Rescue: Finding God In Life's ChallengesНамуна

"Anger" 

If ever there was a top-of-the-charts “all have fallen short of the glory of God” emotion, it’s anger.

Think about it. Depending on how quickly after you woke up you’re reading this, you’ve probably been mad sometime today, and it’s a safe bet something will at least threaten to set you off tomorrow. If our lives came with signs that counted the number of continuous hours we’d gone without getting mad -- like workplaces that keep track of consecutive days of safety -- we’d all be accustomed to seeing a lot of single digits.  

Anger’s triggers are, like the full words and deeds of Jesus, too numerous to fully document: our spouse says something rude, our children don’t do what we ask, a stranger cuts us off in traffic, we smack our thumb with a hammer, the service in the restaurant is too slow, we’re just having a really bad day. In times of tumult, anger is often our default weapon. 

Today, let’s ask ourselves: What primes that weapon? Trauma. It can be emotional (fear, rejection, loss, injustice, etc.) or physical (pain, separation, etc.).  It can be real or perceived. It can be rational or irrational. But regardless of anger’s causes, the Bible’s exhortation in response to it is a Nike slogan in reverse: Just don’t do it. 

Have you ever stopped to think about why that is? It’s pretty easy to convince ourselves, after all, that the circumstances making us mad at the moment justify our anger. Our boss was unfair to us. The teacher has unrealistic expectations. That business ripped us off.
But the Bible doesn’t give us an “out” for any of it. That’s because anger is a “gateway” sin that can lead to far more serious transgressions -- violence, endangerment, crime – whose repercussions can be devastating, even deadly.

Consider Moses – arguably owner of the Bible’s shortest fuse. He killed a man in a fit of rage to start his public life, and ended it with another fit of rage (whacking a rock with his staff) that cost him the Promised Land he’d labored to attain all those years in between.  Many times he was exhorted by God not to sin in his anger – and many times he failed. 

So do all of us. But the good news is, God’s mercies are not just new every morning, but every moment. Anger may flare in us, but we are not slaves to it – no matter how many times our Number of Days Lived Without Losing Our Temper signs read “0.” God has given us His Holy Spirit to damp down the flames that would engulf us – and the exhortations of His Word to help us continually grow in self-control.