Anger Dominates Our Emotions

Welcome back to “Sins of the World.” I’m taking a deeper dive into the words of Galatians 5:19-21 to talk about what we need to avoid and how they can lead us to the Fruits of the Spirit. In Part 8, we talked about jealousy, which Paul defined as corrosive envy. We looked at how jealousy can destroy relationships, self-image, and more. We landed in James 3:14 to show how jealousy can destroy relationships and turns another’s blessing, influence, or recognition into a place of resentment. We look at the social comparison theory, which shows how we can determine our own worth based on the comparisons we make to others. We looked at how we can channel those emotions to remind ourselves that God created us uniquely, and our gifts and skills are working to bring His kingdom down to the earth. Plus, we must channel that energy into loving our neighbor – treating them with love, respect, and kindness.

In Part 9, we’re looking at anger. Anger can lead us to say and do things that we may not always agree with. Anger is a valid emotion, often representing when one of our boundaries has been crossed. How do we process these emotions healthily? How do we watch to make sure they don’t get out of hand? That’s what I’m planning on talk about today.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How has your experiences with anger been? Do feeling anger make you feel more positive or negative?

Understanding What Anger Is

The word that Paul uses for anger is thumos “thoo-mos.’” It describes an intense, heated emotion that issues in action. Biblically, this could be a sudden human outburst or a measured, settled indignation of God. Foundationally, it suggests an inner boiling over that soon finds expression.

Paul calls it a work of the flesh. It assumes the possible that it is present in the lives of believers, and it opens the battle against the sin that’s in our lives. There’s a similar mindset that comes with this, a settled resolve. What it boils down to is this: Anger is both the explosive outbursts and seething resentment.

For us today, anger can be centered on four issues; conflict resolution, a focus on holiness, future hope, and spiritual formation. Anger exposes our heart issues that break relationships up. Anger is balanced with God’s divine righteousness. Anger is a reminder that God’s justice will prevail at the end. Anger is quenched by the different fruits of the Spirit.

So far, we recognize that anger is a heated emotion that we respond by acting out. Anger comes through in both explosive outbursts. Anger is characterized by feelings of displeasure, irritation, or hostility. For our conversation today, we’re focusing on human anger. Anger itself is not sinful on its own, but it can be led to sinful decisions if we’re not careful. Our focus should be on controlling our anger and ensuring our decisions and responses bring out the righteousness that God’s gives to us.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: Anger is characterized by displeasure, irritation, and hostility. Think back to your recent interactions with people. Have you share these feelings? How did you work through these feelings?

Anger Leads to Patience

Let’s check out how Paul views anger in Romans 2:4.

AMP – Or do you have no regard for the wealth of His kindness and tolerance and patience [in withholding His wrath]? Are you [actually] unaware or ignorant [of the fact] that God’s kindness leads you to repentance [that is, to change your inner self, your old way of thinking – seek His purpose for your life]?

NRSVUE – Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

VOICE – Do you take the kindness of God for granted? Do you see His patience and tolerance as signs that He is a pushover when it comes to sin? How could you not know that His kindness is guiding your hearts to turn away from distractions and habitual sin to walk a new path?

God’s mercy is not make Him indifferent towards sin. He withholds the righteous judgment that sinners deserve, giving time for all believers to turn to Him. God remained compassionate, gracious, slow to get angry, and faithful to His relationship to all believers. God’s goodness is to help us transform in His love. We turn away from sin, abandoning our own agenda, and submit to God’s will and agenda. Jesus calls us to repent. He doesn’t delight in destruction, but wants us all to turn and live in His name.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: God’s forgiveness doesn’t mean He ignores sin. God is patient with us and wants us to be transformed through His grace. How can you be patient in your anger, treating others with love instead of fury.

From Revenge to Patient Acceptance

We talked about how anger shows up in feelings of displeasure, irritation, and hostility. When we feel anger, we are often not feeling pleasure about our situation. It could be due to decisions we made or the effects of decisions that others made. It could be due to the discomfort of someone crossing our boundaries. Overall, we do not find ourselves happy with that person for said reason. This can lead us to be irritated with this person. We wouldn’t want to speak with them. We don’t want to interact with them. We barely want to be sociable with them. We may even become hostile with that person. We snap at them. We may call them names or insult them. We may gossip about them even. Our anger leads us to think, say, and do things to make that person hurt as they have hurt us. This goes against the message of God.

God encourage us to love each other that we would want to be loved. God wouldn’t want us to respond in anger, violence, or vitriol. However, this mindset was not foreign to the ancient Jewish people. Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-20, and Deuteronomy 19:21 (all parts of the Torah). This was known as Lex Talionis, or the Law of Retaliation. They often saw that the best path forward was to exact the same behavior that was done on to them. However, that changed in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In Matthew 5:38-39, Jesus said to no longer seek revenge. Jesus told us to love our enemies. Jesus encourages us to ignore the insignificant insults and do not retaliate. We are called to main our dignity, our self-respect, and poise.

Anger makes us turn into a version of ourselves that we may not like, where God encourages us to reflect His grace and mercy. We should not share in the same type of anger that was given to us. We should not go out to cause harm, pain, and stress that was done to us. That doesn’t solve anything for fix the reason it happened in the first place. God wants us to focus on the goal of reconciliation, which involves listening to how the hurts occurred, how the person who received the hurt felt, It’s important that we don’t look at problem-solving these hurts at first, but we must seek to have conversation and understanding each other’s perspective about what happened leading up to the hurt, and how we can work through these perspectives to see where we can avoid these hurts in the future. God’s path to this involves patience. Not just a forgiveness of hurts, but patience to seek the transformation necessary to overcome this anger.

Biblically, patience often refers to a willingness to endure the hardships that are are deal to us. It’s a place where we can sit through the strife, working through the difficult emotions that come with it. When we think about God’s patience, we look all the way back to Exodus 34:6. We look at the character of God and learn that He is patient in waiting to see His followers transformed rather than, unleashing judgment about them all. His compassion sees our weaknesses and misery. The restoration of our relationship is the end goal overall. We restore our relationship with God and neighbor, and seek to spread that same love and mercy to all people that we meet.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How do you see restoration happening in the moments of your anger? Are you currently good at staying calm during angry moments or does your anger make you externally react?

God’s Patience is For Us

This reminds me of the words that Peter mentioned in his second letter about God’s patience. 2 Peter 3:9 reminds us that God is patient for our sake.

AMP – The Lord does not delay [as though He were unable to act] and is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is [extraordinarily] patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

NRSVUE – The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

VOICE – Now the Lord is not slow about enacting His promise – slow is how some people want to characterize it – no, He is not slow but patient and merciful to you, not wanting anyone to be destroyed, but wanting everyone to turn away from following his own path and to turn toward God’s.

God’s purposes will come to light according to God’s plan. People who didn’t believe in God believe that the time that’s passed was a sign that Christ wouldn’t return. Peter responds that our impatience cannot measure the ability for God to be faithful in this world. The delay in the second-coming shows us how merciful God is. It gives time for humanity to be transformed from rebelling against God’s will. It’s not an indifference towards sin, but it’s a period of time to work through consequences of our sinful behaviors, leading us towards repentance and reconciliation. God doesn’t want us to suffer. God wants all people to work towards a place of salvation, offered through the sacrifice of Jesus. Repentance moves us away from sin, acknowledging our faults before God, and turning to following the life of Jesus and having a relationship with God.

Humans need time to to create change because we are fickle creatures. We struggle with change because it often takes us out of our comfort zone. We’ll find ourselves struggling with with change because it’s unfamiliar. It’s require a lot of patience, both with ourselves and with others. Change may anger others, because they will see you growing and they will no longer see you as the person that they could hurt or take advantage of. You may lose relationships outside of the changes you are making because of it all, and it will hurt. Change often does. However, we must remember that all these changes will be made for the good. People will be angry, but let them. Let them be angry at you. Let you be thankful that these changes are happening. People will come and go, but God will be there with you forever.

REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: How do you feel about transforming those angry moments and seeing where you can make them moments of finding patience, either with yourself or others?