Proverbs 15:18

 

The world gives us a lot of reasons to be angry. People, politics, and the simple inconveniences of live, there’s always something else we could be angry about. It’s an easy temptation to give into. Anger can be motivating, can be invigorating, can be addictive (in the sense that even if you want to keep it, even when you know it’s hurting you). On occasion, it can even be righteous. Yet we must be careful with our tempers. Anger tends to breed anger, tends to inhibit the healing of whatever caused it.

In the first place, anger breaks our brains. When I’m angry, I don’t think clearly. When I’m angry, my brain is on self-defense, self-vindication, and putting all the fault on the other side. Anger changes my motivation from ‘finding and acting on the truth’ to ‘vindicating myself and hurting the other guy’. More, anger degrades my capacity to understand. You’ve experienced it too. It is for a reason that anger has been described as a ‘fog’; if calm is ideal for thought, anger breaks that calm.

As a result, when we’re angry, we tend to push not towards resolution but towards anger, either from motivation or incompetence. After all, we want to indulge our temper, so we act in pursuit of that motivation and thereby harm both ourselves and others. Anger breeds anger in part because it motivates us to anger others, to do what hurts them, whether justly or not. In part, though, anger leads to more anger because everybody involved stops having the concern or the wherewithal to deescalate. Tempers flare, flared tempers give more reasons for anger, and the cycle repeats.

In the second, humans tend to adapt to their social environment. When I enter a room full of happy, smiling people, I will probably smile (unless I’m in a bad enough mood to be angered by the contrast). A joke told in the company of other people can often make us laugh where the same joke wouldn’t do anything at all in private, written on a piece of paper; we absorb and imitate the jollity. So is it for anger. We adapt to the anger of those around us and before us, and we imitate it.

In some ways, this is a rational reaction. The other guy is angry; there must be a reason to be angry; I grow angry in imitation. But no, honestly, it’s not really rational at all. Just because other people are angry doesn’t justify me losing my temper- the anger might be unjustified, might be justified but on grounds I cannot share. At the very least, growing angry will diminish rather than increase my ability to think through the circumstance. Yet, as a human being, I am prone to this mimetic behavior.

This reaction reaches its extreme in a passionate crowd. A mob in anger does not need to explain to its members why they are angry; no, the mob may be as ignorant as it pleases. Anger becomes its own motivation with enough intensity and enough people, and reason can be found later, after the fact and by the individual. Even with a mere two people, though, this phenomenon is still in effect. If I grow angry, the person I’m arguing with will probably reciprocate, will at least have to work to leash his temper. Here too it does not help that anger makes us act selfishly, us-v-them, without regard for justice (with less moral inhibition). Anger motivates us to hurt others, and they grow angry in return. Thus contention swells.

Third, anger destroys strategic empathy. Here I’m borrowing a term from geopolitics (or at least that’s where I learned it) but strategic empathy is the art of understanding what the other person wants in order to anticipate and work with (or against) them (it is not ‘motivation by victim narrative’, the common use of the term ‘empathy’). We should all quickly see the usefulness of this skill. We should also see how anger inhibits it. When I’m angry, I think from my own perspective and for myself or for those I have identified as ‘my side’; I do not consider my ‘opponent’. Anger is consuming, clouding the mind and refusing the calm necessary to adopt by proxy the viewpoint of another person, an essential part of strategic empathy.

I mentioned before that anger can be righteous. This is indisputable. God’s wrath is a great presence in Scripture, particularly in passages such as Revelations 8-11, the seven trumpets. Does man, though, have the right to anger? Psalm 97:10 gives us a direct answer with this command: “O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” In conjunction with other passages, such as Psalm 31:6, we get a clear picture of what we are to hate. We are to hate evil. This does not give us carte blanche to hate all the unregenerate of mankind, not on this earth. We have still a duty to love them insofar as on this earth they are still of the image of God (Matt. 5:44). What we are to hate is the evil which they do, which they have chosen; what we are to hate is the sin of Satan and his angels (Rev. 12:9; Ps. 26:5); what we are to hate is our own sin, that our hate of our own iniquity might bring us to repentance. Anger, perhaps, is the wrong word, though. We must hate, but we must hate evil with clear minds and clear thoughts, passion chained to truth.

Anger brings contention. If the anger is righteous, that contention may be justified, but most of our anger is unrighteous, is founded on hurt pride and on fear rather than on consuming love for God. In such circumstances, Proverbs has given us the guide for our heart: be ‘slow to anger’. In this, we must seek to imitate God, who proclaimed Himself, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). We must, like Him, seek justice, gives mercy, and regard with love all that which is lovely, love man made in the image of God and loath his perversions (for on earth the sinner has not yet become the sin). Then shall we find peace- in Him, and on this earth only partial, often peace amidst the storm, but true peace nonetheless.

God bless.

Written by Colson Potter

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Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.