The Vice of Anger
By Charles Rush
September 29, 2002
Ephesians 4: 24-27
used to have a cartoon on my office door, a marital counseling entry from the New Yorker. A guy is seated at an upscale restaurant with his wife. He has a scowl on his face that screams anger and frustration. A waiter is lugging a huge bottle of wine to the table. It appears to be a 2 gallon bottle. The angry husband says to the waiter, “That will be fine, we have a lot to talk about.” I've seen that guy on a Friday night and I'm sure you have too.
Anger
is one of our primordial emotions. For the vast majority of us it becomes an
issue and a problem because we don't handle it maturely and our anger starts to
run us rather than the other way around.
I
suppose the first thing to say is that anger is not a sin in and of itself. In fact,
we couldn't be rid of it if we wanted to. It is very nearly an autonomic
response to a threat, perceived or real, that mobilizes us for action. Anger
mobilizes us to either flight- running away from something that is way too big
to take on directly- or to fight- striking back at the threat directly. The
threat creates anxiety, anxiety compounds into anger, anger causes action.
Anger
is a built in part of our defense system that we have to deal with. We can't
not have it any more than we can not have hunger, libido, or pain. Because it
is hard wired into the human condition, it must be part of our relationship
with God, acknowledged or deeply repressed. For many of us, it is mildly
surprising to discover in the Psalms just how often this anger gets expressed
to God. Whatever else you may think about the quality of the prayer we read in
Psalm 39 this morning, it has the virtue of being emotionally honest. The
writer is frustrated and livid. And he takes all of that to the Almighty and
vents his spleen a little bit about what he wishes would happen to those that
have harmed him. The Jewish tradition is wonderfully, humanely rich with anger.
They are not afraid to tell God how they feel.
Occasionally,
I will talk to somebody who has lost a loved one. A few months after their
sadness passes, some of them will find that they are angry at God. If I ask
them how they are doing, they will say, ‘Honestly Reverend, I'm pissed off at
God… and I feel guilty about that… Or they will say, “but I don't want to be
too pissed off at God because he has to watch out for my son who just died.”
Invariably,
I will say, “Trust me the Almighty can handle your anger”.
Sometimes people in their grief, will have a season where they don't want to
talk to the Almighty, they don't want to go to Church and they feel guilty
about that too. I will tell them, “don't worry about that either.” It is
far better to be emotionally honest. The real deal is working through these
emotions with God. We are mad because we don't like the rules of living, we
don't like how vulnerable and contingent life is. We don't like how deeply we
can be hurt, how incredibly lonely we can be. I'm just mad as hell that the
good die so young.
Right
you are. And you should be angry. When it comes to grief over death, anger
is related to hurt and hurt is related to sadness because sadness is related to
love. Anger at God is the shadow of love for your lost one. Pain and sorrow
is the price we pay for the privilege of love and intimacy. That is the way
that goes.
Too
often, we aren't emotionally honest. We don't deal head up with our anger. And
we don't work through it. It gets the best of us and impels us into rash and
foolish behavior that we later regret.
One
that we see quite a lot around here is the ‘120-10 phenomenon- 120 volts of
juice for a 10 volt problem.' Many of us just have an internal pot that we put
all of our frustrations and anxieties in, we don't deal with them individually,
and they pile up until the point that this bucket is overfilled and then something
sets us off, and a small problem gets the full pots worth of response.
I had a neighbor
in Princeton that was in a business that was losing market share drastically
month after month for a couple of years. Everyone in the field was anxious and
worried about their jobs, worried about the future. Month after month trying to
stanch this hemmorage. It was not pretty. It was not fun. There was a lot of
hostility going around, blame, not much creativity. And this happened precisely
at a time that he had planned to make the big jump to top management. Instead
of the big jump, he was getting some indications from his boss and his bosses
boss that he was not going to be fired… he was way too talented for that… but
his career was being warehoused for an extended season. He would manage too
little in an uncreative manner and he would not be stepping up to the big money
at the next level, or the big house. And the thinking around him was getting
very small. And he was irate but unable to actually voice his frustration to
those people around him because that might only make things worse.
So
all this anger just got stuffed down inside and pretty soon he was overstuffed
with rage, so much of it he was no longer able to tell where it was coming from
or where it should go. Many times, they honestly don't know.
One
Saturday, he is coaching his sons little league baseball team. The umpire made
a couple of questionable calls. The umpire was a kid of 14. My neighbor lit
into him. By the fourth inning, he is on the umpire every third pitch, sarcasm
and verbal attack. Then came a single by Rob Grimaldi in the bottom of the 5th,
two runs scored, to put my neighbors team behind. The third runner turned for
home and the throw came to the plate. Close play. The umpire called him safe.
My neighbor went ballistic. A stream of language came out of his mouth that
would have made Lenny Bruce blush. For a minute, it looked like he was going to
hit the umpire.
The
umpire, God bless him, said, “that's it… you're out of line and out of the
game.” All the other parents are just standing there a gape. The adult is
jumping up and down. The 14 year old umpire is saying. “This is only a
baseball game.” Adults had to escort my neighbor off the field. It was
bizarre and the only reason I witnessed it was it was the umpire's second game
behind the plate and he was my son. I was really proud of him.
10
volt problem gets 120 volts of response because the other 110 couldn't be
directed where they should be directed. Instead, the whole overstuffed pot gets
unleashed on this kid. Or, they get directed at the poor volunteers on the
local School board. Or, it gets vented on some minimum wage sales clerk that
can't run a poorly designed system for service. Or, it gets directed at someone
safe in your family. We do stupid stuff that we later regret.
That
is one fairly typical scenario. And another is indirect anger that manifests
itself in nagging and passive-aggressive actions. There is a wonderful cartoon
with a C.E.O reviewing a new sign that proudly proclaims “This is a
smoke-free workplace.” Next to him is a top manager that says, “Sir,
each day I keep taking them down, but each day there are a few more.”
Around their sign are a series of other post-it notes that say, “This is
a leadership-free workplace”, “This is an appreciation free work
place,” “This is a promotion free work place”, “this
is an equal pay for equal work free work place,” etc.
There
are so many varieties of passive-aggressive anger, you need a catalogue. One
frequent variety you see in divorce… convenient forgetfulness. I knew a couple
that were separated. They had more than the usual rancor and tension that
surrounds separation. She was on a fairly tight budget, he was not. He would
regularly send child support payments a week late, 9 days late. Any lateness
could land them back in court and he knew that but he also knew that going back
to court was a big hassle and unlikely to happen. His answer about the lateness
was always the same, “Oh I just forgot.” Likewise, he was often enough
late picking up the kids or dropping them off that she couldn't effectively
plan her life. It really ticked her off because he was again in the position of
controlling and she had to wait on him, just a little symbol. He just told her
to loosen up.
The
kicker came when she had a big new date and she had asked him to keep the kids
on one of his off days. He agreed. Somehow he got wind that she was on a big
new date. The day of the big date came. He's late to pick up the kids. She
calls to find out where he is. He forgot about it, was two and a half hours
away and there's nothing he could do about it.
Passive-aggressive
hostility is legion. You see it in families resolving estates and heirlooms
from deceased parents that act out with each other, using all manner of passive
hostility to settle old scores over who got what from Mom and Dad and who felt
like they didn't.
You
see it in spouses, withholding love, affection, and intimacy like a blunt
weapon to get what they want and effect a modicum of control in the
relationship.
You
see it in the workplace, when people effectively maneuver themselves and those
around them, when they leverage all the power at their disposal to get the
whole team to stop and pay attention to them or else the direction that the firm
wants to go will become derailed. They delight in becoming the Senator Jessie
Helms look alike, holding the Senate up until they are heard. Sometimes it is
very difficult to tell the difference between legitimate critique and a
sophisticated M/O that masks passive anger and hostility. Only the one doing it
knows for sure, and much of the time, they won't admit what they are doing to
themselves. They won't admit their real motivations. That is why this is
a spiritual issue that requires internal reflection and self-critique.
In
Dante's depiction of hell, people that are consumed by anger- those who are
wrathful (our first example) and sullen (passive-aggressive) are consigned to a
special place in the River Styx. The wrathful are in a constant state of apoplexy,
but no words actually come out. They simply remain contorted perpetually from
rage, that state which is so wonderfully laughable to everyone who can distance
themselves from the tantrum. And the sullen are given over to a constant hymn,
a dirge really, actually a whine of ‘bitter smoke'. “They gargle in their
throats” says Dante “as if they sang, but lacked the words and pitch.” (Canto
VIII, Circle 5, line 124).
It
is a wonderful symbol of the fact that anger is an acid that regularly consumes
those that handle it. What do we do with it?
I
can only make two brief suggestions productively:
The
first is a reminder to those that have to receive inappropriate anger. You are
on the receiving end of your spouses tantrums, and for many of us, this same thing
can be applied in our work environments, in all but the most toxic situations.
After
you get over the wave of resentment and frustration that comes from enduring a
tirade, you owe it to yourself and to those you care for, to analyze what is
going on- to own what is yours. But also, and this is the key, to say about
some of this, “I am not responsible for this. I will not take this. And leave,
often physically, until such time as the person with the tirade is able to
regain composure. We have an obligation to refuse to participate in a
destructive cycle of anger. And we have to break these patterns in those we
love or care about, patterns that are usually the things we learned from the
previous generation that we would just as soon forget, but we can't seem to
delete the damn tapes from our deep memory. Much of the time, those throwing
tirades find themselves behaving almost autonomically, at least it is
pre-conscious, and then later they need to understand what they actually did.
Get
away, only own what you really ought to own, make the other person own their
stuff, break destructive cycles, and analyze what is happening that triggers
these occasions.
And
for people in a rage, this can become an important window for reflection and
growth. Admittedly, when you are in a rage, this may not occur to you that this
is an opportunity for personal growth. But few of us want to really live out of
our anger for long. We know there is a better way to be and we know that our
anger is destroying relationships around us and needs to be corralled or else
we are going to lose the very people we love and care for the most.
How
can it be an occasion for growth? Anger is a response to a threat. After
you blow up, ask yourself, “What was it that was threatening me?” Often, you
will look at the situation and say, “Nothing there is a very significant
threat.” That is a pretty clear indication that you overreacted to the
immediate situation and that you are transferring anger from another place. And
you have to peel this thing back like an onion. But you can finally get to some
understanding of what threatens you.
Secondly,
you need to begin asking yourself why you characteristically express
anger the way that you do? Most of us have patterns to these things.
Where do they come from? This gets us into some analysis of our childhood and our
family dynamics. Regularly we were given some patterns that were
unhealthy before we were even aware of what was going on. But now that we are
adults, we have to ask ourselves, “What type of person do I want to become?”
“Where am I headed from here?” Ultimately, we all have some things that we
simply need to transcend. These are our personal growth issues. The more you
can understand your pattern for dealing with anger, the more you are aware of
the triggers that set you in a direction that spirals out of your control, the
more creative and spiritually purposeful you can become in the future.
It
is a small but significant thing when you can get to a place where you break
the cycle and respond in a spiritually creative way, in your way, not the rote
way you learned as a child. That is a very empowering moment. As we Christians
would say, the Spirit breaks through and gives us something new. We need to
work through it and grow. And we can.
When
I was in Divinity School, they taught us to encourage people we were counseling
to express a full range of emotion, not to label, but do deal with the whole
ball of wax. It was good advice as far as it went.
But
the older I get, the more I think Dante was right including Anger as one of
the Seven Deadly Sins. It has to be
watched carefully. Last summer, I was amazed reading Scottish history, the
depth of destructive fury that went on between the MacDonald Clan and the
McLeod clan for generations. It was very sobering to talk to people in Northern
Ireland, to see the way that their 400 year old conflict still inflames,
enrages, stirs a boiling, destructive hate in some people that is so ugly it is
frightening.
And
we are watching right now, the melt down, the disintegration in Israel and
Palestine, the corrosive power of anger and revenge that is destroying both
nations at once. There are some very real social consequences to the
destructive use of anger: internationally, in our work places, in our families,
with our spouses.
We
need to watch it and we need to get better at the way we handle it.
Spiritually, we need to find ways to take the negative energy that comes from
anger and channel it productively and creatively. That is difficult spiritual
work but the alternative is too spiritually expensive. And the reality is we
can become creative. We have that spiritual power. Paul's maxim, like something
you would find in a fortune cookie, isn't too bad. “Be angry but do not sin.”
Let's grow together.
Amen.
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