Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never
go hungry,
and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
|
|
|
|
“No,
I can’t control my temper!” But you can. “I
can’t.” Can. “Can’t.” Can. “Then
tell me how!” Certainly,
that’s what I wanted you to ask in the first place. Like many others, you have
bought the false line that under certain circumstances you are totally unable to
control your temper. That is false, I say, because the Bible assures us that if
you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you can. God calls upon you to do just
that: “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but the wise man, holding it back
quiets it” (Proverbs 29:11). “But
that’s just my problem; 1 cant hold
it back and quiet it.” When
you say can’t, what you really mean
is you don’t or won’t. You may have convinced yourself that you can’t, but that
doesn’t change the facts. You can; God says so. “Well,
if you knew how hard it is for me to do so, I think that you might change your
mind. You don’t know how many times I have tried to hold it back, but in the
end, I blow off anyway. You don’t know the situation.” I
think I do, and I still maintain that can’t is the wrong word to describe the
situation. Take Joan, for example. She complained that she lost her temper
whenever she became exasperated with her children, and the frequency of those
occasions was increasing. At times she blew off like Mt. Vesuvius. Ashes and
sparks went everywhere. Well, Joan… “I
can identify with Joan!” Good,
I thought that you could, because when she came for counseling, she too said
that she thought it was impossible to restrain her anger. She argued with me
much the same way that you have. Then I said, “Joan, let me describe a typical
situation, and then tell me if it fits. Suppose it is late in the afternoon on a
rainy day when everything has gone wrong. You got your period today, the pot
boiled over on the stove, your three preschoolers have been cooped up inside all
day long, and…(well, you fill in the
additional details). Now, let us further suppose that the kids get into a scrap
complete with fistfights, whining and all of the rest for the umpteenth time.
You have tried, but this is it, you restrain your anger no longer. Instead, over
some slight provocation, in a burst of volcanic activity, you erupt. Lava-like,
words pour out. Fire and ash spout forth in all directions. Debris is
everywhere. Kids are diving under tables, hiding in closets. It is a real
spectacular. Now, in the midst of all of this, the phone rings. On the other end
is Mrs. Green, head of the local gossip society. She is the very last person
that you would want to hear you carrying on like this. So…what do you do?
Well, you sweetly say to her ‘O, hello, Mrs. Green, it is so nice to hear from
you... etc.’ What have you done? Controlled your temper!” At this point Joan
broke in: “That very thing happened just last week.” “It
has happened to me too.” Well, then, you see, both Joan and you can control
your temper when you really want to, when you are highly enough motivated to do
so, and when you make a strong effort of the right sort. The problem is that you
have learned not to bother to control your temper in certain circumstances with
certain persons. But you have learned to control your temper in situations where
you thought that you could not get away with such outbursts. “I
guess you are right.” This
little vignette illustrates an all-too-common problem. Men and women — truly
Christian men and women — learn to
let go of their temper in the presence of members of the family, even though
they have learned to control them
before others. Husbands who give their wives severe tongue-lashings at least
fort-nightly become even tempered sweetness and light personified at work and in
dozens of social situations. The reason, of course, is that (as the italics
indicate) they have learned to do
either one or the other. And, because this is a matter of learned behavior,
there is hope for change. What has been learned can be unlearned, as a new way
of responding that is pleasing to God is relearned to take its place. Moreover,
the fact that you have learned to control your temper in any situation at all
shows that you can learn to do so. That means that you can learn to do so at
home. Isn’t
it strange, businessman, that you think it more important to control your temper
with your boss than with your wife? “But I would lose my job if I lost my
temper at work,” you may protest. Exactly. You probably would. But you see,
reasoning that way only shows how poorly you conceive of life’s priorities.
Because the money that you make at your job is a more tangible, immediate
reality, you therefore give the job higher priority. Yet, your relationship to
your wife and to the Lord is a far higher priority. You are damaging those
relationships too. Because God and your wife love you, you think that you can
get away with abusing them both with your language. But you can’t. Your
fellowship with both is hindered. God has written: “Husbands, love your wives
and do not be embittered against them” (Colossians 3:19). Uncontrolled temper
is never acceptable. It is sin. It is sin in the home as well as anywhere else.
The fact that your wife puts up with you longer than your boss, does not change
the truth of that judgment. So, if it is sin, it must stop. And, as we have
seen, it can be stopped. God Himself has said that He will help you to “put
away all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor” (Ephesians 4:31). “How’?
I have tried everything, but nothing has worked.” Well,
it is clear that you have not tried everything;
you have not tried God’s way. It
never fails. Before we get to the ways and means of putting off sinful patterns
of manifesting your anger that are clearly set forth in the Bible, let us look
at the other way in which many people sinfully handle their anger. Instead of
blowing off, they clam up. They do a slow burn. They hold it in and allow it to
pile up and to crystallize. They grow bitter and resentful, day after day
rehearsing old grievances, licking old wounds. When the Bible speaks of holding
back anger, it does not suggest clamming up and becoming resentful as the
alternative. Holding back a sinful expression of anger differs from holding it
in. Indeed, holding it in is the other sinful extreme which also is condemned by
God: “Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger”
(Ephesians 4:26). The answer to loss of control of temper is not resentment,
just as the answer to resentment can never be flying off the handle. The person
who holds in his anger and stores it up, sins just as surely as the one who does
the Mt. Vesuvius. “What
then is the solution to the problem of sinful anger? On the one hand you say
that the Bible condemns the ventilation of anger, but on the other hand you
insist that anger must not be held in. Doesn’t that leave us with only one
conclusion — that it is always sinful to be angry at all’?” No,
that is not the only way to go. While it is true that both of the manifestations
of anger that we have talked about are condemned by the Bible, it does not
follow that all anger is sinful. Indeed, in the passage just cited from
Ephesians 4:26, notice that Paul says we must not sin when we are angry by clamming up and letting the sun go down on that
anger. It is clear from the words, “be angry, but do not sin” that all anger
is not sinful in and of itself. Anger, like every other emotion that God has
given us. is a proper and useful emotion when it is expressed in a manner that
is consistent with the principles of the Scriptures and used for the purposes
that God has set forth in that Book. As a matter of fact, that anger may even
reflect the anger of God Himself under such circumstances. Verses like Psalm
7:11 (God is “angry with the wicked every day”) and Mark 3:5 (Jesus
“looking around at them with anger…”) give us a certain indication that
there is such a thing as righteous anger. Let
us try to understand what is wrong with the two sorts of anger that God condemns
and what the biblical alternative to such manifestations of anger is. First
notice, neither one of the alternatives examined so far solves any problems.
Both, instead, create new and worse ones. Anger is a powerful motivating force
that is intended to drive one to destroy something. But, the difficulty is, God
has not given us the right to destroy other people or to destroy our own bodies.
Ventilation of anger is aimed at destroying others (or handy and symbolic
objects around one). Internalization (unintentionally, but nevertheless, surely)
is aimed at destroying ourselves. Blowing up at people and things, as one vents
his spleen, truly releases the energies of anger, but in ways that do not really
solve the problem that occasioned the anger in the first place. Instead, these
energies released out of control and in ways calculated to hurt others, only do
more damage. Clamming up, holding anger in, releases the energies of anger
within one’s body. These energies, intended to motivate one to do the right
sorts of things to solve the problem that occasioned the anger, instead are
misdirected toward one’s own body and result in tension, colitis, ulcers or
other such miseries. Diagrammatically,
let me try to show you how these actions fail to achieve the purposes for which
God put anger into man’s emotional makeup. Notice how the energies mobilized by anger are misdirected. While in both instances they are released, these powerful energies fail to meet the problem. In contrast, listen to the important words of Ephesians 4:29: Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth. but only
such a word as is good for building up, aimed at the problem that has arisen,
that it may give help to those who hear [my own translation]. You
see, our words to others even when they have wronged us — must be words that
build them up and that give them help; never words that destroy them. Such
destruction of others is a prerogative that belongs not to us, but to God (read
Romans 12:18-21). But of greater importance for our present discussion is the
fact that the words spoken out of anger (and that is what the context is talking
about) must be directed toward destroying the problem, not toward destroying the
person. Psychiatrists and others sometimes make the mistake of recommending
pendulum thinking and acting. If someone has been holding in anger, they may
recommend ventilating it towards others, toward a pillow symbolizing others,
etc. But this is wrong, biblically. It fails, because even though the energy is
released in a new way, the new way is out of accord with God’s Word and
therefore just as wrong, as wasteful and as counterproductive as the first. It
is a matter of exchanging one sinful pattern for another. Moreover, you can see
how this type of swing still leaves the problem untouched.
In
pursuing either of these pendulum swings, as you are from one extreme to the
other, you move past the biblical middle and fail to release the energies
mobilized by anger in a constructive way that will destroy the problem and
strengthen the relationship one has with others, and with God. Now,
in contrast to both of these schemes, let us look at the biblical alternative:
Aim all of your energies at solving the problem God’s way. If your problem has been ventilation, outbursts of temper, blowing up (Diagram A), rather than swinging past the biblical middle over toward Internalization, you must ask God to help you to hold back rather than hold in your anger. That is, you must learn how to release anger under control, If your problem has been internalization, holding anger in, clamming up (Diagram B). rather than swinging past the biblical middle over toward Ventilation, you must ask God to help you to release rather than hold in your anger. That is, you must learn how to release anger under control. When you do, the diagram will look something like this:
Only in this way can you gain control of this
powerful and important force in your life. Anger, like a good horse, must be
bridled. By his grace, God will help to gain control of your anger so that you
may use it for His honor if you try to follow the biblical directions about
anger taught in these Scriptures. You do not have to make the change in your own
strength, because as you prayerfully seek to follow the guidance of the Bible,
the Spirit of God will enable you to do so. That you can depend upon if… “I
thought that there must be a catch somewhere.” Yes,
there is one, but only one. All this God promises to you IF YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN,
but the promise is not yours if you are not. A Christian is someone who has
learned that he is a sinner condemned before God because he has broken the laws
of God. He has discovered that he cannot do anything about this himself, but he
has come to see that God has done for him all that he could not do. Christ came
to die in his place, taking the punishment for his sins. Thus, He has paid the
penalty for the broken laws. Moreover, because God is sinless and because heaven
is a perfectly holy place, Jesus has lived a perfect life in his stead. Just as
all of his sin was taken upon Christ as his Substitute, so all of the
righteousness of Christ has been counted as his. And all of this took place when
he understood this message and believed it (that is, put his dependence upon
what Christ did for him in His death and resurrection). The very moment that he
believed, his sins were forgiven and he was declared holy in the sight of God.
That is what a Christian is. Let
me ask you, are you a Christian’? If
you are not, then let me urge you not to try to deal with the problem of anger
first. Put first things first. Take a hard look at your life, recognize your sin
(the anger is a good place to begin) and your need of a Savior. If God is
showing you this, then trust Jesus right now. Christian,
while the basic dynamic for handling anger God’s way has been spelled out for
you, it is likely that you may need help in restructuring the particulars in
your own situation. If so, seek the counsel of the person who gave this pamphlet
to you, write to the contact point listed below or read, Chapter 31 of The
Christian Counselor’s Manual by Jay Adams, The Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing Co., Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865.
|
|
