C. S. Lewis
In William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, in the introductory section on self-discipline, he says this: "There is much unhappiness and personal distress in the world because of failure to control (one's) temper. 'Oh, if only I had stopped myself," is an all too familiar refrain.'"
As a case in point, consider Cain:
Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man." Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"(Genesis 4:1-9)
Cain's mother mistook him for the Messiah, a common mistake among first-time mothers. She named him Cain ("brought forth") because, she said, "I have brought forth a man, that is, Yahweh." (The phrase "with the help of" is one word in Hebrew, usually untranslated. In some contexts it indicates a noun used in apposition to another noun.)
Eve connected the birth of her son with the fulfillment of the promise concerning the God-man who was to come (Genesis 3:15). But Cain was not the solution to the problem of sin; he was a heavy contributor to it, a chip off the old block, a son of sinful Adam, which is undoubtedly why Eve gave her second son, Abel, a more reasonable name. Abel means "breath." He was a light-weight-just breath and britches, as my mother used to say.
"Now Abel kept flocks," we're told "and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor." Cain got mad and his face fell-an ancient idiom for falling into a funk.
John Milton refers to Cain as that "sweaty Reaper" who offered the hard work of his own hands to God. Abel, on the other hand, brought a suitable sacrifice: a lamb as a substitute for his sin. The author of Hebrews suggests that the offerings went on for awhile and that both were expressions of each man's heart (Hebrews 11:4). The author of Genesis picks up that emphasis stating, "the Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor" (Gen. 4:4, 5). The problem was not the ritual; it was a matter of the man and his heart.
The New Testament writers supply additional insight into Cain's character. The Apostle John said he was a pawn of the devil: "This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one" (1 John 3:11,12). Jude identifies him with angry rebels everywhere who "have taken the way of Cain" (Jude 1:11).
Cain's anger at his brother grew, gnawing at him, drawing him into bitter resentment and dreary depression. God warned Cain of the consequences of his repressed fury and pointed out his only escape: "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?" he asked. But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it" (Genesis 4:7). "Your anger," God said, "is like a wild beast crouching at your door, waiting to spring. You must master it or you will be mastered!"
But Cain would have none of it. He let his resentment fester and in lethal rage "attacked his brother Abel and killed him"-an act of aggression all the more monstrous because it was "his brother" that he slew-and then, in cold, lingering resentment, shrugged off his guilt: "Am I my brother's keeper?" he quipped.
Rage can kill. It's a simple fact that most murders are not premeditated acts of violence, but "crimes of passion,"committed in moments of uncontrolled frenzy and deeply regretted after the fact.
Anger can have other deadly consequences. It can turn us into brutal abusers. It's estimated that more than half the women in America have been roughed up at least once by their husbands, and, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, three to four million women are routinely battered by their mates each year.
Civil, reasonable gentlemen can suddenly resort to brutal violence. It happens every day. Even the gentle counselor, Paul Tournier, admitted: "I have on occasion slapped my wife, and have often spoken to her in the most wounding terms. I might try to reassure myself with the thought that it was only a passing accident, a mental aberration, when I was no longer myself in the heat of the moment-something soon put right! It would be more honest to say to myself that it was I who did it, and to see that it reveals an aspect of myself that I find hard to recognize; that I am much more violent than I care to acknowledge" (From The Violence Within).
But even if anger does not develop into physical assault, wounding tones and words can crush the soul. We chanted as children, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," but we were denying our pain. Of course words hurt.
David speaks of those "whose tongues are sharp swords" (Psalm 57:4), suggesting the cutting, ripping effect of another's words. When we air out our anger we inflict harm-sometimes irreparable harm-on others. We say things we never meant to say; we leave open wounds and unforgettable pain. "As long as anger lives," one early Christian wrote, "she continues to be the fruitful mother of many unhappy children" (St. John Climacus).
And finally, though we relish anger for a time eventually truth comes in. In the end we have diminished ourselves. We have become the victims of our own rage. Fredrick Buechner writes, "Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back; in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you" (from Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC )
Not all anger is sin: God gets angry (Hebrews 3:11); Jesus got angry (Mark 3:5); and there are occasions when we ought to be angry. Scripture commends righteous indignation. When we hear of hideous cruelty, when others are defrauded, affronted or insulted we ought to be outraged.
Henry Ward Beecher said, "A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. A man that does not know how to be shaken to his heart's core with indignation over things evil is either a fungus or a wicked man."
Paul warns us, however, against indignation's tendency to develop into bitter resentment: "In your anger do not sin," he writes, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" (Ephesians 4:26).
Anger in its time and place
May assume a kind of grace.
It must have some reason to it
And not last beyond a minute.
If to further lengths it go,
Into malice it doth grow.-Charles and Mary Lamb
Indignation, put to it's intended use, is commendable. Rage and resentment are not. Rage is uncontrolled, violent fury. Paul writes, "Get rid of bitterness, rage and anger…." (Eph. 4:31), and cites "fits of rage" as the product of our sinful humanity: (Gal. 5:20). Resentment is rage gone underground. (Resentment is the common expression of rage for those who view outbursts of anger as sin.) Both rage and resentment are guided by selfishness and the desire to rid ourselves of those who get in our way.
The British poet, William Blake wrote of his bitter resentment in a poem entitled "The Poison Tree." In it he describes his polite restraint while harboring repressed anger. His anger grew in his head like a tree and he nurtured it until his enemy was dead:
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow
And I watered it with fears,
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft, deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine-
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Anger is a "blanket emotion" that covers an array of other feelings and affections. When our sense of security or self-worth is imperiled; when we lose power in a relationship; when our imperfections are revealed; when we are rejected, we feel frustrated and angry.
Bottom line, anger is the response we make to outraged love: "the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it," as C. S. Lewis said. What we want is boundless love. When we are frustrated in that pursuit we feel threatened and propelled into action. We want to fight back.
Threatening situations cause our autonomic nervous system to kick in, activating our adrenal glands to secrete chemicals which in turn stimulate a number of organs in our bodies to prepare us to resist and fight. That chemical reaction is what gives us that hard-to-describe feeling of arousal that we describe as anger.
There's nothing sinful about angry feelings. They are an indispensable expression of the natural defense system with which God has equipped us. But when we permit these feelings to push us over the edge, when we give way to blind rage, we demean others, we debase ourselves and more importantly, we dishonor the God in whose image we are created.
We tend to think of anger as an instinctive, reflexive, unconscious, biological reaction beyond our control. Can we then hold ourselves responsible?
We must. The Bible roundly condemns inappropriate expressions of anger and commends those who keep them under control. The wise man says, "Better a patient man (one slow to anger) than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city" (Proverbs 16:32). "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control" (Proverbs 29:11).
Recent studies on anger support what the Bible has been saying all along: Anger can be controlled and sanctified through truth. Let me explain.
Anger involves four components: (1) the activating experience (a crying baby, a tardy spouse, a thoughtless gesture or remark); (2) an inner emotional reaction to the threat; (3) a series of thoughts that either augment or mitigate the anger; and (4) an outer behavioral response.
These components are so intertwined that we experience them as one continuous surge. That's why we tend to think of anger as an emotion beyond our control. We lose hope for change, because we lose sight of the thinking and behaving components of anger and focus on the physiological surge of emotional arousal.
But the behavioral response is governed by our ways of thinking about ourselves and about the person who is making us angry. The intensity of our anger is based on those thoughts. We reach the stage of towering rage because we permit our thoughts to drive us to it. What I am saying is this: What we think before, during, and after the initial anger surge determines our outward behavior.
This is nothing new. The Bible makes it clear that any progress toward godliness is the result of proper thinking. Our thought life is the key element in emotional and behavioral control and that control grows as we acquire additional truth on which to set our minds. We are what we think, Jesus insists (Matt. 12:35).
James puts all of this together and provides the key:
My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1:19,20).
These are the steps James envisions:
1. Acknowledge your anger
We should first acknowledge our anger. It's good to be able to say, "I am getting angry"-to ourselves or to the person with whom we are angry. It's hard for some people to accept their anger because they falsely equate it with sin, but no emotion is evil in itself. Emotions can only incline us to evil.
2. Hold back your anger
The next step is to be "slow to become angry." In the words of an old slogan, "The only time to procrastinate is when you're angry."
We can and must hold back our anger for a time. This is not repression (holding anger in), but rather a matter of slowing down the rapid escalation of emotion, perhaps by the time-honored expedient of taking a few deep breaths and trying to relax our muscles or counting to ten.
Plutarch, the Roman playwright, had one of his characters say to the emperor, "Remember, Caesar, whenever you are angry, say or do nothing until you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters (of the alphabet) to yourself."
Or, if we feel ourselves getting out of control we can call time out and separate ourselves temporarily from the conflict or provoking situation and give our emotions time to subside and our thinking processes to emerge. A little time out will help us "get our minds right," as Cool-hand Luke would say.
The main thing is to retard our anger and give ourselves time to think. "Anger is the anesthetic of the mind." C. S. Lewis said. Once a certain point is reached rationality goes out the window. It's important to slow our thought processes down and begin to analyze how we're thinking.
3. Be slow to speak
We should be "slow to speak"-literally. We should speak slowly or not at all. John Henry Cardinal Newman said, "There is in stillness oft a magic power/To calm the breast when struggling passions lower." Restraining our tongues has the effect of slowing down our thought processes so we can begin to think clearly, rationally and analytically. Speak when angry and we inevitably make the best speach we ever regretted.
4. Be quick to listen
And then we should listen-listen to what God has to say and think his thoughts after him. That's what James means by being "quick to listen." Note the context: "He (God) chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created. My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry (James 1:18,19).
Listen to what? Listen to the "word of truth," an idea he elaborates in verse 22: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." What we must do is slow our thinking down and mentally challenge our thoughts-correct the lies that inform our thoughts and replace them with truth.
All of us have erroneous beliefs about life: We believe against all evidence to the contrary that everything should go our way: our children should always behave; our opinions should always be considered; our spouses and friends should always be reasonable, cheerful, helpful and kind; others should always listen to us, understand us and do our bidding. In short, everyone ought to love us all the time under all conditions of life.
According to psychologist Albert Ellis, the most common mental aberrations are these:
When truth comes in, the lies that have informed our thinking slowly begin to lose their force and our anger begins to abate.
James completes his argument in Chapter 4 where he explains the reason for fights and quarrels:
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God (James 4:2).
James swings his ax at the root of our problem: we're hedonists at heart. (The Greek word from which the translation "desires" is taken is the word from which we get our word, hedonism.) We want to be pleasured; we want to be loved and when we don't get what we want, we go to war!
It's that smothering absorption with getting our way and having our needs met-being acknowledged, understood, cared for, catered to, listened to-that brings us into conflict with others. People don't come through for us and that makes us anger, an anger that quickly becomes blind rage, cruelty and force.
The answer, according to James, is to give up the ruthless pursuit of our pleasure and ask God to supply what we desire in his own time and in his own way and to ask with our wills resigned: "Not my will but yours be done."
Bernard of Clairvaux wrote long ago, "What will you do if your needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added to them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prefer to bear the yoke of modesty (humility) and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body" (from On the Love of God).
Asking God to meet our needs is a better way than our way (and Cain's way) for, as James says, when God meets our needs he gives a "greater grace" (4:6)-a sense of well-being far greater than anything we can get on our own.
Growth takes time. We must be patient with God while he brings it about. As we learn truth we will begin to develop a mind-set that will reduce our emotional reactions to threat. As our hearts become increasingly convinced that God loves us unconditionally and wants to meet our needs we will find ourselves less inclined to react emotionally to indifference, criticism or rebuke.
A secure person is less likely to have an adrenaline surge when a client complains about her performance. The person who realizes that God is sovereign and controls all the details of life is less likely to get angry at 5:00 traffic. Men or women who know they are in God's grip can be patient, calm and long-suffering in the face of terror and intimidation.
This is maturity: "from which foundation we are more prepared for the loving confrontation required in all relationships and the righteous indignation required in a fallen world. Learning to be slow to anger gives us the time and freedom of mind to decide how we should solve our problems or how we should express our anger. Being slow to anger allows us to respond to conviction, to confess our sins of anger and to rise above hate to forgive those who have offended us. From this foundation of holding anger back are made the decisions for how and when to express anger, for anger problems are not fully resolved simply because people hold back. Relationship problems in particular demand the proper expression of anger and the consequent resolution of problems" (Mark P. Cosgrove, in Counseling for Anger).
Of course we will fail. Whoever thought otherwise. But no failure is final. God is a God of an infinite number of chances.I read somewhere that Leonardo da Vinci was working on his painting "The Last Supper" one afternoon and something one of his assistants did angered him. Losing his temper, he lashed the other fellow with bitter words. Returning to his canvas, Leonardo began to work again on the nearly completed portrait of Jesus, but he could not go on. Looking into the calm and patient face of Jesus, as he himself had envisioned him, he was reminded of his own tantrum and thoughtless words. Putting down his tools, he sought out the subject of his wrath and asked for forgiveness. Then he went back to his work of making Christ known.
We will fall; as C. S. Lewis pointed out we will be very dirty children by the time we get home. The only fatal thing is to give up.
David Roper