by
Beth Johnson
"Of
the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to
smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the
prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last
toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving
back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that
what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."
Frederick Buechner
Likely
we all have harbored feelings of anger against someone else because of wrongs
we perceive they have done, but when their anger is turned toward us our
perception of it is totally different. We may fear or we may think about how
foolish they appear. Why is anger such a delicious feeling in ourselves
and yet so odious in others? Solomon, the wisest man on earth said, “Be
not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools”
(Eccl 7:9).
Solomon
also told us how to defer someone’s anger and turn away the wrath that is
causing carnage in our lives. “A soft answer
turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger” (Pro
15:1). We know that tempers only escalate when we answer an angry
man the same way he has spoken to us. But what if we are right and he is
wrong? Does it really matter that we have our way or prove our point if
we lose a friend or drive a permanent wedge in family relationships? Can
we not rather take wrong in order to make peace and thus please God (1
Corinthians 6:7)?
“The
discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a
transgression” (Pro. 19:11).
“He
that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he
that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city (Pro 16:32).
In
defense of their anger, many will quote Ephesians
4:26-27
and they will say, “See anger is not a sin, as long as I do not let the sun
go down on it.” But these people fail to notice that five verses
later, we are told to get rid of anger just like we are told to get rid of
other evil qualities in our lives. “Let all
bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away
from you, with all malice (Eph 4:31)." Would anyone deny
that these are all evil qualities?
Later,
in his letter to the church at Colossi, Paul wrote, “But
now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy
communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have
put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is
renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col
3:8-10).
Let’s
all work to rid ourselves of this very deceitful, sinful emotion which men
have taught us to use to get our way.
