Aristotle once wrote,

“Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher, born almost four centuries before Jesus, in Stagira, Greece. (For the history or map nerds among us: Stagira is located in northern Greece near modern-day Thessaloniki. That city may sound familiar because it’s the place Paul wrote two letters to a young Christian community—1 & 2 Thessalonians. Aristotle himself died at 62, just seven years before King Cassander of Macedon founded Thessalonica in 315 BC, naming it after his wife, Thessalonike, Alexander the Great’s half-sister.)

In Aristotle’s writings we see a mind shaped by the Greek desire to understand the world and the mysteries beyond it. He spoke of what you and I call God as the “Unmoved Mover”—an eternal, non-material, non-personal being who set all things in motion. While the Christian view is of a personal God—one who steps into history, forms intimate relationships, and is committed to human flourishing—there’s still overlap. God is eternal. God does not have a body. And when it comes to ethics and morality, there’s surprising common ground between Aristotle’s wisdom and Scripture.

One such area is anger.

In our current series Untangle, we’ve been reminding ourselves that emotions are not sin, they’re not even neutral—they’re good. They’re part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Anger, like every other emotion, has its place. God Himself feels anger at injustice, idolatry, and cruelty. Jesus displayed anger—toward religious hypocrisy, toward those who would keep children away from Him, and toward those who exploited worshippers in the temple.

So the question isn’t “Should I feel angry?” but rather:

  • What am I angry about?

  • And what am I going to do with it?

That’s where Aristotle’s wisdom rings true. In fact, I came across a helpful article in Psychology Today by Neel Burton, M.D., called The Wisdom of Aristotle on Anger Management. Burton summarizes Aristotle’s approach with five simple but powerful questions we can ask ourselves when we feel anger rising:

  1. Am I mad for the right reasons?

  2. Am I mad at the right person?

  3. Am I mad to the right degree?

  4. Am I responding at the right time?

  5. Am I responding in the right way?

Those are worth writing down, sticking on your fridge, or keeping in your phone. They force us to pause before reacting—to check what’s really fueling our anger, and whether our response will heal or harm.  Anger doesn’t have to control us—it can become a doorway to deeper honesty with God and healthier relationships with others.

If you missed the full message in our Untangle series, I encourage you to go back and listen—it may just give you some new tools to help untangle what’s underneath your own anger.