WHY ARE YOU ANGRY?
Genesis 4:1-16, Matthew 5:21,22
Ted Schroder, October 23, 2016
www.tedschroder.com
The sixth commandment prohibits murder. Jesus applied this commandment to the motive for murder. “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.” (Matthew 5:21,22. The Message)
Jesus upped the ante on the sixth commandment by warning us that the judgment of hell awaited those who let their anger control them. Angry thoughts and insulting words are weapons which we use against one another. St. John wrote, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.” (1 John 3:15) “Anger and insult are ugly symptoms of a desire to get rid of somebody who stands in our way. Our thoughts, looks and words all indicate that, as we sometimes dare to say, ‘we wish he were dead.’ Such an evil wish is a breach of the sixth commandment.” (John Stott, Christian Counter-Culture, p.85)
The first murder in the Bible is committed by Cain against his brother, Abel. It is the result of jealousy. Cain was very angry because he felt that God has been unfair with him. Instead of dealing with God he took it out on his brother. He thought that if he could get rid of his brother, he would feel better, and that he would have no rival. God said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6,7)
The thought is father to the deed. Cain’s anger leads to murdering his brother. The question God asks Cain is always the question we must answer. “Why are you angry?” When we fail to deal with our anger, it will result in destructive behavior. It will come out in irritation, frustration, and transference to others. Or, if repressed, it will go inwards to self-anger, in which the negative feelings result in depression. Either way it results in destructive and unhealthy effects upon our ability to relate to others.
Cain takes out his anger at God on his brother. At the heart of our anger is a sense of grievance, that life is unfair to us, that we are being taken advantage of, that others are not treating us as they ought. We want that person to be punished and removed from any further opportunity to hurt us. We think that their removal, their death, will bring us happiness. We feel that we are being inconvenienced by that life, and that we will be free if they are eliminated.
Andrew Klavan, in his memoir, THE GREAT GOOD THING, about his journey as a secular Jew, being raised in Great Neck, Long Island, to becoming a Christian, writes about his father, one of the most popular radio entertainers during the morning drive in New York City. He was a comedian.
“And like every comedian I’ve ever met, he was angry at his core. His sharp, biting, antic wit bubbled up from an inner cauldron of seething rage. The world was unfair, a conspiracy of big guys against the little guy, namely him. His comedy was a camouflaged hand grenade. Just kidding: kaboom! Intellectual sabotage against the machinery of life. He has a chip on his shoulder, in other words. A whole stack of chips. About being a Jew in a gentile universe, about the fact that he had never finished college, about the fact that serious people never took his ideas seriously. Most of all, he was deeply bitter that he never achieved the wide-ranging fame of other Jewish comics like Danny Kaye and Jerry Lewis…. From my youngest years, he hit me, ridiculed me, and browbeat me…I remember thinking as very young person, maybe only eleven or twelve: This man is not on my side. He is not out to help me but to hurt me.” (p.78f.)
Such is the nature of abuse in families. When his brother had an emotional breakdown he realized that his idea that he had a happy childhood in a happy family was a fantasy.
“My brother’s pain dispelled all those illusions in a moment. In him, I saw myself, and I realized I was wrong. It was all wrong. My childhood had been miserable. My upbringing had been twisted and hostile. My view of myself was delusional. My view of reality was completely unreal. Something was wrong inside me. Something was terribly wrong.” (p.172)
I can remember, some years ago, exploding in anger at home over something trivial, out of all proportion to what was happening. It was a symptom of something going on in my life that I was bringing home from work. “Why are you angry?” was the question which I needed answers to. I made an appointment with a counselor to explore the cause of my anger. If I didn’t find out, the sin, which was crouching at my door, which desired to have me, and cause me to be destructive of my relationships with others, would master me. It would either kill me, through anger, depression, or other stressful behavior which would result in a heart attack or panic attack, or it would destroy my effectiveness in my job.
Anger can be caused by hurt. When we are criticized we get angry. When we are falsely accused we are angry. When we are disappointed in others we get angry. We experience a strong desire to take revenge and to get back at the one who has hurt us. Anger causes us to lose control of ourselves. It motivates us to hate, wound, damage, despise, curse, scold and humiliate others.
How do you prevent the sin which is crouching at your door, which desires to have you, from mastering you? The answer of the New Testament is that we have to leave vengeance to God. “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)
If we believe that there is a future judgment, and that our destiny is either Heaven or Hell, as Jesus has said, then we can be assured that our enemy will receive what is due to him. We have to trust that the Judge of all the earth will do what is right. It is God’s prerogative to decide, not ours. We have to let go our need to be judge, jury and executioner.
In addition, we have to master the anger that crouches at our door. Either we control and dissipate our anger, or our anger will control us. “In your anger do not sin, Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Eph.4:26,27).
If we give way to our anger, we are in danger of allowing demonic forces to come in the door of our lives, and destroying our peace of mind. If we let them take over they will fill our lives with resentment. But if we ask for the strength of the Cross of Christ in the power of the Spirit to come between us and our anger, we can learn to surrender our feelings to the love of God. If we can learn from Jesus to pray for our enemies, we can turn the other cheek. If we trust in Jesus and the justice of God in the atonement, where the anger of God at our sins was absorbed by our Savior, we can be delivered from our anger.
Have you figured out where your anger is coming from? “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31,32)
“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”