Thursday 16 November 2017

A Discourse on Anger

Posted By: imamsahara 18:41:00 Leave a Reply

an old house, like old people, has a lot of memories

Perhaps you have seen that cartoon on Face Book of some gray-haired, wrinkle-faced people where one of them is saying, "We didn't get this old by being stupid."

Truth be told, those same people most likely did their share of unwise things along the road of life, but to reach their age, many of them probably learned from their experiences and did their best to avoid more missteps after that.

One lesson that's been hard for me to learn, but very beneficial, is to not hold onto anger. Scripture tells us to "be angry and sin not." (Ephesians 4:26) That tells me a couple of things:

1) it's not necessarily a sin to be angry. Anger is a feeling, an emotion that rises up when we experience injustice or pain or other unhappiness of some kind. It just comes, usually without us looking for it. It just does that.

2) there is a tendency to sin when we are angry, but we don't have to. It's a choice we make, how we respond to anger.

3) since anger tends to bring out the worst in us, we have to work hard to not let it take control of us. Anger is very powerful.

Those are some conclusions I've made while turning that verse over in my mind. But then there's the practical application. Learning what to do with anger is a big deal. We are all too familiar with examples of those who have not handled their rage wisely. Unfortunately, we are seeing examples of that on an increasingly serious level nearly every day in the news.

I have had anger about some things in my life. In my more sane moments, I have prayed about it. I have asked the Lord what I am supposed to do with the burning emotions that churn in my midsection at the very thought of particular injustices in my personal life.

Some of those memories stem from decades ago, some more recent. All of them figure around scenarios when I was doing what I thought, in all honesty, was the right thing to do. Yet people and/or circumstances responded in ways that knocked all sense of peace out of my mind.

How did I respond?

One time I was very hurt and felt helpless to stick up for myself, so I licked my wounds and retreated. The relationship was permanently damaged and we've been doing our best to just keep the peace ever since. That's one way to deal with anger.

In another time with another person, I was much older and although I stood up for myself, my response was not accepted. I spent many months in depression, and my physical health began to deteriorate. I was miserable with my anger and made those close to me uncomfortable as well. A misunderstanding of my motive caused a burning anger that pasted a scowl on my face, although I was not especially aware of it.

Resolution of that situation came when an innocent comment was made to me and I flew off the handle, letting loose a tirade of words to a completely innocent person.

Thankfully, that same person was understanding of such behavior and was able to lead me to understand that my anger was not resolving the problem and was certainly not hurting the one who had offended me.

Yet I was slowly destroying myself with my negative emotions. I learned to let the matter drop, to cease from replaying the event over in my mind and to walk away from the problem. The one who started it all was not going to come around to my way of seeing things, so to preserve myself, I would have to just let the matter go. I did that and surprisingly, immediate peace flooded through me. People told me the scowl was gone. It was a dramatic thing.

Sometimes repressed anger comes back to the surface many years later. I don't know why that is. I guess it just can't stay pushed out of the way indefinitely. It eventually has to be brought out in the open where we can examine it, perhaps now with the years of maturity.

That happened to me a few years ago. Old emotional garbage surfaced and I realized I would have to do something about it. Repressing it again was not the answer, nor was continuing to be angry.

In that case, I gave a lot of thought about the people who had brought me such pain. I considered in as an unbiased a way as I could muster why they would do what they did, why they said what they said. Admittedly, being a lot older helped me to see things better from their perspective

I was able to conclude that although their actions and words were truly not the best, they were doing the best they could with the circumstances in which they found themselves and the information they had been given. The choices they made were not what I would have chosen had I been in charge, but that is the way it went and it affected me accordingly.

What really brought sense to all of this for me was the realization that nothing, absolutely nothing, comes to me that is not first filtered through the hands of God -- and God loves me!

Yes, I could say (and I have!) that He has a funny way of showing me His love when He allows certain things to affect me. But the truth is, He does love me and His reasons for allowing the bad stuff are, right now, beyond my understanding, but nonetheless good.

For those of us who have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and allow Him to be the Lord of our lives, we have to believe that He is working out all things for our good. (Romans 8:28) The tough stuff makes us mature, wise, caring, compassionate, and so many other good things.

But if we allow ourselves to replay in our thoughts the hurts over and again, we harm ourselves greatly. We turn out to be our worst enemy.

Then there is the matter of forgiveness. We have to forgive those who have offended us. Do they deserve forgiveness?

Of course not! But we have been forgiven by God and we didn't deserve it, either. We need to not hold the offenses against them because God is not holding our bad stuff against us.

We need to let them go and let God deal with them. We may not be able to see how He is dealing with them, but since He is faithful to deal with me when I'm in the wrong, I am sure He is dealing with them as well. Just let them go and move on.

Old houses and old people. Both have seen a lot in their lifetimes. Both have many stories to tell. But the best stories are the ones that end with letting go of the hurts, turning them over to God, and getting on with our lives.