Next Exodus commandment: `You shall not murder.`
Well, I imagine not many murderers are reading this. (Although Billy Graham’s wife, asked whether she’d ever thought of divorcing him, replied jokingly, `Divorcing, never. Murdering, certainly!` ) But in Matthew 5 Jesus repeats this command, then focuses on anger as the seed of murder, the thing we each really need to grapple with: ‘You have heard that it was said… “Anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.` And here’s 1 John 3: `Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.`
Anger: there is – must be – such a thing as righteous anger against injustice, and on behalf of the weak; think of Jesus cleansing the temple. Or in situations like a spouse’s infidelity. But most of my own anger is the other kind. What do we do about that?
Often the people we let ourselves get angriest with, and say the most cutting things to, are those closest to us – our partners, parents, kids. Not all of us explode: for some of us, anger is cold – `I don’t get mad, I get even` – we store it up and it comes out later, poisoning both us and our relationships. But hot anger can be poisonous too, even addictive, because it involves our whole self. It has a cost. As J John says, our blood pressure mounts, our stomach muscles tighten, our digestive tract is affected – the face turns red, the hands are clenched – and we’re moving along the route to stomach ulcers, heart attacks, crippling strokes. Plus, the victims of our anger will tend to reciprocate: in the end, as Jesus said, those who take the sword will perish in turn by the sword. Or if they can’t, the victims of our anger take it out on someone else: parents, children, someone weaker. So we really need to learn to handle our anger; our families need it; our society needs it.
`Everyone should be slow to become angry`, says God (James 1:19). So there’s the first step: learn to slow down, limit and delay your anger. Specifically, learn not to express it immediately – better leave the room or end the phonecall, and yes, count to twenty; and especially, learn to deal with it before you sleep (God’s Word in Eph 4:26, where Paul adds that otherwise we may be giving Satan a foothold). Exercise may help, or talking it through with someone else (recognizing however how that can turn into gossip); or, writing it all out, then destroying what we’ve written – more than once if necessary. Before we sleep is the deadline God gives us for letting it go; but this may all need doing again the next day, and the day after: still, that’s different from accepting, even dwelling on, our anger, or letting it to become a longterm grudge. `As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone` (Rom 12:18).
Then, as soon as we can, reflect (and do so before taking any other action): Are there reasons why I’ve felt so angry? Has something else wound me up? Be very suspicious if you’re saying `But there has to be justice!` And think creatively (it’s worth it) – might there be reasons why they did what they did? Maybe the boss had just had a row with his children, or received bad news about a sick relative, or is simply sick himself and not willing to admit it? Learn the skills (that’s what they are) of defusing angry situations: `A gentle answer turns away wrath`(Prov 15:1).
At the cross, says French sociologist Ellul, God absorbed the evil out of the world as with a sponge; and that pattern is repeated as the people of the cross `forgive each other, just as in Christ God forgave you’ (cf Eph 4:32). Instead of responding to evil with evil and prolonging a repetitive vendetta, forgiveness means letting go of the evil, handing it over to God, confident in his loving sovereignty (Rom 12:19-20). The people of the cross break the process of reciprocal anger bouncing back and forth, rather than taking it on to the next level. And in so doing we help ourselves: deep-seated resentment and bitterness are not much better for our health than outright fury…
And yet. It’s all so easy to say. But it can take more inner strength to forgive, drop a resentment, than to explode. I can’t do it: at least, not alone. But we’re not alone. Whereas the `works of the flesh` include hatred and `fits of rage`, the fruit that comes from cultivating our relationship with God’s Spirit will include – situation by situation – gentleness and self-control (Gal 5). God gave His Son to suffer violence and be murdered, so that our sins could be paid for and the barrier removed that keeps His Spirit out of our hearts, that leaves us trapped in hate and anger. That’s over now. Wrong behaviour shall not be your master, says God firmly in Romans 6:14; an astonishing promise, but as we cultivate our relationship with the Spirit, He means it (Gal 5:16)….
It’s reality. I’m so fortunate to have had enough years in IFES to see or know of many people loving each other who might have cause to hate each other: Serb and Croat, Jew and Palestinian, black and white South African, Tamil and Sinhala, Hutu and Tutsi. This is reality. And we can pray, Your kingdom come in me: in an angry world, help me, repentantly, start to be part, not of the problem, but of the solution; infecting other people with a different way of living…
