Sermon: Managing Anger

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Managing Anger

By Charles Rush

March 25, 2012

[ Audio (mp3, 6.2Mb) ]

live in a culture rich with the use of sarcasm that reminds me of two towering egos from a former generation, Winston Churchill and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw had a new opening play in London during World War 2, so he sent a couple tickets to Churchill with this note, “Dear Winston, I would like to invite you to the opening night of my play. I enclose a ticket for you and another for a friend… if you can find one.”

Upon receiving this note, the Prime Minister, penned a note back that said, “Dear George, Unfortunately I'm busy opening night, but I would very much appreciate two tickets to the show on the second night… if there is one.”

The Roman philosopher Seneca noted that anger is “an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” It is true that, left unchecked, it demeans us all. As Sydney Harris noted, “If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

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 hemorrhage. 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.