Anger
A Recovering Rage Addict Looks at Anger Management
Seems not quite right: A former–and still struggling–rage junkie would have something to say about managing anger.
But indeed. I do. Quite a lot. As you’ll see in a minute.
Let me start with this: I think “anger management” is an awkward, if not inappropriate, title.
See, anger is not managed. It is subdued. But not by you.
Let me explain.
A Tiny Bit of History with Anger
Anger issues usually get drawn out when someone gets married. That makes sense: Require two very different people to live together and conflict is bound to erupt.
It did in my marriage.
Funny, because before I got married, I thought I had it all together. Not much could rattle me. Then again, not much was required of me. People pretty much left me alone.
And since nobody called me out on it I honestly thought I was doing well. Until I got married.
You don’t see things like this coming: An apparent innocent statement causing your fists to clench. Or the simple neglect of things important to your spouse setting her or him on edge.
To make matters worse, you keep it up–and defend yourself endlessly. For the first ten, I don’t know, eleven years, that defined my marriage.
Here’s the deal: I didn’t want it to be that way. But anger defeated me. It worked me over. Manhandled me. I knew who was the master and who was the slave.
Of course, my wife took the brunt of this anger. Post-flare up I’d grovel. Break out the “anger” books. Burn the typical verses into my memory. Plead with God.
But inside of me I was still boiling. “How dare I go through this!”
As you might guess, the next round of heated arguments would reveal that I was not winning the battle…
I was STILL blowing my top and stomping about the house like a mad man. And things even got worse when our children were born.
Anger and Children
This is not scientific, but married people WITHOUT children tend to argue less. But once you involve wee ones and their round-the-clock demands, even greater disaster awaits.
Something you should know: All of this was before my conversion.
Why is that important? In spite of my best efforts to “conquer my anger” my wretched heart was doing the only thing it knew how to do: Defend and exalt self. Even over the children.
That meant my anger drifted from my wife to my first child. Then my second.
I’d lose it when they would fuss for hours during bedtime. I’d flip when they trashed the kitchen floor with their dinner. And stare them down if they nagged me while I watched a football game.
It wasn’t pretty.
But we managed to stitch along enough happy times that they seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part. Yet, they weren’t immune to my wrath.
This Broke My Heart–Kind Of
One thing that sobered me up was the recognition that my children were growing afraid of me. They said as much in their beautifully upbeat and jolly ways.
As you can guess, this broke my heart.
Sadly, I could bear being mean to my wife–but I couldn’t bear being mean to my children. So I vowed to hunker down and kick this wrath habit.
Fat chance.
My tactics to suppressing my anger amounted to walking away, counting to ten and simply trying to remember that I don’t want my children frightened of me.
The problem with this is that my anger was rooted in a wicked heart. And that just proved too much for me.
Understand: I’m not trying to excuse my behavior. I’m motoring to a point. And that point is this: Liberation from anger only comes through Christ.
Here’s what Jesus said about it:
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Matthew 15:18-19
In other words, a corrupt heart will only produce corrupt deeds. And my tactics amounted to thin cosmetic changes that didn’t fool anyone to the decrepit nature below the surface.
It was only when God regenerated my heart that I truly was able to master my anger.
But “master my anger” is the wrong phrase to use. Indeed, it was Christ who mastered my heart through the new birth.
And it has been the grace of God, a daily plowing of that heart with the Bible and an unapologetic infatuation with the majesty of Christ that has allowed me to experience any kind of victory over rage.
Post-Conversion Recovery from Anger Addiction
Dramatic improvements have come in my life since I was born again. The difference between the years before and after is as stark as night and day.
For example, remaining calm in situations that used to send me into a rage…I simply just don’t get rattled [as much].
No doubt, I am still recovering from many bad habits, including anger. But each day I shed a little more residue of the old man as the elements of the new accrue.
I do co-opt certain psychological strategies to manage my anger, like paying attention to what I’m doing, remaining calm and, most importantly, making sure I’m actively giving good quality time and attention to wife and children.
But I’m not brave enough to say I’m no longer a “rage addict.” Some people may not like that. But let me say this: I must keep that label in front of me because, left to my own devices, I will systematically destroy those around me.
It’s also biblical.
Why I Remind Myself of My History with Anger
Often, to drive a point home, the Apostle Paul would refer to his past when he was a legalistic Pharisee hellbent on prosecuting Christians. He remembered where he came from. And he wanted others to do the same:
Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Ephesians 2:12
Paul’s point: Denying your past is trouble because it leads to hubris and susceptibility to making the same mistakes in the future.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather NOT do that.
So, in the end, if it not for Christ, I’d hopelessly remain a rebellious, self-absorbed misfit of madness–no matter how many neat tricks I employed to combat nasty hissy fits.
A Possible Defense of Rage
One objection remains unanswered: Didn’t Jesus rage about in the temple? Wasn’t that a vicious display of anger?
Yes. He did. And it was.
But there’s an important difference between his rage and our typical rage: He was angry at injustice and corruption–not from frustration or an unfulfilled sense of entitlement.
Anger directed at corruption or cruelty is okay. But keep in mind: Don’t sin when angry. Instead, use your anger as a motivation to change things.
Final Thoughts
In the end, if you want to overcome anger, you don’t discover the formula and then work that formula.
No. You must start with regeneration.
Then, and only then, can you slowly recover from a life dominated by rage and grow into a life dominated by a sublime sense that you are at peace with the creator of the universe.
There is no other way.
So, yes, a former rage addict does have a little something useful to say about anger management. And if this at all speaks to you, let me know. I’m truly interested to know what you have to say.
This post inspired by a reader’s question. Got a question you’d like me to answer in a post? Email me.
Propitiation in Plain English
Haunted. Convicted. Blessed. Condemned. These are words that often describe people’s response to Jesus’ death.
But before we can even talk about that, we first need to establish what Jesus’ death accomplished. We need to talk about propitiation.
What Did Jesus’ Death Accomplish?
Propitiation. Big word. Probably means nothing to you. But this is the New Testament term for what Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished for you.
You can find propitiation four times in the New Testament:
Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Romans 3:25
And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. 1 John 2:2
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10
Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Hebrews 2:17
What Does Propitiation Mean?
In a nutshell, propitiation means a gift that satisfies God’s wrath. Think thug offended because you flirted with his wife and won’t be appeased until you give him an island.
That island is your propitiation. But that’s not really the way you want to think about this.
Unlike the pagan conception of gods–moody, volatile and violent gods and godess, prone to punishing humans with disease, drought and death at the drop of a hat–God’s anger is not irrational or unpredictable.
Neither is God inactive in this appeasement like pagan gods. God Himself stepped out on His own and provided the sacrificial offering that covers human sin and makes reconciliation possible.
That’s propitiation. God took the first step towards us.
The Overwhelming Problem of God’s Wrath
Propitiation–and the idea of God’s wrath–may offend some people. [Like Bertrand Russel. But he hardly matters, right?] They have a difficult time wrapping their head around the idea of a personal, loving God being so furious at them that they needed a sacrifice to avoid the terrible consequences.
However, there are two good reasons to face this truth about propitiation:
1. The problem of sin. God is without sin. We are steeped in sin. And though God loves us, he hates sin. In fact, God is so profoundly troubled by sin that he feels both sorrow and anger over sin. Detests it. The Bible says God’s anger at sinners is so severe that He hates them. Even hides His face from them. So, by definition, a loving, holy God is required to be angry at sinners who destroy that which he loves.
2. The problem of the Bible. Eh? This is what I mean: The Bible speaks of God’s anger, wrath, and fury toward sin more than His love, grace, and mercy. Nouns for wrath are used some 375 times to describe God’s anger in the Old Testament. And though less frequently, these words and concepts are found in the New Testament.
Verses 18, 24 and 26 in Romans tells us that God’s wrath begins in this life. And the place of God’s unending active wrath is hell, which Jesus spoke of more than anyone in the Bible as an eternal place of physical torment. Mark Driscoll points out that Jesus described hell like someone getting flogged, butchered or burned.
Incomprehensible debt. Unconceivable punishment. No picture–not even my thug parable–could prepare us for the biblical experience of God’s wrath.
We have to deal with it.
Propitiation Is the Supreme Answer to God’s Wrath
But, because God is loving, merciful, and kind, He has chosen to save some people. So, to both demonstrate His hatred of sin and love for sinners, Jesus averted the wrath of God by dying on the cross as a substitute for sinners.
That’s why salvation is defined as deliverance from His wrath. The anger of God is diverted from us to Jesus. What this does is show how Jesus fulfilled the OT system of sacrifices and thus replaced it with His own work on the cross.
If you think about it, one of the most poignant pictures of propitiation is the Passover story in Exodus 12. The angel of death “passed over” all houses that had lamb’s blood on their door posts and lintel.
In the same way, if you are a repentant believer who trusts in Jesus, your sins are covered by Jesus’ blood–that is, his death–and God passes over you in his wrath and judgment.
Why Does Propitiation Matter?
There are a number of good reasons to allow this seemingly abstract truth to penetrate your soul.
1. Believers often punish themselves when they sin, thinking they are paying God back. Think hair shirt. Punitive fasting. What propitiation teaches is that the penalties for our past, present and future sins are taken care of. They are covered. Our response when we fall into sin is to simply ask for forgiveness. That’s it.
2. Unbelievers often punish themselves because of shame and guilt. Think bulimics and cutters. Suicides and alcoholics. What propitiation does is wipe that guilt and shame away. Forever.
3. When we suffer, God is not punishing us. Sometimes it might be the case that he’s disciplining us so that we might grow in holiness. But never is he using suffering to punish us for our sins. That’s not what the Bible teaches.
With Christmas looming, this doctrine seems all the more relevant to me. Think about it: The birth of Christ is the first step of propitiation.
Without the birth of Christ, we’d have no substitute. No sacrifice. No savior.
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