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Comments Off The Ugly Beast!
Anger consumes. I’ve heard that many times over the years and it is so true. In the moment everything seems so clear: righteousness is total, actions deserved, correct solutions . . . but when things calm down . . . I’m left with an icky feeling that I was only wrong and regrets. That’s the burn of “the heat of the moment” anger, not just that what is done and said is over the top but that I’m left with the feeling that I’m only wrong. That’s generally not true, there was much that I was “right” about but I was unable to keep only to that truth.
Off the top of my head I can think of two scriptures that deal with this: ”Don’t let the sun set on your anger” and “speak the truth in love”.
The first is in a section where Paul is instructing on Christian living and actually speaks more clearly to what I said before. ”In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:26-28). ”Give the devil a foothold,” sounds just like what I described above. One issue I come up against (in my head) with these verses is the “sun set”. What if my anger is still in a place to cause me to sin when the sun sets (I think the other applies here, later)? Well, that’s the me looking for how far I can bend the law, but this isn’t a “law” but instruction for Christian living – a.k.a. love. So the intent is to not let it go and deal with anger quickly but to wait long enough to let it not cause you to sin. Very wise counsel – ever had that thing that made you so angry but you didn’t address it and then it’s too late to address it so it just smolders there?
The second “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:15-16). This one is in the section prior to the above verse – funny how that works out. I’ve always heard just the first part “speak the truth in love” out of context and usually to condemn someone. It seems the intent is to build each other up and in the topic of this post would indicate that I would need to be in a “time out” until I was able to build up with love.
There’s another type of anger – that one that seems to be awakened over and over – where someone just continually does you wrong and there really isn’t a vehicle to deal with it directly with them. Most of the time the issue is easily resolved by just separating yourself from that person, but what about the situation where you have requirement of dealing with that person on a regular basis as in the case of divorce with kids involved?
