong.” It involves confronting evils, rescuing
victims, calling wrong-doers to accountability:
“You can’t treat people that way.” It involves
anger on behalf of victims and to the face of
victimizers. But such merciful anger always
maintains its sense of proportion, its perspective,
its constructive purpose. The process of troubleshooting, of problem-solving, of peace-making, of
making right what is wrong, is often long and
hard. It takes honesty. It’s always messy. You need
patience yet again, and further forgiveness, and
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
more charity… and you continue to engage
redemptively.
I will give two illustrations of the
constructive displeasure of mercy. These are both
from the political arena. This might seem an odd
choice. These are not ‘counseling’ examples, or
even ‘religious’ examples. But I choose these for a
reason. The constructive displeasure of mercy is
about real life, not some spiritual sphere of life.
It’s about both public and private actions, not just
some self-improvement project to solve a few
personal problems.
Winston Churchill’s memoirs of World War
II contain a fascinating portrayal of just the
constructive displeasure of mercy, culminating in
his willingness to get angry and engage in
constructive conflict. As prime minister of
England, Churchill had to work closely with the
USSR’s Josef Stalin in alliance against Adolf
Hitler. He found Stalin to be “surly, snarling,
grasping, ungrateful, suspicious, bullying,
accusatory, and manipulative.” During the years
from 1939 to 1941, Stalin had shown himself
“utterly indifferent to our fate.” He not only
joined Hitler in plundering Eastern Europe, but
he generously supplied the Nazis with oil, iron,
tin, and grain to assist in their war effort against
England. But in 1941 Hitler betrayed him and
invaded Russia, leading to the largest, bloodiest
battles in the history of the human race.
So Stalin and Churchill became odd allies.
England immediately and consistently poured
massive relief aid and war materials into Russia.
But Stalin’s response was demanding and
suspicious, rarely grateful, never trusting. He
frequently blamed England for Russia’s troubles.
In responding to Stalin, Churchill was unfailingly
patient, forgiving, and generous. He repeatedly
displayed those first three attributes of mercy’s
constructive displeasure. He kept in view the
larger purpose of their alliance. Churchill
consistently bore with the unpleasantness of his
ally rather than taking offence and cutting him
off.
But such love is not sentimental or nice. It
is not blind to real wrongs. On one occasion the
Soviet ambassador met with Churchill in
London. “The ambassador emphasized the
extreme gravity of the crisis on the Russian front
in poignant terms which commanded my
sympathy. But when presently I sensed an
underlying air of menace in his appeal, I was
angered. I said to the Ambassador, ‘Remember
that only four months ago we in this Island did
not know whether you were not coming in
against us on the German side. Whatever
happens, and whatever you do, you of all people
have no right to make reproaches to us.’” Notice
the bluntly appropriate, “I was angered.” Notice
that he minced no words in confronting the
problem.
Churchill’s expression of just anger did not
rupture or even threaten his relationship with the
Soviets. England continued to work patiently,
forgivingly, and generously with the Soviets, as a
matter of policy. Stalin’s menace and
manipulation threatened the relationship, not
Churchill’s constructive anger. He voiced sharp
displeasure because he valued the alliance, and in
order to build a better working partnership, with
the purpose of destroying the Nazis. It did not
contradict his consistently constructive
attitude—it was part of it. He called wrong
Wrong, with some force and fire. Constructive
ends mastered and directed his anger at wrong.
And it is not surprising that constructive ends
were achieved. The ambassador changed his
tone, as did Stalin himself in a similar incident a
year later. 2
Churchill stood up to a bully without
becoming one—and the bully respected that.
Constructive conflict is part of the redemption of
a bad situation. It is the only merciful alternative
to giving up in exhaustion, disgust, and raw anger.
It’s the truly merciful alternative to papering
problems over with mere niceness. It’s not out to
destroy (like raw anger); it’s out to make
something good out of something bad. Even
anger can express the true kindness that comes
through patience, forgiveness, and generosity.
You care enough to care about solving something
wrong. It’s what good parents and good teachers
keep doing with troubled and troublesome kids.
It’s what good employers, good pastors, good
counselors, good social workers, good coaches,
good social reformers, and good husbands and
wives keep on doing.
I’ve been privileged to know many unsung
heroes in the course of many years of doing and
teaching counseling. I know a mother and father
whose teen-ager is being swept into the vortex of
drug abuse, promiscuity, laziness, rage, deceit, and
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
23
self-destruction. That child’s life is going seriously
wrong. He tries to bully his parents and
manipulate them. Most parents in this situation
are mastered by their rage, fear, despair,
confusion, and self-righteousness. Out-of-control
kids often provoke out-of-control parents, and
vice versa. But these two parents have been
fundamentally mastered by God and His sort of
mercy. Neither of them is a perfect person. But
they fight against their tendencies and
temptations to raw anger, anxiety,
discouragement, confusion, or self-righteousness.
They admit their faults, even while grieving over
and addressing their child’s self-destructive ways.
They don’t always know what to do. But on the
overall balance sheet, they simultaneously exhibit
patience, forgiveness, charity, and the firm clarity
of appropriate anger as they seek to bring
constructive truth into a very difficult situation.
In the same way, I’ve known adult children
who in the constructive displeasure of mercy took
on irascible, selfish, ignorant, immature parents.
They hung in there; they forgave; they gave; and
they rolled up their sleeves and confronted the
problem. The parent was an abrasive, drunken,
self-pitying fool. The children had good reasons
for anger. They didn’t like what was going on one
bit. They blew it at times. But in the end their
anger at real wrong became wise and loving,
merciful and firm, rather than becoming sour and
embittered.3
I’ve known wives and husbands who
redemptively confronted a spouse who was lazy,
deceitful, domineering, hostile, or immoral. I’ve
known friends who redemptively took on a longtime friend who was now acting like a fool and
treating them all like enemies. All these people
could have given fair and just reasons for giving
in to disgust and wrath, reasons for giving up. But
all these people show the constructive displeasure
of mercy. They treated the wrongdoer ‘unfairly’,
like the vast and generous unfairness of the God
who had loved them: “He does not treat us as our
sins deserve” (Ps. 103:10). I count it one of the
joys of my life to witness such love in action.
Vertical Shift
There we have our Richter scale of possible
reactions. Indifference and delight are the
obvious opposites to simple anger. “I don’t like
that, I don’t care, and I like that” are the three
24
easy responses that we are all familiar with in life.
But then there is this wild music of mercy that we
hear only by revelation. It traverses the ‘I don’t
like that’ part of life, but brings life not death.
Hearing about it stirs our blood, like the sound of
far off bagpipes and drums. It’s the way we ought
to be. It’s what Jesus is. It’s what He is making us
over to become. Here’s a metaphor for these four
different parts of our Richter scale. Most people
drive through life with only three gears: reverse,
neutral, and forward. But the hardest, best
response is this odd fourth gear—“I don’t like
that; I care; and I will act in constructive love.”
Maybe we should call this gear ‘vertical’! To shift
into vertical cuts deeper and reaches higher. It’s a
whole different way of reversing the tide of
something wrong. It woos us and challenges us…
to grow up. It has the ring of what a human being
is meant to be.
Why does this description of mercy seem so
intuitively right? Even if you rarely (or never!) act
this way, even if most human beings only choose
from three gears, this fourth kind of gear makes
profound good sense. Why does it inspire
something in us to know that our capacity for
anger at wrong might take the form of such
mercies? It is because we are wired to intuit the
image of God as something even deeper than the
sense of justice. Justice and mercy meet. The
constructive force of love harnesses the
destructive force of displeasure, and puts
displeasure to work as a form of love. It’s almost
too good to be true, but it makes perfect sense.
These last few pages have given a portrait.
It’s not a ‘religious’ portrait. It’s a portrait of the
truly human. You haven’t been reading about
some plaster saint or haloed icon, serene above
the fray and fret of human troubles. This isn’t
someone who wears weird clothes and talks
funny. This fourth gear is exactly how the Bible
portrays Jesus in action. With a world of wrongs
in His face, He’s patient. He forgives, at personal
cost. He’s goes about the business of practical
generosity, meeting the exact points of human
need. And He pointedly confronts people: “Who
are you living for? How are you living? Then in
mercy He bears the very anger that our answers
deserve. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John never
portray Jesus as static ideal of remote, humanoid
perfection, as some calm, cool and collected
Hindu guru or cognitive therapist offering to help
The Journal of Biblical Counseling • Fall 2006
you become more serene. The Jesus on their
pages takes on people—people like you and me,
people wildly lacking in that fourth gear—with
the constructive displeasure of mercy. He said,
“Come and learn from Me,” because the thing
He was best at is the thing we find hardest to do.
_______________________________________________
1 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 19181956, (abridged by Edward Ericson) (New York: Harper &
Row, 1985), 75.
2 Story and citations from Winston Churchill, The Second
World War: The Grand Alliance, (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1950), chapter 5. For the incident with Stalin
himself, see Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of
Fate, chapter 4.
3 Obviously a young child, dependent on parents, under
their control, is unable to do this. In this and other cases
where the victimized party is in the position of weakness,
the constructive displeasure of mercy operates from people
outside, who intervene on behalf of those who are
mistreated. Those who intervene image forth the God of
Psalm 10.
4 Matthew 11:28-30.
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