Handling Anger
Written by Nate Archer
I really wouldn’t want to be a
bee. Do you realize that when a bee
stings someone, it dies? After it
stings, the stinger stays in the victim as the bee pulls away. As it does, the stinger and the bee’s butt
tear off. The bee’s guts fall out and
the bee dies. Always.
I wouldn’t want to be a bee, but I
think that many times we act the same way.
So often when we are angry with someone and don’t deal with it in the
right way, the same thing happens to us.
Somehow we think that just by being mad at someone that somehow we are
inflicting pain or revenge on them!
However, all that really happens is that we end up killing ourselves
from the inside.
“In your
anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun
go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” -Ephesians 4:26-27
Ephesians 4:26-27 is a great passage that can teach us a lot about anger. It is also a great passage to memorize to help you deal with anger better. One of the first things that it teaches us is that all anger is NOT sin. Notice that the verse says, “In your anger, do not sin.” This implies that it is possible to be angry but not sin. This is good to know. Some people have the misconception that any feelings of anger are sin and so they repress their anger. However what happens is that their anger takes a different form. Just because you have wadded your anger up into a little ball does not mean that you are not an angry person. Some people express their anger as an EXPLOSION and some people express anger as an IMPLOSION. Exploders blow-up outwards. Imploders crunch in on themselves. When the World Trade Centers collapsed, they imploded. Imploding can be just as destructive as exploding!
Anger CAN be sin. Some anger is not sinful, but a lot of anger is. It all depends on WHY we are angry. I believe that God designed us with the capacity to be angry for good reasons. For example, when you see a little kid being beat up by bullies, you should feel angry. When your husband is beating your kid, you should get angry. When you think about things like racism, murder, or rape, you should get angry. God designed us to be angry in response to injustice. He did this for a good reason, so that we could use that passion in a constructive way to fight against the injustice. However, just as there is RIGHTEOUS anger, there is also DISTORTED, or SINFUL anger.
Even though anger might be
righteous, it can still be sinful depending on how we respond. For example, I believe that it is right to
get angry when you think about the fact that in America it is legal to kill a
child before it is born. However, I
don’t think that we should respond by killing abortionists. That may be an extreme example, but it makes
the point. Some people trick themselves
into thinking that just because they think they have the right to be angry that
they have a be-a-jerk-and-get-out-of-jail-free card. They think that they have a right to go off on someone because
they are angry. This is not the
case! Even if you have good reasons
to be angry, you still have the responsibility to handle your anger in a godly
way! This may be tough, but it
is what you need to learn to do.
However, I would say that most of
the time our anger is distorted and sinful.
The problem is that we THINK we have a right to be angry, but we really
don’t. There are a few common reasons
why we fall into the mistake of distorted anger. Hopefully, by looking at some of these reasons, it will make it
easier to spot them when they creep up in your life.
If there ever was a person that no one should have been angry at, it’s Jesus Christ. However, many people absolutely hated him! Obviously, their anger was an example of distorted anger. They had a lack of knowledge about His true identity. They assumed things that weren’t true. They had THEIR expectation about what the Messiah should be like, and Jesus didn’t live up to them. Some people felt their sense of importance threatened. Many people overreacted and eventually put Jesus on the cross.
On of the biggest things we need to do to deal with anger better is to take the time to HONESTLY examine our thoughts and emotions. Ask yourself, “WHY am I angry?” “What SPECIFIC thing is making me angry?” And more importantly, “What is the SPECIFIC INJUSTICE that I am angry about?” There is always something that you feel is unjust that is making you angry. Once you find out what that is, ask yourself, “Should I REALLY be angry about this?” Or, maybe instead you should you cut some slack because there might something that you don’t know about, or facts that could be wrong? Could you be making some assumptions that might not be exactly true? Is the situation REALLY unfair just because it doesn’t meet YOUR expectations? How much are you being selfish? Are you overreacting? Even if there is something to be angry about, should you be as furious as you are?
WARNING:
This is really important! Pay attention to this! VERY often, we fool ourselves about our own
anger. Very often people will be angry
about one thing, but convince themselves, and others, that they are actually
angry about something else. This is why
it is so important to be honest with yourself, even though it may hurt
and you may not like what you find. You
MAY find that you don’t have as much of a right to be angry as you thought you
had. We often displace our anger
from one thing to another. For example,
maybe you are angry with your teacher but there is nothing you can do about it
so you take it out on your brother.
Other times we are angry with the same person, but we substitute a more
noble sounding reason for the actual reason.
No one wants to admit to themselves that they are being jealous, or
selfish, or have inappropriate expectations.
It’s easier to look for some other reason and focus on that as
the reason you are angry. And once you
start LOOKING for a reason to be angry, you will always find SOMETHING. Remember, they even found reasons to be
angry with Jesus.
It can be very hard to admit to ourselves and to others that we have been wrong about our anger. That is why, unfortunately, we often would rather keep looking for reasons to be mad at someone than to admit our fault and work to make things better. We WANT them to screw up so that we have more reason (in our minds) to be angry with them. The longer you stay angry, the more stupid you are going to feel if you have to admit that you are wrong. That is why we need to deal with anger QUICKLY. When we don’t deal with anger quickly we give the devil a foothold that he will use against us. It is a lot harder to keep an intruder out of the room once he has his foot in the door.
If you accept this one fact, you
will be miles ahead in your quest to manage anger better: Just
because you FEEL that you have the right to be angry doesn’t mean that you
actually DO have the right to be angry.
Here is the other main thing that
you need to remember: No matter if your anger is valid or distorted, it is
how you RESPOND to your anger that matters! Righteous anger turns to sin when we don’t
respond in a Christian way. And on the
other hand, distorted anger can be made better if it is responded to in the
right way.
Anger can be a terrible thing
because of what it can do to our relationships with others. We don’t realize how important it is to God
that we handle our relationships with others in a Christ-like way. Anger affects our love for God. 1 John 4:20-21 states, “If anyone says, ‘I
love God’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar.
For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love
God, whom he has not seen. And He has
given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Anger affects our witness for
God. In John 13:35 Jesus says, “By this
all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Anger also affects our worship of God. In Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus says, “Therefore,
if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother
has something against you leave your gift there in front of the altar . First go and be reconciled to your brother,
then come and offer your gift.”
If are angry with someone else,
even if the anger is righteous, as a Christian you only have two options:
Those are your ONLY two
options! Is growing bitter an
option? No, bitterness is sin. Is talking behind their back an option? No, gossip and slander are sin. Is getting back at them an option? No, malice is sin.
Like so many things in life, managing anger doesn’t
happen instantly. We all have habits in
the way we respond emotionally that take a lot of time and effort to
change. This is especially true if you
have grown up in an environment where most of your examples of how to deal with
anger were bad. (For example, if your
parent deals with anger worse than a junior higher and the “good” examples you
see are from watching four hours of soap operas a day… there is a good chance
that some of your habits are screwed up!)
The good news is that there is hope.
You CAN change, even though it probably won’t happen over night and even
though it will probably take a good deal of work. We change by replacing our bad “programming” with the good
programming from God’s Word. This is
what Romans 12:2 calls “renewing the mind.”
To help this take place, you need to be reading the Bible, talking with
other Christians who are further along than yourself, praying, and taking time
to think about what you’re thinking about!
God WILL help you change, don’t be discouraged by failure, but learn
from it. But remember that it will take
a lot of good examples to counteract the bad examples. If you have been swinging a baseball bat
wrong for five years, it might take a lot of practice to relearn your habit the
right way. The best way to speed it
along is to keep practicing the right way and STOP practicing the wrong
way.
Anger with God: One
other aspect that people wonder about is anger with God. However I think that when you stop and think
about what anger really is, and who God is, the question answers itself. Anger towards other people is always because
we believe that they are being unfair.
When we are angry with God, what we are really doing is accusing God of
being unfair. Somehow, we believe that
GOD ALMIGHTY, who is the perfect standard of justice and the ultimate
perfection of love is being unfair?
Obviously this is distorted anger, and we need to treat it as such. If you find yourself angry with God, first
admit to God that you are angry with Him.
It’s not like it’s a big secret.
Second, admit that you are wrong to feel angry at Him. Admit to Him that it is wrong to accuse Him
of being unfair. Finally, ask Him to
help you to have faith in His goodness and love even though you don’t like your
situation and don’t understand it.
Link: It is Never Right to be Angry with God, by John Piper (2000)
Link: Is it Ever Right to be Angry with God? by John Piper (2002)
Recommended Reading: The Other Side of Love: Handling Anger in a Godly Way, by Gary Chapman (Chicago: Moody, 1999.)