Clearance: Restocking Your Emotional Inventory – Anger

Clearance: Restocking Your Emotional Inventory – Anger
Sycamore Creek Church
September 18, 2011
Tom Arthur
Proverbs

Peace, Friends!

Those are ironic words to open a sermon about anger.  Today we continue a series on emotions.  We’ve all got a surplus of some emotions that we’d like to run a clearance sale on.  So we’re doing that.  Last week we ran a clearance on anxiety.  Today it’s anger.  Anybody got a surplus of anger they’d like to clear out and restock with something else?

If you know me you’ll know that I tend to have an emotional poker face.  I don’t show a lot of emotion on the outside, but on the inside I’m often full of all kinds of emotions.  While it may not show very often, I struggle a lot with anger.  Outside: emotional poker face.  Inside: FUMING!

This past week, I was making some bread in our bread machine. We’ve had this bread machine for maybe twelve years.  It’s been great, but lately the pan has been popping out of place in the machine.  There are these little tabs that hold it down so that the engine can mix the dough, but they’re getting weak.  So the pan pops out and the ingredients don’t get mixed.  It has only happened occasionally until lately.  Well, this past week it was happening every five seconds.  I was getting so frustrated, and I could feel that anger building up and building up inside me, and at one moment, what I really wanted to do was RIP THAT @#%@ PAN OUT OF THE MACHINE AND THROW IT ACROSS THE ROOM AND STOMP ON IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN SO IT KNOWS WHO EXACTLY IS THE BOSS!  But I didn’t.  But I was oh so close…

Anger takes a lot of different forms.  For me, I rarely blow up on the outside.  I do blow up.  Just not very often.  What anger looks like for me is stewing.  I argue with people over and over in my mind.  Of course, in my mind, I always sound brilliant and win the argument.  Then everything is just fine.  Or at least that’s how it works in my mind.  It rarely ever works that way in real life.

I experienced an intensity of anger like I have never experienced before with the birth of my son, Micah, and the changes that he brought to my life.  My wife and I had been married for thirteen years before we decided to have a child.  So when he came along, we had a lot of rhythms of life that were pretty well set.  I liked to refer to him as the wrecking ball.  He came crashing through all those ways of doing things.  I no longer got to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do.  Now Micah gets what Micah wants when Micah wants it!

Add to those changes that the wrecking ball brought with him something else that I had never experienced.  I had a very physiological response to his crying.  To me at first his crying was like someone running their fingernails down a chalk board.  So I’m not only not getting to do what I want at any given moment, but I’m also listening to someone run their fingernails down a chalk board.  This was an explosive combination.  Every night for about three months when Micah would cry I would feel my muscles tense up.  My arms would feel like they were twitching.  My neck would stiffen.  My gut would tighten.  I wanted to flail.  I WANTED TO THROW AND BREAK SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!  And when I was holding Micah, I wanted THROW HIM ACROSS THE ROOM!  I’m not joking or exaggerating.

This whole anger response was very scary to me.  It was very scary to Sarah.  Thankfully, I never did hurt him, although sometimes I did have to lay him down on the floor and walk away.  Crying never killed a baby.  But the whole thing scared me enough that I decided to seek out a counselor to help me through the transition and deal with the frustration and anger.  I’m thankful to say today that after time with the counselor, time talking to a lot of friends both here at Sycamore Creek and elsewhere, and some practices I’ve learned through the process, I rarely every have those kinds of reactions now.  And when I do, they don’t scare me like they used to scare me.  I know what I’m dealing with and I channel the anger in positive directions.

Anger Is…

One of the key things I have learned about anger is what anger is.  Anger is a physiological response of readiness.  It is an energy-filled response of readiness.  It is physical arousal.  Anger is also a secondary emotion.  It is a response to one of three primary emotions: hurt, fear, or frustration.  When I realized what exactly anger was, it became more understandable to me, and what I could do with it became clearer.  Let’s unpack this a bit more.

Anger is a response of readiness.  Our bodies are preparing to respond to something that is happening outside of us.  It is part of the fight or flight response.  When we feel hurt, fear, or frustration, our bodies are giving us everything they’ve got.  This response can feel like a rush.  Adrenaline kicks in.  Our muscles have the potential for more strength.  Our attention is acute.  We are ready to respond.  But respond to what?

First, hurt.  When we are hurt we respond with anger.  We can be hurt in a lot of different ways.  Someone lies to you and you’re hurt.  Anger kicks in.  Someone misrepresents you, questions your motives, tries to scam you, looks down on you because of your age (you’re too young or you’re too old!), breaks up with you, or judges you.  All these things hurt and our bodies respond with anger.

I was hurt one time in a particularly humiliating way as an elementary student.  A friend of mine “pantsed” me.  The basic idea of pantsing is to pull down your pants and leave you standing there in your underwear.  But this friend also got a hold of my underwear and pulled everything down in front of a bunch of girls.  There I was humiliated.  It hurt.  When I think back on that it still makes me angry.

Second, we respond with anger when we experience fear.  There was a video circulating on the internet of Casey Haynes being bullied by Richard Gale.  Richard and his buddies are surrounding Casey, while Richard continually punches him.  The catch is that Casey is about three times the size of Richard.  At a certain point he snaps, picks Richard up, and body slams him on the concrete and walks away.  There has been a lot of debate about this on the internet.  Was Casey justified in his response?  I tend to think that violence and hate only breed more violence and hate, but I think we can all understand the response of anger that Casey had to being hurt by Richard.

Third, we respond with anger to frustration.  This is the big one for me.  I seem to get frustrated especially when things don’t go the way that I want them to go, or maybe said more directly, when I don’t get my own way.  Although it’s not always so selfish.  One time we were driving back from Traverse City on M115.  It was dark, and Sarah and Micah were in the back seat.  At some point somebody in a big truck pulled up behind me and was tailing me so close that I wanted to pull over and let the guy pass me.  His headlights were blinding me in my rearview mirror.  I was thinking about my infant son in the back seat and his safety.  The frustration was building.  Just as I was planning to pull over a deer stepped out onto the edge of the road, and I felt like I was caught.  Put on the breaks and risk being rear-ended (I had been rear-ended about a year ago and was still dealing with the back pain from that experience), or risk hitting the deer.  I did put my breaks on and the truck came even closer.  I think he even shined his brights at me or something.  It all gets a little blurry to me at this point in my memory, because my body shot through with a response of anger.  As soon as I was past the deer I pulled over, laid on my horn and shouted at the top of my lungs, “You @#%@@#!”  I was breathing heavy and had to calm myself down before I could continue driving.  I was so frustrated with this driver.  I was seething with anger.

God’s Wisdom

God offers us some wisdom to know how to deal with anger.  When I think about wisdom I turn to the book of Proverbs first.  The book of Proverbs speaks about anger over and over again.  A key proverb about anger is:

A fool gives full vent to anger, but a wise person quietly holds it back.
Proverbs 29:11 NLT

The image here is very helpful to me.  It’s like one of those tea kettles that whistles when it gets heated up.  The response to fear, hurt, or frustration builds up and up and up like the heat in the water, and the fool gives full vent to that anger and blows off a lot of steam making a lot of noise and ruckus.

Interestingly enough, there used to be a therapy called primal scream that encouraged patients to vent their full anger through a primal scream.  The problem was that this only seemed to increase the anger and not diminish it.  This primal scream therapy has been mostly discredited at this point.  But we could have learned this same lesson from Proverbs: a fool gives full vent to anger, but a wise person quietly holds it back.

There are many Proverbs about anger that worth exploring.  Here are some of them:

Proverbs 30:33 NRSV – For as pressing milk produces curds, and pressing the nose produces blood, so pressing anger produces strife.

Proverbs 15:1 NLT – A gentle answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger.

Proverbs 18:19 NLT – It’s harder to make amends with an offended friend than to capture a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with iron bars.

Proverbs 14:29 NLT – Those who control their anger have great understanding; those with a hasty temper will make mistakes.

Here is perhaps one of my favorite ones:

Proverbs 21:9 NLT – It is better to live alone in the corner of an attic than with a contentious wife in a lovely home.

I was surprised to read again a couple of chapters later:

Proverbs 25:24 NLT – It is better to live alone in the corner of an attic than with a contentious wife in a lovely home.

Ouch!  You know what?  It’s so true.  Everything can look good on the outside, but if you’re living with an angry and contentious or “quarrelsome” (as some translations put it) spouse, life is pretty miserable no matter how nice a house you live in.

You could easily substitute “husband” for “wife” in this proverb.  In fact, in reality that is usually the case more often.  When it comes to anger, women more often bear the brunt of male anger than the other way around.  Women sustain two million injuries from domestic abuse each year (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data collected in 2005).  Nearly one in four women in the United States reports experiencing violence by a current or former spouse or boyfriend at some point in her life.  That’s a lot of pain caused from anger.

I think that Paul, one of the writers of the New Testament, sums up God’s wisdom about anger in this way:

Be angry but do not sin.
Eph 4:26 NRSV

This suggests to me that anger itself is not a sin.  Earlier I called it a response, a physical arousal.  I think this is very much in line with how Paul sees things.  You may have all that adrenaline dump into your system when you’re hurt, frustrated, or fearful, but don’t let it lead you down the path of sin.  Do something else with it.  But what?

Anger = Energy

I’d like to suggest that anger has a lot of energy in it, and you can use the energy of your anger to good ends rather than sinful ends.  You can take that state of being ready and point it toward aggressive, violent, or painful results, or you can take that state of being ready and point it toward creative reconciliation.  I’d like to offer you some tips on how to do the latter.

When I was studying anger in my own life shortly after Micah’s birth, I read a book that I found very helpful: Make Anger Your Ally by Neil Clark Warren.  If Warren’s name sounds familiar that’s probably because he is the founder of eHarmony.  Besides being a romantic matchmaker, Warren is also a Christian and a psychologist.  He has a lot of wisdom to share about anger.  I won’t share everything in the book with you this morning, but I would like to share some things that I found particularly helpful.

First, keep an anger journal.  For about three months, I spent some time every day writing down every moment in the day where I was angry.  I wrote down what caused me the anger.  I described the details of how the anger expressed itself.  I asked what I wanted out of the situation, and how I responded.  I also described a plan for the future.  This journal gave me a wealth of data to mine about myself and what situations caused me anger.  This helped me begin to work on strategies ahead of time.  It is awfully hard to respond in positive ways when you are angry if you haven’t practiced ahead of time.  How could Casey Hayes have responded differently without aggression and violence if he had some help from the adults around him exploring creative solutions for situations like the bullying he found himself in?

Second, I’d suggest practicing a daily proverb.  Take the list of proverbs above and write them on a 3×5 card.  Put them in your pocket and carry them around with you.  Reflect on them occasionally throughout the day.  Let God’s wisdom sink into your mind.  When you are reflecting on the data in your journal, let God’s wisdom guide your reflection.

Third, I find asking the question, “What do I want?” to be very helpful when I am experiencing hurt, frustration, or fear.  I think that some of the effects of the bodily response of anger shut down some of our higher thinking abilities.  I become like my nine-month-old son.  I’m kind of like a Neanderthal.  I stop communicating.  I grunt.  I groan.  I make loud noises.  I stop thinking.  Asking myself, “What do I want?” when I feel myself getting angry reminds me to keep thinking.  Then I try to express this to myself.  This may sound silly, but when we get angry, it is something we simply forget to do.  I think it’s also helpful to express what you want to the person you’re talking to, if you are able to do so peacefully.  If you’re not able to do so peacefully, then it may be best to walk away for the time being.  You may need to wait for the energy of the response to cool down.  Men, I’d like to especially encourage you to do walk away for a moment in times like this, but don’t stay away.  Too often we go into our emotional caves and never come back out.  I’ve found that sometimes I have to say to Sarah, “I can’t keep talking about this, or I am going to blow up.”  She has learned that the best thing to do is to stop talking about it as quickly as possible, but she trusts me when I say this because she knows that I will come back to the conversation when I have cooled down.  Too many men walk away, but always leave it up to their wives to bring it back up.  It is helpful to remember the second half of Paul’s statement about anger: “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”  Once you’ve expressed what you want to both yourself and the person you’re talking to, look for a creative solution.  Renegotiate expectations.  Give and take.  Share values.  Be flexible.  Look for solutions that are win-win.  Brainstorm.  Keep at it.  Don’t give up.  Be creative.

Fourth, share your anger with someone else besides the person who is causing you anger.  Don’t keep this anger in the dark.  I found that one of the most helpful things for me dealing with my frustration and anger with Micah was sharing it with many of you, especially many of the men in our church.  I came to find out that my experience isn’t really unique.  Many men felt the way that I did when they first became dads.  I really wasn’t all that strange.  So share your experience of anger with someone else.  A friend, family member, small group, or perhaps like me, a counselor.  Do it before your life is falling apart.

Lastly, there is one kind of anger that I think points us in a different direction: anger at injustice.  I like to call this righteous anger.  It’s the kind of anger you feel when you see someone else being treated unjustly.  Often times this happens when someone else’s voice is taken from them.  Proverbs says:

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those who are perishing. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.
Proverbs 31:8-9 NLT

Take that anger and use the energy of it to break down oppression and injustice.  Use the energy of it to give energy to those who have lost all energy in their lives.

Imagine a Different Kind of Anger

Imagine with me for a moment what life would be like if all the energy of anger was channeled toward positive ends rather than violent or destructive ends.  What would your relationships look like?  There’d be reconciliation.  That guy who was tailing me would have stopped and we would have talked and there’d be an apology and forgiveness.  There wouldn’t be relationships that just silently died because anger sucked all the energy out of them.  We wouldn’t walk around feeling numb to the people around us because of what they had done to us.  We’d work on creative solutions to bring healing and life to those around us.  And if we couldn’t accomplish full reconciliation and renegotiation with those who have hurt us, caused us fear, or made us frustrated, we’d at least agree not to slander one another and to pray the best for one another instead.  That’s what is possible if we take the energy of anger and point it toward a more peaceful end.

Let’s go back to that key proverb:

A fool gives full vent to anger, but a wise person quietly holds it back.
Proverbs 29:11 NLT

Remember that tea kettle?  What do we do with all that hot water?  What do we do with all that steam and energy?  We take that steam and we turn it into a steam engine that propels us forward.  We take that hot water and we make tea out of it.  And of course, tea suggests sitting down with friends and talking it out, peacefully.  Don’t give full vent to your anger, but quietly hold it back and use the energy of your anger to creative ends.

I’d like to pray for those of you who struggle with anger.

God, sometimes anger feels totally overwhelming.  It’s like it takes us over.  Help those who struggle with anger to not give it full vent, but to hold it back quietly and use the energy of that anger to creative and positive ends.  In Jesus’ name, amen.