Tag: Anger

Two Recent Poems

These two poems are reflections on recent news and the paltry response to sexual violence in the church. If this topic is an open wound and a trigger, please skip reading this. As a follower of Jesus and a man, I want to have a compassionate response toward the #metoo movement and the stories women are telling. Too often, Christian men have failed to really listen and we have also failed to call victimizers to account. 

You see God, but do You hear?

El Roi—the God who sees.
Well, God,
we all see too much.
Open your ears
and hear the
cries of the broken,
scattered mass
crying ‘me too.’
We don’t want,
anymore,
the mercy
which papers over
the sins of victimizers
demanding we forgive
the things that
they’ve
never owned.

Hear us.
Hear us.
Times up,
enough.

Spring, 1998

 [warning: graphic content, press the link above to read Jules Woodson’s story]

That was Savage there,
at the end of
the dirt road,
taking by force
what was yours alone
to give and then,
quaking with chagrin
pleading with you
to pledge
to him your
everlasting
silences.

Later that savage
told a flock of
horny teens:
True Love Waits—
Take the long view!
your future wife
is a Jewel that 
ought to be
 treasured!

Did you feel treasured, Jules?
When he unzipped his pants
and demanded of you: Suck it?
Or when he had you
unbutton your blouse
and jumped from
the driver seat,
aware in
that moment
of the damage
this would do
to (no, not you)
his career?

You were crying in
the church office,
the senior pastor,
conspicuously absent.
He saw your tears,
but Larry,
Cotton in his ears,
wouldn’t hear.
“So you are saying you participated?”
“We’ll handle it.”

 
Twenty years later,
The rich man fatted
with lamb,
No prophet Nathan
came to stand
before the man
and demand
justice
For what
he took.

But you stood—
yourself—
for you
(but not just you),
for the others,
so no more
Cotton men
could
refuse
to hear.

Beyond Just Indignation

It is an election year and I’m angry. You are too. The candidate who will win this election is the one whose supporters are most angry at either Trumpty Dumpty or Crooked Hillary. We are not all angry at the same things or for the same reasons, but we are mad. We may be angry because:

  • 2016-07-15-1468607338-43291-donaldtrumpangryTrump’s sexual-assault bragging and his cavalier dismissal of it as mere “locker-room-talk.”
  • The party of “family values” has chosen a serial adulterer, chauvinist, casino and strip-club owner as their champion.
  • Hillary’s 30,000 emails and the security risk they posed and the failure of the justice department to prosecute her.
  •  Those “illegal immigrants” that are over running our country and taking American jobs.
  • “Chai Nah.”
  • The demonizing of immigrant communities and xenophobia and failure to care for widows, orphans and  the alien.
  • The way rural Americans are excluded from political discourse.
  • The Republicans’ continuing failure to  take climate change seriously.
  • The Democrats’ failure to champion the unborn and  their support of late-term abortions.
  • Prolifers who don’t care about criminal justice reform, refugees and other vulnerable members of society.
  • Hillary Clinton is a two-faced politician with a public and private persona and she lies.
  • Trump’s near inability to tell the truth.
  • Hillary cheating to get the Democrat nod and manipulating the system and your vote.
  • hillary-angryThe Russians are trying to rig the election.
  • Security lapses  which led up to the Benghazi attacks while HRC was Secretary of State.
  • Racial bias in policing African American communities continues and has led to unjust killing of African Americans
  • Black Live Matters activists have the audacity to declare that black lives matter.
  • Obama doesn’t call a press conference when a police officer gets shot.
  • The way politicians pander to special interest.
  • The Main Stream Media’s bias strains credulity.
  • Common Core math is so hard right now.

This is not an exhaustive list. Maybe you are angry about something else, but if you aren’t angry you aren’t paying attention. Anger can be a great motivator. When we are angry, for good reasons, our anger can become a force of good, motivating us to action.

So anger itself isn’t the problem, as long as it isn’t motivated out by self-interest. Anger is the appropriate response to injustice. There are times you should be angry! When we see those who are suffering, and fail to “get angry,” we are complicit in systems of injustice (Sarah Sumner’s Angry Like Jesus, Fortress 2015, makes this point. See chapter 9). If we repress anger, it comes out in unhealthy ways.

Be angry, but know we all have blindspots. We side with the left or right and we all ignore inconvenient injustices. We relativize abortion or excuse the poor treatment of women. We claim to be strong on crime but ignore the cries of the wrongfully accused and the unjustly punished. We rage against terror but advocate war.  We champion institutions (Law & Order!) but excuse where systems grind people up. We see the speck in our neighbor’s eye and ignore the log in our own. Be angry but don’t be blind!

And anger is dangerous to our souls. Bitterness can blight the whole tree and we should take care what grows in us. So my suggestion this election cycle  is don’t let the daily news cycle poison you. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48, emphasis mine).

Jesus declares enemy love is a defining characteristic of what it means to be children of our Father in heaven! When our anger leads to hate and bitterness, we lose. When anger at injustice drives us to love and pray for our enemies we are enlivened by the Spirit and set free to live towards the Kingdom coming. So does Hillary make you angry? Have you prayed for her? How about the Donald? Have you prayed for him? How do you demonstrate your love to those whose view of the world you find abhorrent?  I confess enemy love doesn’t characterize my life enough. It is easier to write others off and dismiss them. But when God’s anger burned against humanity, his response was to send Jesus to reconcile us to himself. Then he gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-21).

Does this mean we capitulate and stop being angry at injustice? Not at all. It means we rage, rant, act, call people to task and pray when people suffer because of the careless or willful actions of others. This doesn’t mean we excuse abuse, assault, lying, bulling, negligence or dehumanizing rhetoric. Real reconciliation will never gloss over injustice, but it will choose enemy love despite it. It means we call them to task while we pray for God’s grace to flood their soul.

Anger is part of what it means to be human. It is often the appropriate response. “Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). In contrast, enemy love is what it means to be a child of God. Don’t settle for just indignation if you serve the one who is reconciling all things to Himself.

The Grape Jelly of Wrath (an examination of the sin of Anger)

Jar of WrathAmong other things that I have at my house, I have a two-year-old living under my roof. She is precious to me but she is at a willful stage and therefore angry a lot. She’ll scream if you carry her because she wants to walk. If you let her walk she screams because you won’t let her walk where she wants to walk. If you put food in front of her, she’ll scream because she doesn’t want it. If you eat the food from her plate that she doesn’t want, you will feel the full brunt of her wrath. When she gets ready for bed, she is angry if she doesn’t get to wear her first choice of P.J.s. She is angry if you make her wear a diaper instead of underwear. Parents of two-year-olds know, at certain stages, your life is organized around angry outbursts.

Most of the time, my wife and I can take these outbursts in stride because lets face it, a strong-willed two-year old demanding her way about absolutely everything is terribly funny. Quite adorable actually. It is hard not to laugh at a two-year old who picks up her dinner plate full of food and carries it to the kitchen and asks for cheese and crackers instead (this doesn’t work, if you are wondering). Our older daughter was just as bad at this age, so we know it’s just a developmental life-stage we have to get through before peace again reigns in our house (of course then number 3 is going Rage Against the Machine).

What isn’t particularly adorable is when grown men and women act as though they have the emotional intelligence of my two-year-old. They don’t act rationally but fly off the handle when the littlest thing raises their ire: waiting in line at the supermarket behind the coupon queen, when a spouse asks something they were going to do anyway, when they are forced to go around that idiot who is only going 5 miles above the speed limit in the left lane. When we see people lash out at the world because it has failed to accommodate their every whim, we don’t find it funny, but sad. How could anyone be so self-centered and demanding? It’s particularly embarrassing when the angry two-year-old of an adult is me.

Lets face it, all of us let our anger run wild and demand our way. When we are tired and stressed this can happen a lot (which is par for the course at our house). But then there are other times where our anger seems wholly justified and we are sure we are in the right. Jesus himself chased out the money lenders from the temple and his anger burned against the religious leaders’ hypocrisy for how they unnecessarily burdened the people. Martin Luther got the whole Protestant ball rolling because he was pretty peeved. And he had good reason, the Roman See was thoroughly corrupt and the selling of indulgences preyed on the poor. Luther also praised the focusing energy that anger brought to his life and ministry:

I have no better remedy than anger. If I want to write, pray, preach well, then I must be angry. Then my entire blood supply refreshes itself, my mind is made keen, and all temptations depart.(What Luther Says: An Anthology, Vol. 1, 74, 27).

Today we similarly see many things that make us angry. African warlords who rape women and kidnap children, systemic racism which still locks minorities in poverty, colonial paternalism which acts with good intentions but demeans the nations and peoples we perpetually victimize, the abuse of women and their objectification in pornography, magazines and super bowl ads. If these things do not make you angry then either you haven’t really looked at these issues or you have no heart Tin-Man.

So if Anger is the right response to these things, why is it a deadly sin? Like the other vices, Anger is a habit of mind which can poison us from the inside out. Sometimes anger is the appropriate response but it is sinful when it is excessive or misdirected. There are things that should make us angry and things that should not. If we like my two-year-old, are Angry every time we don’t get our own way then our Anger is subservient to our own selfishness. If our Anger over real injustice (large or small) causes bitterness and hatred to take root in our heart then our souls are in mortal danger. Anger at injustice, easily may give way to bitterness at particular people for perpetuating it. When injustice has a face it is hard not to hate and we can easily cross over to the dark side.

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung points us to the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. which illuminates a different way:

Martin Luther King Jr., for example was undoubtedly passionate in his pursuit of racial justice, but he was not a person dominated by anger or one who hated his racial oppressors. His passion for injustice was deeply rooted in his desire that all people learn to love one another and see them as God sees them, and his manner of pursuing justice showed that he knew that the matter was not solely in his hands. The righteous angry person can still pray, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Moreover King engaged in his project among a community of believers. He did not attempt to discern God’s will all by himself or mete out God’s judgement as an individual. The checks and balances of shared power and wisdom are good ways to prevent wrathful rationalizations about the way our agendas and God’s do or do not coincide (Glittering Vices, 132-3).

Anyone who has read King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail has marveled at King’s ability to extend shalom towards his oppressors (jailers and white clergy).

Anger Management is all the Rage

So what are the practices which help us to reign in our anger and keep it in check? Principally, I see three:

    1. Life in community and systems of accountability, like King’s example above guard us from pursuing our own rights and agenda and help us discern God’s heart in the matter. Clearly friends can also re-enforce our Anger, so intentionality is important!
    2. Establishing ongoing systems of self-reflection. This could be as keeping a journal about your anger. Or you can pray the Examen and pay attention to your soul feels consolation and desolation. Learning to take inventory of inner thoughts is necessary if we are to grow in the virtuous life.
    3. Learn from Jesus. Yes, Jesus got angry, irritated and crazy mad. If you read the gospels you see instances where his ire was raised, but you still could not describe Jesus as an angry man. instead he was characterized by his compassion and gentleness. Part of conquering our inner beast, involves learning from Jesus a new way of navigating injustice in our world. His ultimate response to injustice was not an angry outburst where he smote the wicked. His response was the cross.


As we continue walking with Jesus the way of the cross, may he transform us from Angry hate mongers to his gentle and compassionate servants.