Written by Blake Mathews
Greed is easy to avoid. Envy isn’t too big of a problem. Lust can be counteracted with the right combination of Web filters and covered shins in the classroom. But the one deadly sin that seems to prey on Harding students unabated is anger, or rather, the stubbornness with which we cling to it.
I should say sooner rather than later that getting angry is not a sin. There’s the canned example of Jesus getting angry and destroying private property in Matthew 21, though we might categorize that as “zeal” rather than “wrecking shop.” Anger is an emotion and a very natural one at that, so don’t chastise yourself whenever someone makes you mad. How we act on our emotions is what either pleases God or drives us from him.
I should also say that I can only write this column because I too struggle with acting, thinking and living out of anger. When somebody nearly clips me in traffic, I don’t exactly utter a prayer on his or her behalf. Those flare-ups of anger and response can lead to trouble, but the worst of it comes from the slow burn, the simmering anger that festers like a wound left opened and uncleaned. We call them “grudges” against people we “aren’t on good terms with.” Maybe the initial fighting, name-calling and legal threats have subsided, but we still see them through hate-colored lenses.
This slow burning anger does not exist in a vacuum. It spreads to your friends and then to their friends; it eats away at your principles and hollows out the good, loving person that you are capable of being. The anger becomes your business card, and people will remember you by it. Regardless of how grievous the initial offense was, letting the anger turn you into a fiend is never excusable.
So, how should we deal with someone who wrongs us? First, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t be afraid to get angry. Numbing ourselves to injustice is a greater danger than indignation. Touch base with the anger, and plan your next move. Will you try to show this person what he or she has done wrong? If so, you may want to put your anger back in the box and pull out the love instead. Correcting our brothers and sisters when they err is an expression of love. Threatening to turn up the heat, taking another step down the path of conflict or likewise resolving to “teach them a lesson” might satisfy your pride. It might satisfy your sense of justice. But you will not replace conflict with peace. There will be a friend-sized hole in your life where that person used to be.
The biblical answer is reconciliation. I’ll let you look up the verses about squaring things away with your brother before you make a sacrifice on the altar, but the basic premise is that mutual forgiveness and understanding are the best ways to remove the taint of anger from our actions. And it needs to be removed.
Sometimes, though, mutual forgiveness isn’t available. The other person just may not be ready to reconcile. In that case, which I sometimes find myself in (when I’m not guilty of it myself), I take a lesson from the movie “Redbelt.” The 2008 film focuses on an idealistic jujitsu instructor who teaches his students that everything in life has a force. We have the option of either embracing that force, deflecting it or opposing it with our own force. “Turn to the side,” the instructor says. “Why oppose it?” If you cannot embrace the other person in his or her anger, simply deflecting it without striking back may be the best option. Turn to the side, and pray that a greater Force than you comes along and brings forgiveness.
