How to Deal With My AngerНамуна

Anger Is Prideful

To better deal with anger as believers, we need to understand its roots. Fleshly anger is rooted in pride. No matter when, why, or how we get angry, we are always in the center of the picture. We are often angry when people do not agree with us. We value ourselves and our opinions above those of others and get mad when they refuse to see things our way. This is especially true about people under our authority.

We must be cautious not to discipline our children out of selfish frustration or pride. Our discipline should be rooted in a desire to nurture and guide them in the ways of the Lord, recognizing that they are gifts from God and not sources of personal validation.

A similar thing can happen at work. A new co-worker might make us angry when they do not want to do something the way we want them to do it. Our ego is affected. We feel hurt and unappreciated because we think that we know best, so we get angry. The root of human anger is always pride. We feel indignant when others do not agree with us because we think that they are making a mistake. We also believe that when we get angry, we will convince these people to do the right thing. We will prevent them from making an error. We might even prevent them from sinning with our anger, right?

Wrong. That is not at all how the Lord sees the matter. The Scriptures clearly tell us that human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. If we are really honest with ourselves, we might admit that the manner in which our co-worker or our children want to do a certain thing might not be wrong, it might just be different. Sometimes, our pride blinds us to seeing that another person’s opinion or action might be as good as or even better than our own. We need to keep our pride in check. When we stay humble, it will be much harder for us to get angry.