Proverbs 14:29 NLT

People with understanding control their anger; a hot temper shows great foolishness

Ephesians 4:26 ESV

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,

James 1:19-20 ESV

19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger^j does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Jeremiah 6:14a TLB

¹⁴ You can’t heal a wound by saying it’s not there!

Anger is a funny thing.

Growing up, I had a lot of it. More bottled than expressed. More implosive than anything else. I didn’t know how to deal with bullies. I was more introverted than not. And I was more comfortable trying to think my way out of trouble than acknowledging my emotions. So I was just angry. I was angry at my family. I was angry at my peers. I was angry at the world. But I gave myself no real outlets for it.

I found gangsta rap intensely relatable though I had no desire to emulate the behavior.

I understood the alienation that fueled school shooters though their acts horrified me.

When I did fight back against people, physically, or verbally, I felt guilty if I hurt them.

I always aspired to be above it all. Just an unperturbable, untouchable, enlightened kinda guy.

And I would alternate between that and being mad.

Then, in my early 20s, I became a Christian.

As a person of faith, I aspired to be like Jesus: a man of love, joy, peace, faith, just dispensing wisdom and floating on clouds. And that’s not an accurate reading of Scripture. Jesus was fully God and fully man. In his humanity, he got mad at a lot of things.

He was angry when religious people prioritized ritual over helping those in need (Mark 3)

He was angry when people did business in a worship space (Matthew 21).

He was angry at the death of his dear friend, Lazarus (John 11)

He was angry at the hard-hearted hypocrisy of faith culture, constantly.

But nobody who asks you “What Would Jesus Do?” ever tells you that. The emphasis is on Jesus the otherworldly pacifist, not on Jesus who occasionally got sick of people, because people will go out of their way to make you sick.

So when you get angry, you just assume you are deficient, and you try harder.

In my 30s, I became a faith leader. Now my anger felt not just weak, but scandalous.

And as a leader you face a lot of tests. Especially when you are different. Almost inevitably I was the only white man in the room. Often I was the only man in the room, period. Frequently I was the youngest person in a leadership role. And at every table I’ve ever been invited to, at least one person was actively inviting me to leave.

No matter who we are, we will often be called into roles which put targets on our backs, where we are given a title that the group demands we earn. There will be people who are committed to evicting us, people who are skeptical of our value, and people whose hearts we can win, as well as some who will rejoice when we walk in the door, though sometimes they are harder to find.

And depending on who we are, expressing our anger may not even be safe.

At any given point in my journey, people may have been unfair, unkind, unscrupulous, and unrepentant.

But I was still called to work with them. I was still called to love them. I was still called to lead.

So my anger would again, get stifled, which works until it doesn’t.

So what do you do?

Many of us have a pretty uncomfortable relationship with anger.

1. We deny it exists.
2. We make it our identity. We relish in venting it. We reach for it as a first response.
3. We claim our right to it, but then extrapolate from it a right to punish others with it.
4. We take no responsibility for the things we do to the people on whom we unload.

What if, instead:

1. We acknowledged our anger. You can’t heal a wound by saying it’s not there. And painting smiles over pain does not address the corrosion within. Plugging holes at the site of our wound will only lead it to burst out elsewhere. Some of the most dangerous people I encounter in community are the ones committed to a narrative of perpetual peace. It works until it doesn’t, and it definitely doesn’t. Perpetual peace isn’t part of the human experience. We will be hurt. We will experience anger as a response. We will have to develop tools and strategies for processing it so that it doesn’t harm others, or us.
2. We chose the path of healing: Our pain is real. We need to start there. But we do not need to stay there. We can choose to be angry all the time. We can choose to make choices out of anger. We can make it our primary fuel. Or we can recognize that anger is something that must be managed.
3. We recognized the need for boundaries. And growth. And decided that our pain does not justify our inflicting pain on others. That we never earn the right to be destructive. That no matter how much we have been sinned against, we don’t gain a license to sin anew. Paying forward a blessing multiplies healing. Paying forward a curse multiplies harm. And it doesn’t level the playing field; it just puts more blood on our hands.
4. We accepted responsibility for our destructive actions. No matter how afflicted we are, we ae capable of harming others. And when we do, we need to acknowledge it. Our clever excuses may silence some critics, but it doesn’t make us right. God is not mocked. God is not fooled.

And I’ll add one more: what if we used our anger for good? If we can set boundaries, then one of the things we can do is be angry enough at our poor choices that we look to make a change.

I have more to say about anger.

Today my prayer is that none of us would suffer in silence, and no one would suffer from our silence.

I pray that we would deal with our anger before we explode.

We look better in peace, than in pieces.

(Photo Credit: Pixabay)