Which is worse for your
well-being – holding in your anger until you can’t help but unleash it or
having it swell up in a sudden outburst?
Either way, according to a psychology report, anger is an emotion that “eats
away at your cardiovascular system, your gut and hijacks your nervous system,
often obliterating the capacity for clear thinking.”[i] And just because it gets vented through your
emotional house one way or another doesn’t mean it’s been completely
remediated. For most all of us, it
comes down to the fact that we need to develop a strategy for managing this
particularly powerful emotion.
Let me stress that word need. A recent USA TODAY
study reports that the number of Americans who feel angry and irritable is
60%. This is up from 50% just two years
ago. Unemployment or being overworked
were given as one reason. A quiet
erosion of trust when dealing with people is another. And a 2012 Harvard study revealed that
two-thirds of American teens admit to having anger attacks with violent,
destructive outcomes.[ii]
It’s not just for our personal well-being then, we all
need to have a healthy anger management strategy for the common good as
well. This strategy will identify
when, where and with whom it is appropriate, safe, and constructive to let
loose our irritations and smoldering wrath.
It will also help us to understand that there are ways to be assertive
without being aggressive, vulnerable without being violent, expressive without
being destructive.
Has the way you express anger changed through the
years? Have you shifted from eating it
to frequently expelling it or from frequently expelling it to eating it? Or have you found safe places and people to
be around that help you accept the inevitability of anger in your life while
helping you to keep it in healthy check?
I know that I surely have. Sometimes this has meant paying a therapist
while at other times it’s meant disciplining myself to take deep breaths and
know when to step away from a volatile situation. What’s made the biggest difference, however,
is feeling it is safe to speak to God about anger through both wounded whispers
and straight up yelling from my heart.
I find the healthiest anger management strategy is one born of faith.
A lot of people, though, and this may be you, aren’t
comfortable being angry at God, feeling God has disappointed or betrayed
them. This always a real toughie to get
through. Worse, even, then feeling
this way towards a parent or a child. We
can still feel terribly ashamed when we angrily fail to love God, our
neighbors, and let’s face it, ourselves.
What do you believe about how God responds to any and
all anger? From God’s perspective, is it
really ever ok, or even right, to be angry?
The story of Jonah offers great insight. The passage we read and heard a few minutes
ago is less known then this prophet’s literally gut wrenching adventure with a
great fish. It is, however, no less important. I’d argue it’s even more so and certainly
more relatable. It speaks to Jonah
being angry at God…not because God had betrayed him, but just for being
God.
Jonah fully understood who God is. Specifically, that God is gracious and
merciful to all of God’s children, abounding in steadfast love. God had called on him to go and let the people
of the sizeable city of Ninevah know this good news too. Jonah knew that if the Ninevites took his
prophetic words to heart by repenting, they would be saved from them the wicked
consequences of not knowing the God of Israel.
But Jonah also knew how much he hated these people. Ninevah was at time the flourishing capitol
of the Assyrian Empire, the empire that had conquered Israel and sent the
Israelites into captivity. For some
fifty years, Ninevah, with its historically ruthless and warlike people, had
been the largest city in the world.
Jonah’s enmity for this enemy pulsed through him as a
wrathful adrenalin rush. He wanted
these terrorists obliterated. He wanted
this to be by the hand of God, for God had called them out on their wickedness. He wanted victory for Israel. That God was willing to give this horrible
oppressor a second chance, to be merciful to them, to love them despite their
wickedness… this was quite incomprehensible.
It was unjust. It’s not exactly hard to question why Jonah
ran away from what God wanted him to do.
He had more hurtful hate than mercy in his heart.
But after Jonah’s literally gut wrenching adventure with
a big fish, after God had cared enough to save him from his disobedience, Jonah
finally did as God had summoned him to do.
And wouldn’t you know? Ninevah
listened! Ninevah repented! Ninevah turned in trust to God! Its king threw off his royal robe, put on a
burlap sack and sat down in the dirt! Seeing
this, God’s wrath against their wickedness subsided.
The story ends awesomely, right? The people are saved. Jonah becomes something of a hero. So then why did he turn to God and start
seething? Why was he furious at
God? Why did he yell, “I knew this was
going to happen!” and pronounce that because God didn’t kill them he might as well have God kill him?
Oh, the dumb things we can say when we are angry. Like a wise counselor, God simply replies to
this by saying, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
The question is less about right and wrong, and more
about Jonah’s well-being. A better way
to translate Jonah 4:4 from the Hebrew language is to have God saying, “Is your
anger about my mercy a good thing?” And
God could well have gone on the say, “Is your give me justice or give me death decree making you well? Is it helping my will? And have you forgotten all about the
undeserved mercy I showed you by saving you from your disobedience? Did you happen to notice that the pagans on
that ship acted more like me than you did?
That the Ninevites, who had previously not known of me, also were more
obedient? Have you learned nothing about
my patience and persistent love for all my children?”
Jonah responded to the
question by once again trying to flee from God. God doesn’t give up on him. God continued to teach him about mercy through
a lively object lesson involving a shade-providing plant. When this dies as suddenly as it had sprung
up, God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” Unrelentingly negative and eaten up by anger,
Jonah says, “Yes, angry enough to die.”
And that’s Jonah’s final
word.
God’s final word,
however, makes it clear that it is far more important to be concerned about
Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty
thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left.
Through the years, I’ve
heard a lot of folks complain that the God we meet in the Old Testament is full
of unmitigated wrath. There are many
troublesome passages to support this that, over time, each of us should study
and theologically excavate. But today, in
Jonah’s story, despite ominous warnings to the Ninevites, we only meet the God
of great mercy. Not only mercy for those
who truly were enemies, but also for the prophet who was supposed to rejoice
that more of God’s children had turned away from wickedness and toward their
true home.
What do we learn, then,
from Jonah’s story? What’s our take
away?
We learn that
whether we hold in our anger or unleash our anger, it’s never more consuming
than God’s compassion.
It can compel us to run away, be we will never be lost
to God.
It can propel us into disobedience, but it will not
repel us from God’s mercy.
We learn not to judge and hate others as outsiders and
enemies when our very own thoughts and actions hypocritically go against the
love of God we profess, pray about and praise.
We learn that it can be the most unexpected voices
speaking for God that prove to be the most prophetic and positive for the sake
of God’s amazingly gracious mercy.
We learn it’s okay to be angry with God, but it won’t be
pleasing or make a tough situation you are in any better.
May we all instead faithfully “put away all bitterness
and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” before
each day’s sun goes down. May we do so
in order to awake ever more ready to and “be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven” us.
And all God’s people said, AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment