Anger
is easy. It is often our
default emotion
when things go wrong. Though most would not admit it, we like
being angry! It feels good
to put people in their
place. If I had a dollar
for every story
I have heard where someone bragged about telling another person
off, I would be
rich. Anger makes us feel
strong!
There
is only one problem: most
anger has
nothing to do with strength. While
there
is a case to be made for righteous anger where we are upset about
same things that
upset God, most of our anger is fear based and comes from feelings
of weakness,
selfishness, or loss of control. Self-control
is the quality of the strong (Proverbs 16:32).
The
tricky part is that we keep using anger because it appears to be
effective. For
example, you can control people by yelling and screaming, because
most people
will simply back down and get out of your way.
However, in the long
run, anger
creates more trouble than it solves.
Proverbs
17:14 says that, “Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam”. In other words, you can blow
a hole in the
dam if you want to, but, if you do, you going to have a flood on
your
hands! The consequences of
acting in
anger are huge and long-term!
To
be
clear, I am not just pointing fingers here.
One time, while playing hockey with my brother, I got so
mad that I clubbed
him over the head with my hockey stick.
He ended up with something like 26 stitches and three weeks
off
school. When I was first
married, I escalated
every small dispute to nuclear level because that always made Sara
back down. I yelled at my
kids to keep them in
line. In short, I caused a
lot of
unnecessary grief for others and myself.
Hopefully, those around me would tell you that I am growing
up, but I am
still working on it.
Sadly, and wrongly,
we have normalized
anger and combativeness instead of thoughtfulness, discussion and
prayer.
We need a better
way.
“Everyone
should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
because
human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires”
(James
1:19-20).
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