Walter on Anger
On Anger
February 13, 2005
Dear Paul and
Friends at
There are few
sins as common as anger. Live with almost anyone long enough and you'll see
them lose their temper at least once! Unfortunately, this is as true for
Christians as it is for those who don't yet know the Saviour. I've heard of
church meetings where people yell across the pews at one another. One church up
here had the distinct privilege of watching a deacon's meetings descend into a
boxing match... at least the contenders "stepped outside" and didn't break the
stained glass! Some Christians carry around bitter grudges at someone else for
years and years. They are all forms of anger.
Anger often
feels so right it is hard to believe it so wrong! Yet, the Lord was clear:
James
1:19-20 ...let
every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of
man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.
Paul said the
same thing another way when he wrote:
Ephesians
4: 26 Be
angry and do not sin
Some folks
call this "righteous anger," but if we were honest with the text, it would be
more accurate to call it "sinless anger." I am not sure I've ever experienced
it, but I trust there is such a thing. I think we should be careful with it
though... lots of times one churchman's righteous anger is just really sinful
anger painted up with religious words. Sinless anger means sinless in intent
and attitude as well as vocabulary! That's quite a standard!
I once heard
a man say that we usually get angry when we don't get what we want - anger is
the fleshly response to a blocked goal. I know that isn't rocket science, but
sometimes it can be a big help. When tempted to blow up, we would do well to
ask ourselves two questions: 1. What is that I want
that I can't seem to get. 2. Is God sovereign?
Looking at
life that way often relieves a lot of stress and the need to get angry. If I
want my child to stop whining and he won't... I could just get angry and bat him
around the house (bad idea!) or I could stop and pray that God would show me if
my goals are correct and if they are, ask Him to give me wisdom on how to reach
them.
Some men seem
to be born angry. The cries they made in the delivery room were prophecies of
their ornery spirit in later life. The Bible calls this kind of man
hot-tempered and lumps him together with the fool. In our day we sometimes call
this kind of man hot-headed - I guess because his red face and scorching words
are overheating his brain-holder? Men like this are to be avoided like turkey
farms on a hot August afternoon. These men create trouble wherever they go.
29:8 Scoffers
set a city aflame, but the wise turn away wrath.
Some men's
tempers make Nero's fiddling look harmless! They are like walking infernos -
all you need to do is get close to the furnace door to burst into flames
yourself. Hold a dry leaf just near the flame and watch it ignite. Let a man
with a quarrelsome spirit get too close and he'll engulf you in the blaze of
his anger before you know it.
22:24
Make no
friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man,
22: 25 lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.
This kind of
man stirs up strife ( 15:18 ), acts foolishly ( 14:17
), exalts folly ( 14:29 ), and gives full vent to his spirit (29:11). His
tongue slams others like a battering ram on a castle wall and his rage flows
like lava down a mountainside. For him, anger is power and power is the way to
get what he wants. He is self-centered, selfish, self-exalting and without
self-control. Show me an angry man and I'll show you a man who does not pray.
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
26:21 As charcoal to hot embers and wood to
fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.
A Christian
woman who excuses her anger as just a part of her personality or ethnic
background or culture or family genetics is lying to herself and avoiding her
Lord. Jesus said;
Matthew
5:21 "You
have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You
shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' 22 But
I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to
judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and
whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire.
What the
Bible holds up as the ideal is not a man who can get what he wants by getting
angry, but a man who can break his rage like a cowboy tames a wild pony.
Besides "sinless anger," there are no other categories of anger available for
Christian people.
That is
because anger is of the flesh:
Galatians
5:19 Now
the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20
idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife , jealousy, fits of anger ,
rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness,
orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those
who do such things will not inherit the
Colossians
3:5 Put to death therefore what is earthly
in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,
which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In
these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But
now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice , slander, and obscene
talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put
off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on
the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its
creator.
It's no
wonder then that what the Lord wants is for His men and women to be in control
of their anger. Out of all the verses on anger in the Bible, only one describes
appropriate anger (what we've called sinless anger) and all the rest condemn
anger as a sin of the flesh.
What is important
to the Lord is a man who controls his own spirit. That can be mighty hard to do
when you are in the midst of getting wronged, lied to or cheated. When all you
want to do is get from your back 40 to your farmhouse in time for dinner and
your lousy tractor gets stuck in the mud - it is tempting to feel a little
irritated. No wonder then old Solomon could write:
16:32
Whoever
is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he
who takes a city.
As I
understand it, capturing a city in Solomon's day was no easy feat. It took
months of planning, siege works, battering rams, starvation and the like before
Rabbah fell. Not every sin is conquered as quickly as
Now if we are
going to be serious about anger and seek to get it under control, we ought to
know some things. The first thing is to learn to avoid even the slightest bit
of it in our lives. You know those moving stairs you have down there in the
city - escalators? Well, too many of us are happy to ride up the
anger-escalator thinking that we'll get off before it reaches the top. Trouble
is, running down one of those escalators is much more difficult and slow than
riding it up! Too often we let our anger carry us upwards until the fury flows.
But, I say, don't even get on the escalator! Turn around and walk away.
17:14
The
beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel
breaks out.
When I was a
boy, I used to play down by the creek at my daddy's farm. I loved to dig in the
sand and build big old dams to block the water. One thing every dam builder
learns quick though, is that the water will rip open
the tiniest hole in your wall in a matter of seconds. Water is drawn to leaks
in a dam like hockey fans to a free NHL game - just crack open the door to the
26:21 As charcoal to hot embers and wood to
fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.
It's a funny
thing with anger. It feels like it must get vented, otherwise we will explode
or something. Yet, quite the opposite is true. Vent it - and you'll be throwing
gasoline on the fire! Suppress it - and the fire is snuffed out. Notice I said
"suppress" and not "repress." I'm not a wordsmith, by any stretch, but there's
a difference in my mind between those two terms. By suppress I mean, turn away
from the anger and pray to the Sovereign. By repress I mean just get
tight-lipped and fuming mad on the inside. I don't see much grace in the second
of the two. I think what the Lord desires is for us to lose the anger on the
outside and the inside - and we can, by His help.
One
encouragement in all this is to recall the respect God lays on the name of the
man that controls his anger:
29:11 A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
but a wise man quietly holds it back.
19:11
Good
sense makes one
slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offence.
20:3 It is an honour for a man to
keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be quarrelling.
12:16
The
vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.
14: 29 Whoever is slow to anger has great
understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.
Now think of
that. The Lord says that a man who controls his anger is wise, prudent, and has
great understanding. Not only that, the Lord calls this man's self-control his honour
and his glory. Now we understand that honour and glory is from the Lord and
doesn't take away from Him at all - but, like you, I would love to be known as
a man of honour. What if someone could say of our churches - they are full of
wise and prudent members. Paul told Timothy this was the goal in
1
Timothy 2:8 I desire then that in every place the
men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling...
There was a
connection in Paul's mind between personal holiness and a lack of anger.
An angry man
is a fool. He goes looking for a fight.
14:17
A man of quick temper acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices
is hated.
26:17 Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is
like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.
Now kids, the
next time you go for a walk, try grabbing every dog you see by the ears! I bet
you won't do it more than once, because you'll get yourself a lovely set of
canine incisor scars! I'd feel bad for you the first time you got bit, but if
you grabbed another dog the same way another day - I'd look you in the eyes and
with tender tears of compassion say, "You're dumb." Someone ought to look in
the eyes of an angry woman and say the same thing.
21:9 It is better to live in a corner of
the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. ( repeated in 25:24)
21:19
It is
better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful
woman.
27:15 A continual dripping on a
rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike;
27:
16 to restrain her is to restrain the
wind or to grasp oil in one's right hand.
27:17 Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
It is
interesting to me that the "iron sharpens iron" proverb comes right after the
"continual dripping" proverb. I'm no Hebrew scholar, but I do think a husband
and wife who work as hard at keeping anger out of
their home as they do at keeping thieves out, will do a lot to sharpen one
another. So many Christians I meet are content to shoot for the status quo -
"As long as we don't hit each other, everything's okay!" But the Lord gave you
your bride to love and die for, and surely putting to death your anger is one
way to do it. Solomon's musings were not intended to give you an excuse to
build a deck on your roof or a cabin in the desert! You're called to love your
bride and help her to put to death her quarrelling.
Fathers are
even commanded to create an environment for their children
that does not encourage anger:
Ephesians
6:1 Children,
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2
" Honour your father
and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 "that
it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land." 4 Fathers,
do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and
instruction of the Lord.
Anger is such
a serious thing that the Lord commands us to never go to bed angry!
Ephesians
4:26 b do not
let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to
the devil
All the devil
needs is a foothold - sly and strong beast that he is. He'll quietly slip his
toes in your situation and hold on like a spider's web in the wind. Waiting to
pounce and kill, he'll whisper dainty morsels of envy, jealousy, injustice, and
false merit in your ear - invisibly pushing and pulling you toward the cliff of
bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, slander and malice. No wonder Paul says to
push all these things away from us, and
Ephesians
4:32 Be
kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ
forgave you.
If we are
going to win the fight against anger we must get into our craw the fact anger
is sin - and sinless anger is mighty rare. To grow in Christ you must get
serious about how you live.
As
they say, "Talk is cheap."
But to have a
godly walk is deep.
How can we
live without anger? Here are some ideas:
1.
Plan to answer softly.
15:1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but
a harsh word stirs up anger.
If we just
had it in our minds that the next time we felt the temptation to get angry we
would lower our volume, force a smile, and only let loving and gentle words
through that big hole in our heads... we would be far better prepared to fight
the war against anger. Our goal should be to put the fire out, not stir it up.
We need to see ourselves as a big bucket of water, not a bellows cramp!
15:
18 A hot-tempered
man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.
2.
Decide to put up with more.
19:11
Good
sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offence.
10:12
Hatred
stirs up strife, but love covers all offences.
The fact is , we would do well to consider Jesus and what he endured.
When you think of how many days of his life were full of so-called reasons to
get angry... and then how little He was sinlessly angry
- it ought to humble us and convince us that we really can put up with more.
3.
Avoid angry people.
I know I
mentioned this before, but we do tend to become like the people we spend the
most time with. If your best friends are angry people, you are going to become
an angry woman.
22:24
Make no
friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man,
22: 25 lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.
4.
Never go to bed angry.
Before your
head hits the pillow every night - do your blood-earnest best to rid your house
and family of anger.
For as bad as
anger is for us, it is surprising how much the Bible speaks of God's wrath and
anger. For Him, it is no sin. It is just and pure and holy and one day every
soul will see it in full measure. Some men will be condemned to the wrath of
God because they never repented of the anger of man. What a glory, that all the
wrath of God a Christian deserved was poured out on God's Son, Jesus, instead
at the cross. His satisfaction of wrath is enough to demand our rejection of
anger.
29:22 A man of wrath stirs up strife, and
one given to anger causes much transgression.
May God give
us all grace to kill the sin of anger.
Following Him
with you all,
Walter
P.S.