"But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the Hell of fire." (Jesus in Matthew 5:22)
You might be saying, "Now wait just a minute! Is anger always a sin? Isn't anger one of those emotions that's kind of neutral, neither good or bad. It's all in what you do with it?"
And I would say, "Yes, exactly!" There are times and circumstances that we should be angry.
On we could go; this list could be very long; you get the drift. Yes, there is such a thing as "righteous anger" or "righteous indignation" as it is sometimes called. When we face situations where accepted values and sound moral principles have been violated we should be angry, no doubt about it.
We even saw Jesus demonstrate such anger when he overturned the money-changer's tables in the temple. He was angry, not so much because commerce was going on in the temple, but he was angry because their rates of exchange were gouging the poor. They were unfair. It was the Jewish Passover Time, and he was angry because he saw they were taking advantage of the great throngs of people that crowded Jerusalem. They were making a killing, and doing it in the temple. And yes, he was angry!
But much of the time we are not so good at positively channeling our anger. Much of our anger is not "righteous indignation." That's probably why the Bible tells us that "Vengeance is God's thing" because we simply can't handle anger very well for very long. Even if our anger starts out as righteous anger, it can turn "unrighteous" in the blink of an eye. Most of the time our anger can end up getting the best of us. Most of the time our anger ends up controlling us rather than us controlling it.
There are two kinds of expressed anger.
First, there is what I could call Powder-keg anger. Powder-keg anger explodes, sometimes unpredictably all at once. The least little spark can set it off, and when it goes it's fury is intense and out-of-control and it can wreak havoc. Several years ago, I read about a man in Alabama who became violently angry because he lost a Bible-verse-quoting-contest. After he lost the contest he pulled out a gun and shot and killed the man who beat him in the contest! Now that's "powder-keg anger." But you don't have to kill someone. Like a volcano, have you ever erupted over at a seemingly trivial thing and spewed an acrid cloud all over the place?
The second kind of anger we could call "Crock-pot anger." This kind of brooding anger sort of simmers and simmers and simmers like the roast we cook in the crock-pot--slowly stewing all day long. This kind of fuming, seething, steaming anger often results in violence, but it takes awhile. Psychologists often diagnose people guilty of committing violent crimes from abuse, to rape, to murder as persons whose anger has been building up, and seething within and smoldering for a long time, perhaps years.
One of the marked characteristics of our age is the prevalence of anger. Anger is all around and everywhere; both kinds: powder-keg anger and crock-pot anger. We see anger from the freeway to the fairway; from the work-place to the home-place; from the playground to holy ground. Anger seems to be etched into people's lives. More people seem to be angry and on-edge than ever before! Why? Where does our anger come from? Well, probably from a lot of places, but here are a few:
- Anger comes when we feel cheated: when things don't turn out like we thought they would: our jobs, our marriages, our kids, our neighborhoods, our cities, our country, our world. Anger often comes when we feel cheated.
- Anger comes when we feel powerless: when things are beyond our control. What used to take years and decades can now happen in a few weeks or even a few days. We can literally wake up in the morning and read the paper or hear the news the company has been sold, or your net worth dropped 50%, or you find out your kids are on drugs, or your parents are divorced. And all you did was go to bed for a few hours, and you awoke to a new world.
- Anger comes when we are exhausted. Two income families are now the norm; or perhaps you are the single parent household; or it's taking two jobs to make ends meet; or the business is expanding, and you're working many extra hours at the expense of family or spouse and other priorities. The resulting anger may cause you to slam the door in a loved ones face, or a neighbor's face. Fatigue kills community life and family life, and it feeds and generates anger.
- Anger comes when we feel suspicious and defensive. We don't trust anyone anymore. We don't trust our neighbors, even if we do know them. Our houses have become more like prisons with our sophisticated security systems. It's easy to become isolated, out-of-touch and defensive, and it becomes a breeding ground of anger.
- Anger comes when we feel trivialized or dehumanized. One of the worst feelings in the world is to not be taken serious; or to be used; or worst of all, abused! Anger is a way that we fight back and assert our humanity and our worth. In the face of being dehumanized, anger is the way we keep the fires of self-worth burning; but it only works for so long until it becomes counter-productive.
- Anger comes when old hurts and old wounds go
unresolved.
A psychologist told me once, "The
subconscious never forgets."
You may think you have forgotten painful things that happened a long time ago,
but the "subconscious never forgets." The
old memory, the ancient wound, the consciously forgotten pain are still there,
recorded into your subconscious memory like sounds on magnetic tape. All it
takes is for someone to press the "play" button, and who knows, what
distorted sounds may emit from within.
So what do we do with our anger when it's controlling us; when it's negative; when it's hurtful; when it's doing no earthly good to anyone? How can we deal with our anger in a positive and constructive way so it's destructive potential can be neutralized and it's energy might be harnessed and channeled in a positive direction. Well, I have discovered three things that have helped me and helped me enormously.
First, you must accept your own anger! Without the acknowledgment of your own anger there is no hope. Don't lie to yourself about your anger. Don't try to rationalize your anger or justify your anger. How many times have you ever said something like, "You made me angry." Wow! I've said that a lot. Well, it's a lie! You didn't make me angry. That's just my way of not taking responsibility for my own anger. "You made me angry," sounds a lot like Adam in the garden of Eden in Genesis 3 passing the buck saying, "It wasn't my fault, the woman made me do it." And the woman Eve said, "It wasn't my fault the serpent made me do it." I sort of feel sorry for the serpent for there was nobody left for him to blame.
Anger is what my response was in a given situation, but you didn't make me angry. Anger is what I chose; anger is how I responded. It's my responsibility. A common pattern in situations of domestic violence is that the one who abuses tries to blame and shift the responsibility onto the one who's being abused as if the anger is their fault. I've had many conversations where individuals have asked me how they might change their behavior so that their spouse won't get angry. Now that may or it may not be a helpful conversation. But first, for me the bottom line is the one who is angry needs to take responsibility for their anger. The first step in handling anger is to accept your own anger; not deny it; not excuse it; not rationalize it!
The second step is to learn to understand it. Anger is usually coming from somewhere. Take some time tonight or tomorrow, no tonight--and think of a couple of situations in the last month where you have been the most angry. Look carefully at each situation and ask yourself, What evoked the anger? A person? A mistake you made? Your pride being hurt? A memory button was pushed? Someone spoke unkindly to you? Someone you loved was hurt? You witnessed an injustice? In others words pay attention to that which made you angry. Look at each situation, Was your anger justified? Now, be careful here, for it's easy to deceive yourself right here. Pay attention to what makes you angry and ask your self what's behind it? Why did I become angry? Where's it coming from? Is it really the attitudes and actions of another, or is it something that's coming from deep within you and this exterior occasion is only the catalyst that brought it to the surface. Have the courage to look behind the anger. You may need some help in doing that. That's a really hard thing to do!
The third thing is to express your anger in appropriate, non-destructive, non-sinful ways. We get a lot of help here from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was an angry man! More than once, he called upon God to destroy his enemies and let God's "retribution fall upon them." Jeremiah found out about a plot against his life. You can't blame him for being angry. He was honest about it. He acknowledged it! He looked his own anger straight in the eye. No excuses. No rationalizations. He was angry and he knew it, the others knew it--but most importantly he let God know about it.
I believe that anger in it's destructive form is an expression of our brokenness; an expression of our severed relationship with God. Anger is an outward display of our inner fragmentation, our inner wounded-ness, our inner lack of peace.
I know there was a time when I was a much more angry person. And most of my anger was the outward expression of a great deal of inner turmoil; the outward expression of deep inner feelings of unworthiness; deep inner feelings of rejection; deep inner feelings of failure. Much of my anger I turned inward on myself and became a kind of a depressed perfectionist. It wasn't until:
1) I acknowledged it's power over me;
2) I looked behind the anger to see and begin to resolve the deep pain that was fueling it;
3) and finally giving it to God.
Only then did a process of healing begin that reduced my anger.
Jeremiah was anything but perfect--far from it. But Jeremiah understood that anger was permissible in his relationship with God.
The only way you and I can ever be set free from anger's power is to channel it to God. For God can take it! God desires to take it! In fact God wants it.
Jesus Christ hung on the cross, and at his feet was an angry, enraged mob... and Christ took their anger, and he absorbed it into himself.
I'll never forget a time many years ago when I sat in the sanctuary of the church with a woman who had a life-time of bottled-up anger. She felt she was ready to explode, but by the grace of God she came in to see me and she told me her story of profound and hideous hurt. She had never told another living soul about it. We sat in the front row at the foot of a cross that rose up behind the altar. I encouraged her to verbalize her anger, to tell God just exactly how she felt. She finally did. And when she did the pain, the grief, the anger, the rage that had been stored up for forty years gushed out of her straight toward that cross.
It was a new beginning for her. Not a simplistic solution, but a new beginning. She began a traveling a more hopeful road. Little by little she began to change/her spirit/her disposition--and for the first time in forty-years she began to grow emotionally and spiritually.
An easy way for me to remember these three important steps of grace in dealing with my anger is to say:
Name it: acknowledge it's power in your life.
Claim it: begin to look behind it to its real source.
Aim it: in the direction of the cross. For God willingly will take it, and transform it, and it can be the beginning of new road/to healing/to hope/to new freedom/to a transformed spirit.
Amen.