August 3, 2008
Ecclesiastes 7:9, James 1:9, Mark 3:1-6, 10:13-16, 11:15-17
Note: Message adapted from David Thompson God’s Healing for Hurting Families Chapter 7 “From Destruction to Dynamic” pp.101-116
What do you do with anger? Sometimes we aren’t sure how anger should be dealt with but be assured that how you deal with anger makes all the difference in the world you live in with the people you live with and the person of Christ that you live for.
Anger, as we have learned, is a natural part of life. Without anger we would be dead meat. But with anger, we can do a lot of damage that for some people will never be undone.
So, how do you deal with anger? There are three ways that we handle anger. Remember, with anger there is good and bad. There’s constructive and there’s destructive.
Suppression- I’m angry but I am not going to show it. Suppression is what we might think of as good. That’s true to a degree. However, this kind of anger can also be very lethal in that when you suppress your feelings over years there can be an exploding point in some way. That explosion may be in a multitude of health problems or a sudden nervous breakdown of some kind. Remember, again, that it is constructive to suppress anger but that there is also a destructive manner to suppress anger.
Repression- I’m angry but I don’t know it or I deny that I am. This is the Christian’s favorite way to deal with anger. We deny it. We become like Dr. Leo Marvin in the movie “What About Bob?” In it, you can see he’s beginning to burn with anger but says, instead, “I’m not angry, Bob. I don’t get angry.” All the while everyone watching the movies sees that he is angry.
Expression- I’m angry and somebody’s going to know I’m angry. This the most popular view of anger and perhaps rightly so. There is little respect for a man who has an unbridled anger. People suffer all sorts of consequences over anger that is not under any sort of control. I do believe that we can express our anger constructively. The worst kind is in the destructive mode.
Anger occurs when boundaries, integrity or rights of someone has been violated. When the dog urinates on the new carpet a boundary has been desecrated. When a child is told that they are worthless their integrity has been abused. When someone ignores the felt needs of another human being then their rights are infringed upon. And in that instance the resulting anger can be suppressed, repressed or expressed.
Jesus shows us how to properly deal with anger and the things to be angry about. First, though, I want us to consider…
1. RIGHTING THE WRONG RIGHTS.
Too often our anger gets the best of us because we have perceived that our rights in some way have been violated. And when we allow our selves to become defensive about our personal territory or boundaries we become ready for war.
What are some of those boundaries? Well, I have witnessed a few instances when there were expressions of anger that were unwarranted:
Dinner was late being fixed.
Shirt wasn’t ironed properly.
Somebody lost the remote.
Any one of the tiny issues can suddenly cause an explosion in some households. What do we do about our own misunderstanding of our rights being wronged? What can we do to correct this problem?
a. Go beyond justifying your anger.
This sounds too simple and it is. Too often we can fall into the trap of justifying our self-centered anger. The question is not whether or not you were justified in being angry but whether or not you will allow God to help resolve that anger. This requires the intentional pursuit of holy love.
b. Admit responsibility your anger.
When you are intentionally pursuing holy love in all of your relationships, then you must come to that place to admit your own responsibility for your anger reactions. You look in the mirror and you don’t like what you see. In admitting responsibility to your self and to God you begin that first step to…
c. Surrender your anger.
The very essence of holiness is surrender of my will and my way to God. This includes the hurt and pain I suffer (or perceive to suffer). By surrendering your anger to God begins the process of God healing your broken heart and healing the wounds that have been inflicted. This does not mean getting rid of your capacity for anger or surrendering responsibility for your anger. “It rather involves owning that anger as a creation endowment meant to serve your needs and bring glory to God.” (Thompson)
d. Learn forgiveness.
To apologize to God or your wife or kids or neighbors is actually the easy part. To apologize to your self can be a whole other story. However, you must come to that place of learning not only to seek forgiveness but to also forgive your self.
What we are not looking for is cheap forgiveness. Family members should hold you accountable for your anger. The Church should hold you accountable for your anger. YOU should hold your self accountable for your anger. What we are looking for in the whole process of forgiveness is, what Thompson calls, authentic forgiveness.
Authentic forgiveness does not mean letting someone off the hook but it does mean that you, me, us relinquish our right to retaliate.
To forgive your self means that you relinquish the right to hurt your self and demean your self. To forgive your self means that you will seek the necessary help to be an overcomer in Christ.
There’s another aspect of this forgiveness issue that comes to mind. Too often we who have struggles with anger problems usually grew up in an atmosphere that caused us early childhood pain. Now, I’m not going to get into a lot of depth nor am I suggesting a valid excuse for bad behavior. A lot of people grew up in bad homes but they don’t shoot people at work because of it.
In the book The Good Guy by Dean Koontz, these words jumped off the pages and into my notebook: “Under a lot of anger is a sewer of self-pity.” Whether this is totally true or not may be left to debate but what strikes me is that a lot of anger that people display involves unresolved issues from the past. They saw examples of the wrong kind of anger that was often directed at them. Feelings of self-worth were flushed and they have a hard time expressing and processing their true feelings.
The fact is that we all have unresolved issues from childhood and our early years and even regrettable acts on our part. And these issues will likely remain unresolved the rest of our lives. However, how we deal with anger as Christians will make a world of difference in the Christian faith of our children and those around us. What we have to do is learn to forgive those in our past- especially the short-coming of our parents. We may even need to seek counseling. Believe it or not, just because you’ve become a Christian does not mean that you ceased being human.
e. Seek reconciliation.
Seeking reconciliation is important both to the offended and the offender. For you as the offended, find ways to help the person who is easily angered and hurts you. At the same time, you as the offender need to discover ways to vent your anger, walk away from the situation and/or retreat until you have cooled off.
Steps 8 and 9 of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous spells out the issue of reconciliation quite well: “We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” And, “We mad direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
Making amends reminds us that reconciliation will often involve restitution. This means that we are willing to pay for the material damage inflicted and even do a “penance” of work for those we offended.
Here’s the deal: nlike Spock on “Star Trek,” we are not Vulcans who have no emotions like you humans. We come equipped with anger straight from our manufacturer: God. God has emotions. God gets angry. So if God gets angry what does he get angry about? God gets angry about sin, injustice and hypocrisy. What we learn is not how to correct our wife or kids but we must learn that we need to be…
2. CORRECTING THE RIGHT PROBLEMS.
A lot of people like to try and correct others and their short-comings but never see their own. Jesus shows us the kinds of things that need to be corrected. He teaches us by his actions what are the right problems.
To get a clearer picture for us as believers about how to be angry we need to see up front and personal the One of whom we are supposed to follow. Jesus got angry about some things. Therefore, it behooves us to be angry at the things that made Jesus angry.
The Gospel of Mark chooses to give us three pictures of anger in Jesus’ life.
a. Religious Tradition over Healing of People.
Here we see Jesus on the Sabbath Day in a synagogue. There are four parties involved: Jesus, a man with a crippled hand, people watching to see if Jesus would heal the man and the Pharisees who loved their letter of the law more than God. God’s instruction through Moses commanded that there be a “hollowing” of the Sabbath by refraining from work. By the time Jesus showed up, the devout Jews had developed some elaborate traditional laws to keep the Sabbath.
Jesus senses the heaviness of the situation. He realizes that he is crossing over a sacred boundary that had been kept for centuries. However, he also sees the hypocrisy of the holy. He questions the keeping of the Sabbath over the healing of the person. What does Jesus do? He heals the man.
b. Abuse of the “Little Ones.”
In this picture, people are bringing their children to Jesus for him to bless. Jesus disciples begin to impede this by rebuking the parents. Remember, children in the ancient world were counted for little and especially if you were female. Even in Jewish society, children were at the bottom of the social ladder. The disciples saw that they were hampering Jesus’ valuable time.
Jesus became indignant. He rebuked them, instead, and called on them to become like children in their hearts. And then he put his hands on the children and blessed them.
c. Religion as Route to Power.
The third picture we see is found in the temple court. Jesus sees money-changers in the temple court doing what, probably at the beginning, was well-intentioned assistance for out of town worshippers coming into the Temple. However, this assistance had turned into thievery and fraud. The people were being bilked of their money so that those in charge could profit- extending their own power over the people. Jesus was incensed. He turned over the tables and chased them out- probably to a cheering crowd. There was no way he would allow religion- especially His religion- become a route to power by stepping on the backs of others.
In these three cases, we see anger as a constructive method rather than destructive. Here, anger is not some out of control behavior but a method of showing the truth.
So how do we take these actions of Jesus and move them into our hearts as believers?
3. LIVING THE RIGHT EXAMPLE
Jesus gives us the right example of expressing anger. He shows us how we are to truly be an angry human. He shows you how you should then be angry.
a. Heal others.
Jesus was not afraid to rock the boat in order to reveal the heart of God for the hurting. We have to be willing to take criticism and the like in order to see that the lives of the lost are healed. To reach those mired down by sin requires Christians like us to become angry about sin and what sin is doing to our families and neighbors. Are you angry about the lostness of humanity?
b. Intervene on behalf of the Little Ones.
Jesus stepped in and confronted his own friends, the disciples. There are times we have to confront our best friends for their mis-behavior. It doesn’t mean that we hate them but it does mean that we love truth and fairness. Jesus’ intervention brought blessing to the children and their parents, and it also brought a new revelation to his followers.
c. Embrace and Bless the Little Ones.
Jesus not only blessed the little one but put his hands on them.
When was the last time any of us blessed the lost with our touch? Are we game to get down into the muck and change the lives of those who are not like us? This means that we will not treat the lost as though they had leprosy or some infectious disease but that we will put our selves at holy risk for the Gospel of Christ.
d. Commit to Long-term help for Offenders.
Jesus didn’t dump his disciples and get new ones because of their lack of regard for all of human life. Instead, he spent time with them to teach the right way to live. Especially for those of us in ministry, we can become frustrated when people don’t see the world as we see it. However, Jesus kept living out the Gospel message and kept teaching and praying so that these same insensitive disciples would grow and learn and put into practice the right practices on how to live.
e. Act Vigorously to Expel and Restrain Evil.
Simply getting angry about sin is not going to accomplish a whole lot. Our anger needs to be like Jesus’ anger- tied to compassion and love. The extortioners and embezzlers in the temple not only were kicked out of the temple but they got a lesson about the treatment of God’s worship.
We are called by God to do as Jesus and walk in His steps. To do so calls on to become activists against evil. We may not be Superman or Batman or one of the Fantastic Four, but we are Christians who are supposed be possessed by the power of God for the salvation of all of humanity. This means that sin will anger us and the power it holds over our loved ones and others will anger us.
Conclusion:
Are we serious about our anger? If so, I would like us as one body of Christ to pray the following prayer about anger. I believe that we are in this together as Christians.
“Heavenly Father, help me to be angry about the things that make you angry. May the Holy Spirit empower me to handle anger in the right way; help me to be self-disciplined about anger so that I do not hurt those closest to me; and enable me to display the right kind of anger in every situation. In Jesus Name, Amen.”
No comments:
Post a Comment