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Anger

Christianity and Our Emotions

Series: Christianity and Our Emotions

Anger

October 8, 2006

Text: Acts 26:9-18

9 "Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.   10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. 11 By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.

"With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.'  15 I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.  16 But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.  17 I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles — to whom I am sending you  18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' 

NRSV 

      During the remaining Sundays in October, we’re going to look at some basic human emotions in the light of our faith. I hope by doing this we’ll understand ourselves better, and also find ways our faith can help us deal positively with such feelings. We’ll explore anxiety, loneliness, and happiness. Today, we’ll take a look at anger.

      Billy Martin, the famous New York Yankee player and manager, told a story in his autobiography about a hunting trip in Texas with his buddy and fellow Yankee, Mickey Mantle. Mickey had a friend who would let them hunt on his ranch.

      When they reached the ranch, Mickey told Billy to wait in the car while he checked in with his friend. Mantle’s friend quickly gave them permission to hunt, but asked Mickey a favor. He had a pet mule in the barn who was going blind, and he didn’t have the heart to put him out of his misery. He asked Mickey to shoot the mule for him.

      As Mickey walked back to the car, he decided to play a joke on Billy. He pretended to be angry, and he scowled and slammed the door.

      Martin asked what was wrong.

      “I’m so mad at that guy,” Mantle said, “He changed his mind and won’t let us hunt. You know, I’m going out to his barn and shoot one of his mules!” Mantle drove like a maniac to the barn.

      Martin protested, “We can’t do that!”

      But Mickey was adamant.

      “Just watch me,” he shouted.

      When they got to the barn, Mantle jumped out of the car with his rifle, ran inside, and put the mule out of his misery.

      But as he was leaving, he heard two more shots. He ran back to the car, and saw that Martin had taken out his rifle, too.

      “What are you doing, Billy?” he yelled.

      Martin yelled back, his face flush with anger, “We’ll show that son of a gun! I just killed two of his cows!”

      Anger.

      It can drive us to do some silly things, at best, and some horrible things, at worst.

      It’s something we all experience, no matter how long or short our fuses.

      At times, when a loved one passes, I’ll be talking to the family and hear that the dearly departed, “Bob,” “never said a cross word about anyone.” That may truly be. But I often wonder if that relative ever rode with Bob during rush hour on 270, when someone cut him off from making a turn. Know what I mean?

      Today, I’m going to deal with two simple questions:

      What happens when you’re angry?

      and

      How can you deal with anger positively?

      To do this, we’re going to dig into the fascinating story of the conversion of one of the angriest men who ever lived: Saul, also known as St. Paul.

      When you read that story, you see that the first thing that happens when you’re really mad is this:

—You exaggerate the other person.

      When the light fell down from the sky and knocked Paul to his knees, he heard Jesus saying,

      “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

      In other words, “What have I done to you? Do you really know who I am, what I did, how I taught? Do you really know anything about me?”

      Saul didn’t. He demonized Christ. For him, Christ was the anti-Christ. This Jesus would destroy the Jewish religion, the religion that meant so much to him. His dimwitted followers were perpetuating the evil—making up a story about Jesus coming back from the dead. His followers were doing evil things like taking communion—cannibalism, eating the flesh and drinking the blood.

      Did he ever sit down and talk to a Christian objectively, seeking to know what they really think, or feel, or do? Of course not. He just listened to what people said about them. The only interaction he had with them personally was to torture them in order to get a confession. That way, they could be sentenced to death. He no doubt got many a confession.

      Saul was a good “enforcer.” Trouble was, he enjoyed his work.

      And Paul would say, “Yes, that was me.”

—Anger consumes you.

      “Saul, why do you kick against the goads?”

      A “goad” was a sharp spear a farmer used to prod an ox during plowing. It was like a spur. So Jesus is saying, “Saul, why are you kicking against the spear? Why do you continue impaling yourself against it? Why are you constantly hurting yourself with your rage?”

      And hurting himself he was.

      Paul describes himself as having been “furiously enraged” at Christ. That’s the only time that phrase is used in the New Testament. It carries with it the sense of being literally “beside yourself,” not being your true self.

      That’s an awful way to be.

      The Christian writer Frederick Buechner once said that of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most “fun.” He said that anger invites you “to lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.” The chief drawback, he says, is “that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”  [Wishful Thinking Transformed by Thorns, p. 117]

      When you let anger take over, you’re out of control. The person you’re mad at has control over you, and odds are you don’t even know who that person really is. Meanwhile, you’re not able to be fully present with your spouse, your children, your friends…or even yourself.

      And Paul would say, “Yes, that was me.”

      Well, if this is what happens when we’re angry, then how should we deal with it?

      To get into that, we need to see how the Damascus road story ended, as recorded earlier in the Book of Acts. 

8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Acts 9:8-9 

How should you deal with anger?

—Blind yourself to how you were seeing the other person.

      “Saul got up from the ground…he could see nothing.”

      He couldn’t see any of those Christians any more. He literally couldn’t see things like he used to.

      You know, when you’re mad at someone, you imagine that person is doing something to you intentionally. If you’re going to work through anger, you have to blind yourself to that notion. People act and speak according to who they are, not who you are. They live their own lives, and sometimes we get in their way. We take their words and actions personally when, in fact, they’re simply being themselves.

      There’s a Buddhist parable of a young farmer paddling his boat up the river to deliver his produce to the village. Another boat was moving downstream toward him. He yelled and yelled, trying to get the man to change course. He grew angrier and angrier as he had to veer out of the way at the last minute. As he did, he was surprised to realize there was no one in the other boat. He had been screaming at an empty vessel.

      The other person who is irritating you will not change direction in the current just for you. He/she is who he/she is. And probably he/she isn’t losing any sleep over you.

      The first step in dealing with anger is to blind yourself to the assumptions you’re making about the other person.

      Then,

—Look into yourself.

      “For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”

      Isn’t that what we should do when we’re angry—reflect, instead of react?

      When we’re angry with another, shouldn’t we really ask ourselves, like Jesus asked Saul, “WHY?” What’s the irritation about the other person that’s really an irritation about ourselves? Are we the older brother or sister who didn’t get appreciated like we should? Are we the younger kid who had the hand-me-downs all the time, and had to compete with the brother who was the captain of the football team, or with the sister who was the prom queen? Are we that perfectionist who rails at the imperfection of the world, embodied in the sloppy actions or words of this person we’re mad at? Are we the super-righteous person who has a few secret prejudices?

      For three days, Saul couldn’t look at this Jesus, at these Christians. He had to look at himself. And what he saw wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t the savior of the Jewish religion. He was simply another human, with issues and warts and all. He was simply a sinner, in need of grace.

      Saul would say, “Yes, that was me.”

—Love the other person.

      Jesus responded to him with love. He was concerned for him. He said, “Saul, you’re hurting yourself,” then later added, “I will rescue you.”

      You do know that Jesus had every right not to throw a light down from heaven, but rather a smart bomb. He had the right to “take him out.” That’s what you do to the Osama bin Ladens, right?

      And yet Jesus held back, not returning anger with hate, but with love.

      “I will rescue you.”

      I have no doubt Jesus had been angry at Paul. If you look at the Gospels, you’ll see that Jesus got mad at times. Once he was about to heal a man on the Sabbath, in the synagogue, and the Pharisees said he couldn’t do it—“You’re breaking one of our laws.” It’s then recorded that Jesus “looked around him in anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.” [Mark 3:5]

      Jesus was angry—angry at their hardness of heart, angry at how they preferred darkness to light, angry at how they chose bondage to the law instead of freedom by faith, angry at how they chose the ways of death instead of the path to life. In other words, he was angry at how they were hurting themselves—and others in the process.

      And so Jesus struck down Saul with blinding light—so that he would eventually see, with new eyes.

      Maybe it was seeing how Jesus related to him that helped Saul understand what love really was. Seeing how Jesus melted his hardness of heart may have helped Paul write years later,

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

[1 Corinthians 13:4-7]

      And Paul would say, “Yes, Jesus is like that.”

      Anger. It’s an emotion that’s hard to deal with. Only the Son of God could let anger become an opportunity for love.

      But with his help, maybe we can, too.

      Jan Johnson tells of a time she struggled with this. She began a story with these words,

“Let’s call them the Couple. At first, they made friendly suggestions to the minister, my husband; then they offered barbed comments; finally, they wrote letters of protest to the board. I managed to be patient, but when they leveled criticism at my then-teenage daughter [because of her clothes, talking about her “grossly inappropriate behavior,” I lost all serenity.] Their comments were reported to my daughter by the Couple’s daughter, so my daughter no longer wanted to go to church. Neither did I. But we did go, and every time I saw the Couple, I wanted to throttle them.” [Weavings, 7-8/03, p. 31]

      [You’ve got to watch out for those preacher’s wives!]

      Jan wrestled with her anger for the longest time. Occasionally she could set aside her own hurt and look at the Couple. She knew that the woman had had painful experiences in her youth. She began to see the Couple’s harsh actions as actually a cry for attention, for some warmth. As Jan focused on what they were going through, she surprised herself by crying for them as she prayed.

      She resolved to stop avoiding them in church, and to start making overtures of being “nice.” She forced a smile at them occasionally as they passed in the hall. Sometimes she’d make small talk with them, then move on quickly. Then one Sunday, when her husband had everyone stand and greet each other like we do, Jan turned and found the woman behind her—and the woman offered her a hug.

      Jan said, “Looking back, I’m still stunned to have reciprocated by embracing my enemy.”

      Now THAT’S how to deal with anger.

      Your story, my story might not have such a happy ending.

      But working past anger with love—you’ll use anger creatively, not destructively.

      And that—at the very least—will make the mules and the cows very happy!