©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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11-06-05 |
Anger Pt. 2 |
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11/6/05 Anger Pt. 2
Last week we were involved in a study
that I think needs a little more time
before we return to our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
We spent the morning talking about being angry with God.
I have come to believe
that, prior to Christ’s entrance into our lives,
our default setting in our relationship with God is anger.
Every one of us have a long list of grievances against God,
things that we don’t like about our own lives,
things that an Almighty God could have changed and didn’t,
things that make us angry at Him for the way He’s dealt with our lives.
There are times when we are consciously mad at God, of course,
times when we shake our little fists at Him
either for something we believe He did
or something He failed to do,
but more often
our anger at Him
is redirected at other targets.
We’ll be angry at our circumstances.
We’ll be angry at our parents.
We’ll be angry at our spouse or our children.
We’ll be angry at our boss,
or at the government,
or at the weather,
or at our living situation.
We’ll be angry at our lack of money to do the things we want to do,
or at our health,
or at those in authority over us who will not give us the freedom we believe we deserve.
We’ll be angry at the jerk in front of us who’s driving too slow,
or at the jerk behind us who’s driving too fast.
And I suggested last week that with every anger response we ever feel,
underlying that response
there is a deeper anger response within our spirits against God.
I’ve done some more thinking about that this past week
and I’d like to modify that statement just a little.
With all of those things I listed -
anger at the weather,
anger at our circumstances,
anger at those in authority over us and so on,
I believe there is within us
an underlying anger against God
for what we believe to be His failure to fix what’s broken in our lives.
But as I thought about it more this past week
I realized that there is another type of anger we sometimes feel
that is not directed toward God,
an anger against evil
both in our own lives
and in the lives of those we love.
There are some things that do indeed make me very angry.
I’m angry at a culture in which moral sewage
is proudly paraded under the banner of freedom of expression.
I’m angry at the predators
who so skillfully target our adolescent boys,
shoving an endless stream of pornography in their faces
long before they have the wisdom to fear it or the skills to defeat it.
I’m angry at a world in which parents sacrifice their children
on the alters of their own lusts,
or their own addictions,
or their greed,
or their craving for affluence or recognition.
I’m angry at a society in which value is determined by appearance,
or IQ,
or status,
or possessions.
I’m angry at those who use their strength or their positions of authority
to abuse those under their control
or to use them for their own pleasure or profit.
I’m angry at a world in which Satan’s wounds
leave open sores on our souls
that cause us intense pain, and fear, and sorrow, and loss
sometimes for the rest of our lives.
Simply put,
I’m angry at sin
and at what it’s done in my own life,
and in the lives of those I love.
And there is a healthy place for such anger in the life of a Christian.
It provides us with a much needed motivation
to fight against the evil
and for the freedom of those who have been corrupted or injured by it.
But right here is the crucial point -
the kind of anger I’m talking about
does not cause us to fight against those who have sinned against us
but rather it causes us to fight for the freedom and the healing
of those who have been touched by sin.
And I need to ramble just a little bit here
in an attempt to better explain what I mean.
We have all been born into a world
that has been deeply saturated with real evil, and corruption, and sin.
This is the only world available to us.
Nor are we simply victims of the evil of others.
Because we all enter this world
with spirits in rebellion against God
we have all made our own contribution
to the evil in which we find ourselves immersed.
We have all sinned against others
and we have all been sinned against ourselves.
It is the natural results of our self-centered spirits prior to our union with Christ.
When Christ enters our lives
His Spirit gives us eyes to see ourselves and our world
as we’ve never seen it before.
And part of what we see
is the way in which sin
both in ourselves and in others
always robs us of the freedom to be the people God created us to be.
When we begin to see the effects of that sin
there are two possible responses
that can well up within us.
Both involve anger,
but one is of God
and the other is right out of our flesh.
The flesh response is a kind of inner rage
against those who caused our pain.
It’s not hard to recognize
because this anger causes us to want to get even,
to conquer, to destroy the ones who hurt us.
This is the kind of anger I was talking about last week
that always carries with it
that element of underlying anger against God
for what we view as His failure to do for us
what we feel He should have done.
But the other type of anger response,
the one that is an expression of the life of Christ within us,
is an anger that motivates us to fight
not for the destruction of those who hurt us,
but rather for healing both in our own lives
and in the lives of others who have been wounded in the same way we have been.
I ended our time together last week
by sharing with you
a few of what I consider to be the basics of life on this planet.
The first is that this right here
is the only world available to us.
It is a world filled with tremendous suffering and evil
because of the corruption within the human race
since the time of Adam and Eve.
But it is also a world
in which our God actively seeks each of us
in the midst of that evil,
our evil,
seeking to reveal to us His love
in a way that we can see it, and know it, and respond.
And the second basic of life is this,
that only our discovery of the love of our God for us
can enable us to make sense out of our lives
and give us the strength and the hope for the future that we so desperately long for.
And the third basic truth of life is this -
if we take whatever it is
that is making us so angry at our God
and share it with Him,
and place it into His hands,
He will take it,
and reshape it into great good in our life.
It is what He does in the lives of those who reach out to Him.
That doesn’t mean He will remove what we hate,
but it does mean He can and He will reshape it in our lives,
turning real evil into eternal good within us.
And part of that process
is the way in which His Spirit
redirects or reshapes anger in our lives.
And the beginning of this process
is our personal acceptance
of that third basic principle of life with God -
if we take whatever it is
that is making us so angry
and share it with our God,
if we choose to let go of our longing for revenge
and place the injury and the pain it has caused into His hands,
He will take it,
and reshape it into great good in our lives.
Will it help to hear it in His own words?
ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Everyone of us
will have events and circumstances in our lives
that will trigger anger responses within us,
times when we feel our rights have been abused,
times when those in authority over us will abuse that authority,
times when circumstances beyond our control will deeply impact our lives
in a way that makes us feel victimized and angry.
Our natural human response
will be to want to find some way
to conquer, to defeat, to destroy those who have caused our pain.
Now let me first state the obvious here,
that if there are steps we can take within the moral framework given to us by our God
to remove ourselves from added pain,
by all means take them.
There is nothing either righteous or reasonable
about volunteering for pain we do not have to endure.
The man who hits his thumb with the hammer is unfortunate.
The man who chooses to leave his thumb in the same place
and then continues to pound on it is just plain stupid.
But given that obvious truth,
when we are confronted with anything in our lives
that triggers the natural anger response of our flesh,
the beginning point in transforming that destructive anger
into a positive motivational force in our lives
is right here with this 3rd basic truth of life with God -
if we take whatever it is
that is making us angry
and share it with our God,
if we choose to let go of our longing for revenge
and place the injury and the pain it has caused into His hands,
He will take it,
and reshape it into great good in our lives.
ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work
together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to
His purpose.
You see, the beginning place in dealing with all anger responses in our lives
has to be in our understanding of
and then trust in
the active involvement of our God in our lives.
It is one of those many areas
in which we need to once again choose to believe
that our God really is who He says He is -
that He is not just a distant divine deity
to whom we owe some measure of reverence,
but that He is the all-powerful Creator God
who, because He loves us,
has chosen to bring us into an intimate Father/child relationship with Himself,
a relationship in which He is actively involved in every aspect of our lives.
Because of our practical faith in Him
we need to give up what we naturally assume is our right to revenge
and then choose to believe that our God both can and will reshape this thing that makes us so angry
into real good in our lives,
a good that could never have existed
had the wound never been inflicted.
And maybe some examples
will help to better explain what I’m trying to say here.
Because of a number of different factors
I went through times during my childhood and adolescence
of intense emotional isolation,
times when I felt absolutely alone.
When I was going through those years
I did what we do as children -
I just assumed that this was the way ever child’s life was.
But as I moved into my adult years
I went through a time
when I began to feel extreme anger
at those I felt were responsible for the pain I felt during those years.
Then, as my Lord entered my life,
and began His rebuilding work in me,
over the course of several years
He brought me to the place where I was willing to let go of my anger
and trusted Him to do whatever He chose to do
with my past.
And as I let the anger go
I saw Him creating within me
the most remarkable thing.
I saw Him giving me the ability
to see and feel the pain in the lives of the children and adolescents
that He began to bring into my life,
and to give me a longing to reach out and help heal that pain.
And throughout my adult years
this work of His within me
has added a deep richness to my life.
I have no idea how He does it,
but I know it would never have been
had He not first brought me to the place
where I was willing to let go of my flesh anger response
to the pain I’d felt so long ago
and then trust Him to work all things together for good in my life.
I was in a conversation recently
with a young man
who shared with me
some experiences he went through during his early adolescence,
experiences in which he was the target of repeated vicious attacks by his peers.
He was bullied repeatedly
in ways that left him feeling both angry and powerless.
I asked him how he feels about it now, looking back,
and his response made me realize the strength of his walk with his Lord.
He said that he can now see
how God both can and will take those experiences
and use them for good in his life in the future.
And with that attitude in place within him
he’s right.
At the very least
he will carry with him throughout his life
a remarkable sensitivity to others who have been victimized as he was
and in ways that only God can do
he will find his former anger
reshaped into a compassion that will motivate him to reach out and bring healing in the lives of others.
Our flesh-based anger against those whom we believe have wronged us is a fascinating thing.
In our minds
our desire to conquer and defeat those who have injured us
seems so reasonable, so justified.
But as long as we hang onto it
it actually blocks us from sharing in the kind of healing
that our Lord seeks to accomplish in our lives
and in the lives of those around us.
I was in a conversation with a man a number of years ago
who had just gone through a brutal divorce.
There were children involved
and he asked my advice about how he should approach the future.
I told him that he now had to choose
whether he wanted to fight against his ex-wife,
or wether he wanted to fight for his children.
He could not do both.
If he chose to fight against his ex-wife
he might achieve some emotional satisfaction if he succeeded in defeating her,
but he would loose the hearts of his children in the process.
If, however,
rather than making his choices on the basis of what would bring pain to his ex-wife,
he made his choices on the basis of what would bring healing and security to his children,
he would find God’s redemptive work active even in the tragedy of his shattered marriage.
I suppose I could have said
what I’m trying to say here far more easily
and certainly far more concisely
by simply sharing with you a single line
from James’ open letter to the family of God.
In James 1:20 James says simply,
...the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of
God.
We each enter this world
believing we have both the right and the ability
to be our own god,
to rule our own life.
When we come to Christ
our spirits recognize the stupidity of that lie
as we bow before the one true God
who has both the right and the ability to govern our lives.
But by then we have already taught our minds and our emotions
to think and feel from the perspective
of protecting and defending and guarding ourselves
against anyone who seems to be infringing on our kingdom,
on our rights.
So many of the anger responses we encounter
are a direct result of our ingrained reactions
against those whom we feel are denying us our rights
or challenging our kingdom rule.
When James tells us
that ... the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God,
he is telling us
that those responses that grow out of our life prior to our submission to Christ
will simply never ever bring us into the kind or quality of life we long for.
Only when we choose to take the one who angers us,
give up our right to revenge,
and place both them and ourselves into the hands of the one true God
will we discover the power of our Lord
to both heal
and to bring real good out of even those things that have caused us our deepest pain.
Many years ago, now,
during the early years of our church history,
I worked a second job to supplement our income.
I’d worked for my employer for a number of years,
and done what I believe was good work for him.
Then one spring our family went on a trip over spring break
and when we returned home
I had a message waiting from my boss.
I called him and he told me that while I was gone
he’d decided to fire me and move a family member of his into my former job.
No notice.
No severance pay of any kind.
Not even a thank you for the years I’d worked for him.
My first response to what he’d done was anger at the injustice of the way I’d been treated,
and for the next several months
every time I thought about it
I kept thinking of great ways in which I could get even with him.
But even then I knew enough about this anger thing
to realize that as long as I held onto the anger
all I was doing was continuing to give that man power over me.
And as I made some progress in working through the mess
I discovered some hidden treasures in what I at first viewed as a great injustice.
For one thing,
my new circumstances
gave me some blocks of free time I’d never had before.
I started using some of that free time
to do something I’d never seriously tried doing before -
I started to write.
And now, looking back,
I realize that in a very real way
both The Grace Exchange
and The Fisherman
are direct results of that man’s injustice against me.
And in a far deeper way
I came to understand what Paul meant
when he
told us ...that God causes all things to work together for good to those who
love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
I do understand that natural anger response
that we so often feel
whenever we find ourselves confronted with injustice,
or with unkindness,
or with another person’s abuse of power against us.
And if it were not for our God
and His commitment to us as His children
I would be the first to encourage us to give back as good as we get,
to seek to destroy those
who seek to destroy us.
But the truth is
that those of us who are in Christ
do have a God who loves us with an everlasting love,
a God who has committed Himself
to recreating the evil that comes into our lives
into remarkable good
as we choose to let go of our anger
and give up our right for revenge
and then allow Him to do both in us and for us
what He has promised He would do.
Paul’s instructions to us in the book of Romans
are in no way meaningless religious platitudes.
They are, in fact,
his revelation to us
of the only pathway that can lead to true healing and freedom in our lives.
ROM 12:17-19 Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord.
And next week we’ll take one final step
in our discussion of anger.
Last week we talked about our anger against God.
This week we focused mostly on our anger against others.
And next week we’ll look at God’s anger against us.