Here is the Rebecca Pippert quote from last Sunday. Her main point is that God’s holy anger goes hand in hand with His holy love. Here she furthers her argument by describing her reaction towards friends who were destroying their lives through drug abuse.

“How did I feel? I was grieved and sickened to see the wasted potential. But I also felt fury. Everything in me wanted to shake them, to say, “Can’t you see? Don’t you know what you’re doing to yourself? You become less and less yourself every time I see you.” I wasn’t angry because I hated them. I was angry because I cared. If I hadn’t loved them, I could have walked away. But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E. H. Gifford wrote, “Human love her offers a true analogy; the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.”

The fact is that anger and love are inseparably bound in human experience. And if I, a flawed and sinful woman, can feel this much pain and anger over someone’s condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? If God were not angry over how we are destroying ourselves, then He wouldn’t be good and He certainly wouldn’t be loving. Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.”

- Rebecca Pippert “Hope Has Its Reasons” pp. 100-101