A man storms out of the house after an argument with his wife.
He gets in his car and screeches off, then goes faster and faster. He misses a
curve and crashes the car into a tree. He crawls out of the car, bloody and
broken and with his last breath says, “There, that’ll show her.”
Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, once said, "How much
more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it."
Anger is a difficult subject. With this single word, we can cover
various levels of frustration from being
displeased to full-blown rage. We have acceptable anger, justifiable anger,
circumstantial anger, personality driven anger, violent anger and anger because
of the color of our hair.
To excuse our anger we’ll mention Jesus casting the
money-changers out of the Temple. The only problem is: the story doesn’t say Jesus was angry. In fact, the only
mention of Jesus being angry in the NT is: Mark 3:5 After
looking around at them with anger,
grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, "Stretch out your
hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
His anger, though, wasn’t from a personal offense. It was a
response against the actions of others. The word used meant violent passion. It was anger coupled
with love which resulted in grief.
Whenever we read of God being grieved, it is anger expressed
in sadness because of love. Sadness that the object of His love has pulled away
from Him and chosen to go a different direction.
We most associate grief with losing a loved one. If you pull
back grief and look at its components, you’ll find the same thing God feels: sadness
driven by love and anger. Anger that someone you love has been taken away. It
is not an outburst of anger but a sadness that overwhelms. And we grieve our
loss.
Grief is righteous anger. It’s appropriate and God permits
it, but then He comforts us.
Jesus
demonstrated appropriate anger toward the men choosing evil over good. That’s
righteous anger. Bede Jarrett, a
writer from the past century, wrote: "The world often continues to allow
evil because it isn’t angry enough [at that evil]."
David Seamands: “Anger is a divinely implanted emotion.
Closely allied to our instinct for right, it is designed to be used for
constructive spiritual purposes. The person who cannot feel anger at evil is a
person who lacks enthusiasm for good. If you cannot hate wrong, it's very
questionable whether you really love righteousness.”
We are to have righteous anger against such things as:
abortion and those who promote it, child abuse, sexual abuse, sanctuary cities,
slave trade, pornography, drug dealers, swindlers, telemarketers, school
shooters, cop killers, and injustice. These are evils perpetrated on society
with no regard for who gets hurt. There is no sacredness of life. We are to be angry
at the things that grieve our God.
But, the anger
Solomon deals with is a different anger – anger that comes as an outburst of frustration. Where
righteous anger is targeted against evil that may or may not touch us directly,
outburst anger is targeted at things that affect us personally.
We are upset because of what has happened. Someone did
something that hurt our feelings, our pride, our person, our plans and we are disappointed
that our expectations weren’t met because of them.
When Solomon mentions anger or related words like: strife,
quarreling, insolence, contentions, temper, he is talking about the outburst of our frustration.
A clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of
angry men said, “I’ve seen many of my patients lose jobs, wives, and
opportunities because they were simply not able to handle the normal
frustrations and disappointments in life. They argue, they insult, and they
sulk. They come to think of themselves as ineffective, unlucky, or just plain
losers. They don’t admit this to anyone, but deep inside, they feel inferior…Their
anger gets in the way of their ability to be good bosses, good workers, and
good family men…These men did not start out with the intention of hurting
others. They reacted impulsively."
Impulsive anger is a symptom of a life out of control. Solomon
places those with no control over themselves into the foolish camp.
Prov 25:28 Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over
his spirit.
In ancient days, the wall was the security of the city. It
provided a boundary defining who could be in and who was to be kept out. When
the gates were closed it provided safety for those inside and stopped unwanted
intrusion from the outside.
Prov 4:23 Watch
over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.
Watch means
guard, protect.
The heart is to be protected as with a wall around it. A man
with no control over his heart is like a city with no boundaries. He lets
things in that shouldn’t come in and lets things out that shouldn’t go out.
Within our heart we choose our action. We can either react by how we feel, or we can respond by how we prefer to act.
Jesus said if someone hits you on one cheek, turn to him the
other. Our natural reaction is to
hit them back. To do what Jesus said requires us to choose a different response. If I don’t respond, I will
react and that reaction will take me down a path of regret.
Ambrose Bierce,
an American journalist at the end of the 1800s said, "Speak when you are
angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." Never send
the first draft of an angry letter.
Anger drives insolence: contemptuous, rude or disrespectful
behavior or speech
Prov 13:10 Through insolence comes nothing but strife…
Prov 20:3 Keeping
away from strife is an honor for a man, but any fool will quarrel.
Description of a fool is one who relates to life only as it
pleases him. He lives with no restraints. He says what he thinks and does what
he is driven to do without control.
We have all sorts of techniques to control our anger:
- Biting our tongue
- Counting to 10
- Walking away
- Going silent
But none of these get rid of anger. Anger that isn’t gotten
rid of resides as rage.
One writer said: "Many men find themselves unable to
cope with even minor frustration. They get angry over trivial things, such as a
broken pencil lead, an overcooked hamburger or a golf ball in a pond. Their anger
erupts and gets out of control. They feel as though they are constantly under
attack, that everyone is out to get them, and that nobody understands or cares
about them. This feeling of having no control leads to a state of continual
frustration and anger. This tendency to react with instant anger can be called
rage. Rage is anger that never completely goes away."
Ecc
7:9 Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of
fools.
Rage is like the heat that remains in a fireplace when the
fire has died down. All it takes is stirring the embers and the flames return.
Prov 26:21 Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle
strife.
Prov 29:22 An angry man stirs up strife, and a hot-tempered man abounds in
transgression.
Prov 30:33 For the churning of milk produces butter, and pressing the nose brings forth
blood; so the churning of anger produces strife.
How do we defuse ourselves?
Prov 17:14 The beginning of strife is like
letting out water, so abandon the quarrel before it breaks out.
Like Bruce Banner, we must learn to recognize when we are
turning into the Hulk.
When we feel anger rising up, before we reach for the tongs
to stir the fire, we need to stop, back away, turn off the emotions, let it go before the Hulk shows up. How?
Gal 5:22-23 But the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Asking God for help is asking for the Holy Spirit to
manifest Himself in us with the fruit of His presence. I need the evidence of
who I am as a Child of God to rule over me when I’m imitating a person of the
world. I yield to Him, not to the
angry impulses.
How do you break a habit? You replace it with something
better. If you only pray, “God take my anger away,” and don’t ask Him to
replace it with something better, it will come back and be worse than at the first.
Luke 11:24-26 When the unclean spirit goes out
of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any,
it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes,
it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil
than itself, and thy go in and live there; and the last state of that man
becomes worse than the first."
What do we pray? “I need control.” Which really means: I
need God-control. What does God-control look like?
Ps
145:8 The LORD is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.
Prov 14:29 He who is slow to anger has
great understanding, but he who is quick-tempered exalts folly.
Prov 15:18 A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow
to anger calms a dispute.
James 1:19-20 This you know, my beloved
brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the
righteousness of God.
We say, “We’ll I’m from a family that expresses anger.” Slowing
down our anger demonstrates we are of God’s family. We demonstrate God’s
character. God uses discretion. He
can be angry or not angry. Anger doesn’t control Him. He controls the anger. I
am demonstrating discretion when I slow down my anger.
Prov 19:11 A man's discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression.
Discretion: the freedom to decide how to respond to a
disappointment.
The ability to decide or act
according to one's best judgment; the right
to choose what to do.
What is the spiritual activity behind discretion? Giving
ourselves time to turn the moment over to God, to choose to slow our anger down
and choose our controlled response.
A passenger boarded the Los Angeles-to-New York plane with a
stop in Dallas. He told the flight attendant to wake him and make sure he got
off in Dallas. He woke up just as the plane was landing in New York. Furious,
he called the flight attendant and demanded an explanation. The attendant
apologized and the man stomped off the plane. "Boy, was he ever mad!"
the attendant told another crew member. "If you think he was mad, you
should have seen the guy I put off the plane in Dallas!"
TAKEAWAYS:
- Though there is appropriate anger directed toward evil, most of our anger is unrighteous frustration with life situations.
- There is no one who can control our anger but us.
- God will not control it but will give us self-control to control it ourselves.
- It is our job to slow down the process, giving time to place our frustrations into God’s hands.
- Anger is a selfish activity designed to hurt others when we have become disappointed with a life situation.
- Don’t hold it in. Don’t give it to someone else. Let it go.
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