Title: Revisiting Anger, Part I
8/13/06 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr. B
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
(Re-read the Ephesians passage from “The Message” by Eugene Peterson)
It was not too many months ago that I was having a conversation with someone and the issue of anger came up. The person on the phone said they were angry about something and then said that they supposed their anger was a sign of their not being a true Christian.
Wait a minute I said, no one said that anger was something we had to rid ourselves of! “Be angry, but do not sin”, the Apostle Paul said. “Oh”, the caller said, I had not heard that one before.
And here it is in today's Lectionary reading from Ephesians - “Be angry but do not sin” or in the contemporary language of Eugene Peterson, “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry - but don't use your anger as fuel for revenge. Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.”
Anger itself is not bad - even though it has acquired a horrible reputation, its what we do with it that can get ugly. Or as Peterson stated, it is when we use it for revenge or as the stronghold of our life that it looses its helpful value.
Anger is part of our creative force, it is part of us - it is neither good or bad - it just is, just as joy and sorrow are. Many of us were raised to “be nice no matter what”(particularly if we were raised in the church) and are pretty uncomfortable with anything that raises the blood pressure a bit! In my family I often felt like the black sheep because I had these angry emotions, particularly towards my father! It was moving for me this morning to listen to Staci during the children's time tell the kids that anger was normal and okay, and that we can learn how to express it in appropriate ways. I don't imagine that many of us here heard that in church or at home when we were young!
This week I am going to revisit anger in general and then next week I am going to try and reflect a bit on the whole concept of an “Angry God”.
Although anger is related to positive values, such as justice, self-defense, and independence, many Christians have put anger in the same category as lying, stealing, cheating and using profanity. Anger tends to travel in the same company of violence, fighting, yelling and punishment, for example. Therefore anger is guilty by association.
Author Andrew D. Lester writes: “Underneath our society's suspicion of anger lie centuries of Christian teaching that anger is evil. Anger has been discounted as part of our “carnal nature” and representative of human depravity. In the Middle Ages anger became identified as one of the seven deadly sins. Fervent sermons have traced anger back to the Fall and suggested that if it were not for original sin, human beings would not be plagued by anger at all.”
Scripture has been read with this prejudice as well, so that only those biblical passages which describe destructive anger are quoted and not the ones that claim it as a necessary force for justice when used as a tool and not as a weapon.
In the story of Cain and Able for example, Cain becomes angry and kills his brother Able. God did not tell Cain that he had no right to become angry - but that he chose to sin with his anger by killing his brother. God told Cain in so many words that he needed to “master” his anger - to learn how to use it constructively rather than destructively.
In today's reading from Ephesians Paul is actually quoting from Psalm 4:4 when he said, “Be angry but do not sin.” The Greek interpretation is “If you become angry, do not sin.”
When you consider the diverse early churches that Paul was working with, including the mixing up of Jew and Gentile - we can imagine that there was plenty of anger as they sought to grow into a community of disciples. Paul himself was known for his anger - a small man with a firey spirit.
“The potential to feel angry is rooted in God's created order.” (Andrew D. Lester, Coping with Your Anger)
Anger is a part of us, how much better it is to learn early-on how to use it constructively.
Avoiding, denying or considering anger as something to be ashamed of is not constructive.
One of the first things we can do with our anger is to learn how to listen to it before we act on it. Take some deep breaths - step away if necessary.
Learn how to say “our conversation is triggering anger for me for some reason, can we talk about this after I have had some time to cool down?”
Then take time to ask yourself, “what is my anger trying to tell me?”
Write about it; talk about it with someone you trust.
If it is your child that is angry, try and sit down with your child (easier if we start doing this when they are very young) and acknowledge that you see that they are very angry or hurt. Ask them what they think their anger is trying to tell them right now, like a friend, what messages does it need to share?
Another author, Carla Day, finally admitted what an angry person she was in general. Rather than deal with her anger she resorted to blame, everyone ignored her, failed or neglected her. Eventually she ended up in a deep depression. She was not comfortable with anger. She had been a victim of abuse and the experience had taught her that anger was her enemy.
Conflict had the power to generate intense anxiety within her and the teaching of the church only added more confusion.
As a Christian she thought she was not supposed to be angry.
But she was angry.
One day she was thinking to herself, “If denial and blame are not the answer than what is?” And from somewhere deep inside her a voice said “try honesty”. Not “try sarcasm” or “try the silence treatment” - it said, “try honesty”.
I recently read that lack of honesty is one of the culprits behind the high divorce rate in our country. We struggle to be honest with the ones we are the most intimate with about those issues that upset or anger us.
It was after that still small voice spoke to Carla that she began to write letters to God because she reasoned that if she could not be honest with God about her real feelings, then who could she tell?
So she wrote, notebook after notebook until the anger began to subside. Writing became her way to MANAGE her anger.
In time she began to see that anger was not bad - it was not a “two-headed monster” and while “anger has the potential for great harm, anger itself is, after all, just another human emotion.” “In time”, she wrote, “I began to learn the lessons my anger was trying to teach me. Sometimes the actions of others are not in our best interests. Listening to my anger has prompted some constructive changes in my life.” (Carla Day)
Where there are people there is the potential for the emotion of anger whether it is in the church, the family, the work place, school, government or anywhere. But even those who have lived as monks, separate from community will tell you that their anger came along with them and they still had to face it; and it was often anger at their own selves.
Paul did not deny the reality of anger as part of God's created order but it is vitally important for us to learn how to manage and use this emotion in ways that are constructive, AND it is never too late to learn how to do this.
Carla Day used denial and blame to deal with her anger until the day the still-small-voice got through to her and said, “try honesty”.
I close today's thoughts with these words from Carla Day:
“Someone has likened feelings to the keys on a piano. We tend to stick with the keys with which we are most comfortable while God wants us to experience a wide range of feelings, from the crescendo of intense anger to the tinkling of wonder and joy. By embracing all of my emotions, I am becoming the healthy and whole person God intended me to be when God created me.”