Editor's note: Dr. Froswa' Booker-Drew is vice president of Community Affairs, Strategic Alliances for the State Fair of Texas®. She is the author of two workbooks for women and serves as a member of the Buckner International Board of Trustees. She originally wrote this column for the Baptist Standard as part of a special series "Justice looks like ..." allowing readers the opportunity to consider justice from numerous viewpoints. 

“… let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

I was on a call recently with a group of women involved in ministry. Some are ministers. Others are teachers. Several are in leadership roles at their churches.

As we discussed our issues serving in the church, one of the ladies asked a question about the challenge of being perceived as angry and the stereotype that accompanies the perception of a woman who speaks up.

I have been wrestling with this idea of anger. As a society, we are more comfortable with rage and other manifestations of anger, like hate, than we are with displays of righteous anger, which Jesus demonstrated.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus upset with something he witnessed. He saw the house of God being used for something other than it was intended.

“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers’” (Matthew 21:12-13).

Jesus exhibited righteous anger. He did not stand back and watch injustice occur. In that moment, he did not just speak up; he did something.

Read the rest of the article at the Baptist Standard.