Victory Over Vesuvius
Have you ever been the recipient of some high-octane anger? If so, you know what it is to be blasted by the maniacal screams of an out-of-control enemy.
Referring to such anger, Galatians 5:15 says we're not to bite and devour one another. In using these words, Paul was perhaps thinking about those wild dogs that scavenged the cities for garbage. Unfortunately, some Christians today are more oriented to the word “savage” than to the word “salvage,” and in certain instances have become more beast than brother.
Whenever Mount Vesuvius blows and the hot lava of our wrath comes spewing forth, there will be a scarring of emotions, a ruining of relationships, and, very likely, the destroying of a witness, if there ever was one to destroy.
For reasons that are totally justified, Ephesians 4:31 denounces wrath. Wrath is anger intensified. Wrath is fury unloosed. Wrath is a thunderbolt of judgment designed to wipe someone out.
In all too many churches today there are people who will draw their theological revolver from their ecclesiastical trousers and commence firing away.
There are more than a few people who could give a testimony about what anger took away! People have lost jobs, friends, marriages, self-respect, their witness for the Lord—all because of vehement, vitriolic anger.
Due to its desire to dominate, anger should be seen for what it is, the petulant demands of a rival god, the insistent urges of an infantile ego, the bully tactics of a thug.
But once unleashed, anger has a way of boomeranging back to hurt us.
In one of the old “Amos and Andy” shows, Andy became increasingly incensed whenever an animated acquaintance slapped him in the chest with the back of his hand. So, blowing steam one day, Andy announced to Kingfish, “I’m going to fix him! I’m going to put a stick of dynamite in my vest so that the next time he hits me, he’s going to get his hand blowed off!”
This is how ungodly anger sometimes acts. It puts us in harm’s way, letting the acid of anger eat away at our soul.
One of the most colorful figures in American history was Aaron Burr—a very capable man, a brilliant man, a man who had immense power as a politician. In fact, he would have been elected President of the United States had not Alexander Hamilton thrown the weight of his influence against him.
Hatred of Hamilton burned in Aaron Burr’s heart! Resolving to take revenge upon him, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel which was fought at Weehawken, New Jersey.
The two men stood apart, raised their pistols, and fired. A bullet from Aaron Burr’s pistol took Hamilton’s life.
What a great moment that must have been for Aaron Burr! What a sense of satisfaction must have been his!
But the bullet that took the life of his enemy also ended Burr's political life. The nation turned against him. Never again did Aaron Burr have a chance at public office. The trend of his life from then on was only downward.
The fire in his heart, the gunfire that resulted, began with a certain lust, a desire for higher office, and became incendiary, destructive anger. Thomas Watson warned, “When lust or anger burn in the soul, Satan warms himself at the fire.” And flashes that fiendish grin!
Stopping Anger
Because this is what chronic anger does portend, it is essential that the fire of our anger be extinguished at once. To delay, is to risk flashes of fire darting in this direction and that—searing, scalding, and eventually scorching what is of immense value.
So how does one stop anger, and by this we mean ungodly anger? The only way to stop it, is to stop it! We don't scale it back. We don't retain it as an option. We don't count it as progress if we only had two outbursts of anger this week when last week we had five.
History shows that if anger is retained as an option, it will be used. Therefore, vowing to stop it means: However else I respond to a situation; it won't be anger! That's the one option off the table!
Saying only this, though, credits our willpower too much. For while our will may be the most important faculty of the soul, the better response to anger will come from our spirit, not our soul. Romans 13 says, “Let us walk properly … not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
To put on Jesus means to “switch tracks,” to get out of the orbit of our self-life with all of its wishes and wants and into the flow of the new nature. And the flow of the new nature is toward the originator of the new nature, the Lord Jesus.
If you'll make it the practice of your life to get into his presence—to listen to him, speak to him, yield your life to him—all that would have gone on in your life, won't happen.
Let me try to illustrate this. Let’s say that an important, nationally-known dignitary has come to your city and for PR purposes has decided to visit your home—the home of a typical, middle-class citizen.
The telephone rings soon after this highly respected man with his entire entourage arrives.
It’s your business partner informing you that a competitor has just pulled a mean, underhanded trick that has caused you to lose your biggest account.
So how do you react? Do you start huffing and puffing and threatening to do this competitor in? Do you yell? Do you curse? Do you ventilate full fury for all in the TV audience to see?
No, as tough as it might be, in deference to your honored guest, you remain outwardly calm.
So what does that tell you?
What it should tell you is that contrary to your former “I can’t help it” explanations, you can help it. Those earlier outbursts from you involved your decision to indulge your feelings.
Granted, the ability to restrain yourself is not the consummate victory, but it is a start, upon which we can build better things.
Jesus said, “Behold, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). This has to mean that one far more important than this renown dignitary is on the scene! And if you even partially saw his glory, you would gulp, you would gawk, you would probably fall to the floor completely overwhelmed. What you would not do—indeed, what you wouldn’t even think of doing—is throw a tantrum, laced with uncouth language and steamy indignation.
What would stop you? The awesome presence of Jesus!
Jesus became your Lord when you agreed that he will control your life, not you. So, if you have been cultivating a sweeter and deeper relationship with him, you're not going to throw off the yoke that Jesus shares with you to make your life easier.
Do you see the principle? If you communicate with Jesus several times a day, Jesus will become more real to you; and the more real Jesus becomes, the more your anger will easily and speedily dissipate.
If the truth be known, the chronically angry person doesn’t just “lose it” at those peak moments of frustration. He actually lost it long before when he started, and then stayed, living in the the self-life. That's why Romans 13 we are told to switch tracks, to exit the self-life and to function in the spirit life.
What is the spirit life like? The Bible says the fruit of the spirit is love (do you see how that differs with anger?), joy (do you see how that differs?), peace (do you see how that differs?).
On and on we can go, patience …. Pause, as you meditate the difference this would make. Are you thinking?
Pause again for each of the other parts of the spirit's fruit, kindness—do you see how that contrasts with ungodly anger? Goodness (which, like love, sums up the fruit), meekness (which means being moldable, pliable, teachable), and temperance, which means being controlled by the Holy Spirit.
Can you see how living life through your spirit, your new nature, disallows the anger that alienates—and, in fact, is the remedy for it?
What will further incentivize living from your new nature is the theological truth that every part of the spirit's fruit is in you right now. You don't acquire these qualities gradually; you got them suddenly. At that point in time, you were born again and became a new creation, these qualities came instantly, and fully into your life.
Tragically, most believers, and even most pastors know very little about the new nature. Pastors will let years and even careers go by without ever doing a series on this subject. My book, Pursuing a Divine Life, a Study of the New Nature, comprehensively sets forth this teaching.
There's really nothing more important anyone can say about how to solve the problem of anger than this: what life lived through the new nature can for do for you.
Nevertheless, let me tweak this approach a bit by offering you—
Three Words
What should the angry person do with his anger? He shouldn’t repress it, because that drives the anger inward where it can do more danger there. But neither should he express it, because the Bible never teaches ventilation. The pillow fights, the primeval screams, the “get it off your chest” outbursts are not God’s way at all! Actions like these only empower, and perhaps dignify, what God wants transformed. The relief from this kind of release is only temporary.
What God wants instead is for these angry feelings to be—not repressed, or expressed, but confessed. Confessed, not in the sense of shedding tears and asking for forgiveness, but in the sense of adopting the same perspective God has. The Greek word for confessed, homologeo, means “to say the same thing as.”
To say what God says will mean recognizing that God's view of destructive anger is that it be spurned, rejected, forsaken, and ruled out. Agree with that; don't justify your anger. You say what God says.
Also, let me add—
Three More Words
Do you remember the story of Cain and Able? First, Cain was sad because his offering was rejected. Then he was mad because Able’s offering was accepted. Then he was bad when he turned around and killed Able.
Now the best way to deal with stage-two or stage-three anger, the mad or the bad, is to take it back to stage-one, the sad. Focus there. People instinctively want to help the person who is sad; but, just as instinctively, they don’t want to be anywhere near the person who is mad or, still worse, bad.
Therefore, to present one’s concerns from stage-one “sad” allows for a more constructive solution. But, this caution: When doing so, listen; don't just speak. And don't manipulate, as sad people sometimes do in order get more attention.
What you are listening for is God's solution, which may not entirely exonerate you. Still, you must listen for the truth that will set you free, as opposed to rehashing your ideas that set you off.
We call this R&R time. R&R time is the gap between the first emotional reaction and the eventual settled response. For the hothead, there is no gap. Feelings control! The enraged will reacts!
We need a gap, but not one fuming with disgust because of this perceived injustice. Doing that will only exacerbate the problem.
Let's make it a godly gap, where His mind is sought, where His heart is shown, where His response is one that serves Him but not self.
There have been many people who had a long history of anger problems but completely turned that around. So completely that people today would never guess this person once had an anger problem!
That story could be yours, angry person. You don't have to be like the big, bad wolf: huffing and puffing to blow a house in.
Not if you let Jesus in ... your own heart's home.
