Anger

One of the readers of these pages writes to me regularly, and has spoken recently about anger over a particular incident. This set me to thinking about anger, and to writing those thoughts here.

Just as it is possible to find four quite different definitions for 'love' (see C. S. Lewis's admirable 'The Four Loves') it is obvious that there are several types of anger. There is the anger we feel when we see some act of cruelty directed against a weak victim. We want to rush out and protect the suffering, and we feel a totally spontaneous rage against the person causing the hurt. We obviously feel the rage more intensely if the victim is some one close or dear to us, but we can feel the rage pretty strongly even if the victim is totally unknown to us.

At the other end of the scale there is the sort of resentment we feel when some one lets us down, cheats us, deceives us, belittles us, or insults us. This is the very human response we have to something that hurts us, and to the person that hurts us. Our anger can be very strong, even though in a more rational moment we recognise that the hurt was not actually deliberate.

Defence mechanisms, and anger like this is a sort of defence mechanism, are totally natural, and sometimes part of the way we survive as humans. The rush of adrenalin we need to respond to real physical danger is part of the anger response we feel towards an insult. In other words, some anger is perhaps purely chemical, and very difficult to control. No doubt this is why Paul of Tarsus gave us the advice 'Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.' (Ephesians 4:26)

The immediate response is perhaps not controllable. But we can control how we deal with it. We can either allow it to stay, to let it fester, to let it destroy a relationship; or we can let it go, release the cause of our anger by an act of forgiveness (even if the forgiveness is not sought), and recognise the extent to which that anger was really a bit of wounded pride.

It is reassuring that the Bible recognises that anger is a natural, and sometimes legitimate, response to events. It is also good to be warned to keep it under control. If I hold on to my anger, I am beginning a habit of resentment, even hatred, which will harm me, and produce no good result. Ultimately we are all bound by the principle that we are 'to forgive, as we have been forgiven.'

Shortly after saying 'Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger', Paul goes on to say: 'let all bitterness and wrath and anger ... be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.'

If this sounds too much like a counsel of perfection, just settle for forgetting your anger before the day is done. Chemically, as well as spiritually, it is after all rather bad for you.