Don’t Fret
Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, and the justice of your cause, like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (Psalm 37:3-7)
This might seem a strange place right in the middle of the Psalm to conclude our comments on the passage. Granted, we’ve taken but a slice of the whole, but if you read through to the end of the Psalm, I think you’ll agree that these particular verses are key to the whole.
We’ve come to the last of the nine prescriptions toward a peaceful and just life…
Do not fret:
You probably know what “fretting” feels like. The image that comes to mind is of me pacing back and forth, muttering frustrated thoughts about something or someone not actually in the room. Blood pressure: High enough to explode like a “Old Faithful.” Heart rate: Fast enough to win the Indy 500.
The Hebrew term speaks of the heat generated during a tantrum of temper. We’ve all experienced how the emotion of anger can lead to a physiological heat response in our body. The first time it appears in the Bible is in reference to Cain’s blazing hot jealousy with his brother Abel. As you know, it led to the first murder to be found in Scripture. And wouldn’t be the last.
In addition to hot temper, “fretting” involves an element of anxiety. Avoiding this anxious anger requires that we refuse to let our thoughts of hate or revenge run away with us. In other words, don’t let your worries lead to frustration, which may lead to a fever pitch of unrighteous anger. That sort of anger is incapable of “producing the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:20).
David’s warning isn’t just about a general sense of keeping our frustrations in check. He’s referring to a specific scenario of how a godly person is to respond“when people carry out their wicked schemes.” There’s a lot of wickedness in the world. Sometimes it seems that those with wicked schemes far out number those with righteous intentions. It can be, and is, frustrating, aggravating, and even infuriating when I think about how people treat each other these days.
To be clear, there is such a thing as righteous anger. Anger is a legitimate emotion when injustice is perpetrated on the vulnerable. If we never experience this sort of anger, and are apathetic about the social ills all around us, it’s as though we encourage the spread of evil. After all, God gets angry when his beloveds are victimized. Jesus got angry at the religious experts of his day (Mark 3:5). The poets and prophets often journal their anger when wickedness is on the rise. “Indignation grips me,” wrote David in another place, “because of the wicked, who have forsaken your law” (Psalm 119:53).
In such cases, anger is not only permitted, but necessary. Thomas Aquinas said, “If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.” Paul differentiated between righteous and unrighteous anger in his letter to the Ephesians. In one breath he prescribed that we “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Ephesians 4:31). That kind of self-centered anger is not allowed. And yet, five verses earlier he does permit a certain kind of anger along with a caveat, “Be angry, but don’t sin” (Ephesians 4:26).
Next Paul warn us that if our anger is out of order, especially if we hang on to it for long, it gives an “opportunity for the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). That devil, says John Stott, “loves to hang around angry people hoping to exploit the situation to his own advantage.”
We’re not free to hate our enemies (Matthew 5:43-44). Nor are we free to condone their actions, but to stand against them when they harm our neighbors. Instead of taking matters into our own hands, he encourages us to leave the wicked to God. He will judge in his way and in his time.
The song opens with, “Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong.” Later he emphasizes one particular cogent reason to keep our angry reactions in check: “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil” (Psalm 37:8). Don’t know about you, but I can attest to the truth that evil ensues pretty much every time I let anger get the best of me.
How and when the Lord chooses to balance the scales of justice is up to him. Sometimes he does it in short order and other times he waits until he makes all the scales equal in his future righteous kingdom. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. meant when he preached that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Trusting his wise judgment reduces our tendency to fret when people’s wicked schemes seem to play out in their favor. We have to wait in faith that he knows better than us about how to run a universe. “Do not take revenge,” says Paul, “but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).
Allow me to confess that for the last decade or so, I’ve struggled terribly to refrain from anger about what I consider to be the disastrous policies of certain politicians, their evil character, and conscienceless actions. I have a friend with similar views as mine who says tongue in cheek that if he misses his workout one day, he simply replaces it with watching the news about the national sanity perpetrated by these same public “servants.” Yet he and I agree that our elevated heart rate due to the evil we see in others tends to lead to evil in ourselves!
So, how do we curb our anger and refrain from fretting when injustice rules the day? The answer is found in stuff the psalmist here prescribes. To reiterate: Trust the Lord, do good, settle down in the promises, enjoy safe pasture, delight in the Lord, commit your way to him, be still, and wait patiently for him to act.
I’ll try if you will. Okay, I will even if you don’t. But I hope you will.
