R.C. Sproul [ How To Deal With Anger ]

during the summer when I was in college I worked in a hospital outside of Pittsburgh and every day I would drive to downtown Pittsburgh to pick up my mother from work and drive her home and traffic was always congested leaving the city coming going across the bridge and we'd go across the Liberty Bridge and enter into these tunnels that went under Mount Washington called the Liberty tubes narrow two-lane tunnels you go through the tunnels and after you come out of the tunnels the thing widens in the six lanes for a right turn lane to go straight and also to turn left and if you came out of the tunnel in the left lane of the tunnel you had to turn left and if you came out of the tunnel in the right lane of the tunnel you could not turn left you were not allowed to get into the left turn leg well for some reason this particular day I got stuck in the right-hand lane in the tunnel came through the tunnel got to the other end and I saw that the light was green about a hundred yards up in front of me so I darted into the left lane where I wasn't supposed to go and just as I got to the light it turned red and I had to stop and I looked in my rearview mirror and there were some policeman who was standing at the edge of the tunnels of Davy was a motorcycle cop and he was overweight and he saw me make this darting move into the left lane and he started running towards my car and I could see him and I could see his face getting redder and redder and the steam coming out of his ears and he came up to my car and took his fist and pounded it on my roof of my car and I opened the window and he said what do you think that you're doing he was enraged and the first verse that came into my mind was a soft answer turneth away her ass so I came up with the softest gentlest reply I could ever do and I said I'm very sorry your officer I should not have done what I did and he was not prepared for that he just started sputtering and finally he looked at me in disgust he said oh all right just don't do it again and they turn around and walked away and I thank God for the wisdom of the scriptures that allowed me to escape the policeman's wrath well we all variance the consequences and the effects of human anger we have all been angry at times in our own lives and we've had people who were angry with us an anger as a force or as a power is one of the most destructive forces that can be unleashed among human beings and it is an emotion a posture an attitude that it is so powerful and so real and so pervasive in our culture that you would think we would have a better handle on our understanding of it and yet it seems as though we don't understand very much about anger and yet the scripture is by no means silent on this matter of anger and I'd like to turn your attention for a moment to the New Testament to the fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians beginning with verse 25 Ephesians 4:25 the Apostle writes these words therefore putting away lying let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another be angry and do not sin and do not let the Sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil now here Paul addresses this difficult problem of anger and he does it in a rather unusual way the opening statement that he gives with respect to anger is this be angry if I had just read this passage to and I said did you know that the Bible tells you to be angry I think you wouldn't believe me but here the Apostle actually said states in a positive imperative way be angry now what's he saying here it's really not an injunction that we should be characterized as angry people that's not the point of this but what he is realizing and acknowledging is that inherently and intrinsically anger is not a sin anger in and of itself is not a sin if it were a sin inherently then that would mean two things immediately one that God is evil and two that Christ was a sinner because we know that it is part of the character of God for him to express his wrath and we see occasions in the New Testament particularly in the episode of Christ's cleansing the temple where he fast fashioned a whip out of ropes and went in there and turned over the tables and drove the money changers out of the temple and Christ was angry he was visibly angry with what was going on here now we have a phrase that we use to describe that particular type of anger which we call righteous indignation at any time God is angry it is a righteous kind of anger and any time Christ manifested anger it was a manifestation of righteous indignation or righteous anger but our episodes of anger are not always quite so righteous sometimes we are angry without just cause which again jesus warned against in the Sermon on the Mount on the month but G but again Paul is saying here be angry there's nothing wrong inherently with being angry but anger is such a dangerous and volatile human emotion that many many many times when a person is in a state of anger that anger becomes an occasion for sin where we lose control we lose our temper what does it mean to lose one's temper to be temperate is to be moderate to be sober to have ourselves in a state of self-control and anger can cause the loss of self-control and provoke us to behave in ways that are destructive and harmful to ourselves and to other people so Paul says be angry but he doesn't leave it at that he says be angry but sin not the wisdom of the Apostle he understood that anger becomes the occasion for all kinds of wickedness and then he adds another injunction to this being angry but don't sin in your anger or sin not and don't let the Sun go down on your anger and that's a metaphor of course and what is the Apostle saying when he says don't let the Sun go down on your wrath anger as I said in and of itself may be a legitimate righteous emotion but so easily can turn into those emotions that are completely destructive for example bitterness resentment harboring grudges all of these things flow out of anger that has never been dealt with where the son the Sun sets on that anger and we carry over the anger to the next day and to the next week or perhaps our entire lives many of us walk through this world filled to the brim with anger that's never really been dealt with you've heard of people who are guys who say the angry young man or people that seemed to be explosive in their temperament that walking through their lives is like walking through a minefield you're afraid to step without looking where you step you have to walk on eggshells around them because they're so explosive they're so temperamental there's so much anger in them so they never dealt with the anger in the first place the Sun set on that anger and that anger then began to eat away at their insides to become bitterness and resentment and producing an attitude of grudge and hostility that happens and we've all experienced it and we've all known people who seem to be perpetually angry about this or the other incapable almost of smiling we see this in in the criminal world at times unbelievable hostility recently in the United States a man was convicted in Texas for the torturing death of a black man that he tied to the back of his truck and drove for three miles while this man was alive and till the man perished and there was no remorse instead just bitter venom coming from the convicted killers mouths as he was led away in manacles to the prison door he yelled obscenities to the judge into the courtroom still overflowing with anger even after this terribly incredibly wicked act of destruction of another human life so the power of anger can bring down nations it creates Wars it it it ruins families that destroys marriages and so it's very important for the Christian to understand the nature of anger and how to deal with anger and one of the principal things is not to allow the Sun to go down on your anger my wife have all been married now almost 40 years and I would like to be able to say the world that we've never had a word of disagreement between us in that time but that would be a lie to people I don't care who they are cannot live together in a marriage state for a long time without having disagreements and without provoking one another to to anger in fact there's nobody in this world that can make me more angry than my wife why because there's nobody who means more to me in this world than she does and no one who knows me better than she does it she knows how to turn my switches any time she wants to but she has no fear of my anger because if I'm angry she can laugh at me because she knows I can't sustain it and I I know how many times I've gone to bed at night say I'm gonna stay angry and I'm not going to get over this and I'm gonna make her pay and and all of that and then I hear don't let the Sun go down on your wrath and I said I can't do that and so on and so this is a thing that we all have to deal with I'm sure but again the heart of it I think is understanding the nature of anger in the first place and we all need to ask ourselves from time to time what makes you angry certain things that might anger me wouldn't bother you at all and things that bother you would make me mad and or wouldn't make me mad immune system way it is we've just built different and we have different reasons for responding the way we do to certain things well there are basic elements to anger that have been isolated and I would say the three most common causes for anger and though I'm distinguishing among three and in one sense they're all variations of the same theme the first one is what I'm going to call disappointment disappointment how do you handle disappointment this is one of the most difficult things for children to learn how to deal with his disappointment mom can I stay over at Blake's house tonight no son we have things on in the morning is not going to why can't I and all of a sudden there's all this anger and all there's rage coming out of the kid because he wanted to do something he had plans to do something he had hopes to be able to do something and these hopes have now become an expectation and the expectation was not realized and the result was anger and disappointment and creates and provokes anger and here's the axiom people disappoint people we are not able to completely fulfill all of the expectations that people have from us and if we fail to meet their expectations if we let them down isn't that a strange phrase let them down we use that vertical quantitative measurement to talk about various levels of the spirit when we are unhappy we are said to be low and when we're happy and exalted we're said to be high alright so here we are happy as clams and all of a sudden somebody will lets us down somebody fails to meet our expectations and when that happens we had expect that one thing we got something else in this place we're disappointed and that disappointment now is expressed in terms of anger now closely related to disappointment is its twin which I call frustration frustration is really disappointment repeated where your hopes are not realized repeatedly it's one thing to hope for something have it not come to pass you're a little bit disappointed but you're not angry yet then yeah same thing happens the next day or the next day and after that pretty soon you're frustrated you want to see how that works watch an infant get in one of these play school benches or they have a little a little work bench you give to the child the toddler and they'll have round holes and square holes rectangular holes and triangular holes and the child has a little wooden mallet and he has these little blocks that are round and square cylindrical and all the rest and the name of the game is what to put the square peg in the square hole the round peg in the round hole now I've sat and watched little infants playing these games for long periods of time and be absolutely amazed at their patience initially where you see the little child pick up the square peg and try to pound it in a round hole and he hits it once it doesn't go he doesn't give up they'll hit it again he'll hit it again and you watch me see but you know what's going to happen you know what's going to happen in a few moments he keeps doing that pretty soon he starts wailing he throws the mallet kicks the bench scatters the blocks why because he's frustrate he failed to achieve his goal now hockey is a sport that is different from other sports some fans say that they went to a prizefight and in the middle of it a hockey game broke out hockey's more about fighting than any other sport but we don't we frown upon fighting in other professional sports it's a terrible thing to see a fistfight break out on a baseball field or a basketball game or in a football game but sometimes you will see fisticuffs erupt in a baseball major league baseball or basketball or football when does it usually happen let's take football for example and you've seen melees and and and brawls break out on the football field let me tell you this you almost never see a fight break out in a professional football game these are highly disciplined professional athletes who are engaged in physical contact that they've learned how to handle and adjust to throughout the whole game you almost never see a fight break out in the first quarter or in the second quarter or in the third quarter when do the fights erupt I'll tell you when they erupt when one team realizes that it no longer has any hope of winning the game when their frustration level of failing to achieve their desires and their goals become so intense that that frustration erupts in expressions of anger and in violence so if you see somebody who's angry you might want to check and see what was the goal or the desire or the hope that they had the dream of their life that wasn't realized left them in a state of frustration disappointment which then turned to rage these are two of the most frequent causes of anger there is now the third cause of anger it's really still part of the same theme and I want to focus on this because this is the this is the essence of it pain were hurt pain or hurt somebody walks up to you and slaps you in the face chances are that's gonna make you mad it hurts to be slapped across the face somebody knocks you over caused you to scrape your knees that might make you angry because that person has inflicted pain upon you but here this is a simple matter of understanding physical pain but we all know that there are other kinds of pain besides physical pain the baby that was playing with the workbench experienced emotional pain in the frustration of the action the person who hurts your feelings who insults you who slanders you who gossips about you injures your reputation injures your name provokes pain in your life the person who cheats you out of your money in a business deal has inflicted pain on you it hurts to lose your investments and so that pain is transferred into anger now notice that all three of these involve some kind of pain disappointment is painful frustration is painful being slandered is painful being slapped across the face is painful and these are the things that provoke anger Jesus was angry at what he saw happen to his father's house because it pained Jesus to see his father's house which was to be a house of prayer turned into a house of merchandise and Jesus expressed his anger that grew out of his pain I can't think of any kind of anger that isn't rooted in some kind of pain now why is that important to understand that well in understanding my own anger and certainly in understanding somebody else's anger particularly if they're angry at me it goes a long way if we can discipline ourselves to look past the anger to the pain if somebody comes up to you and says to you I am really mad at you what's your normal reaction you're going to be defensive you're not going to be sympathetic you're going to be uncomfortable or if somebody comes up to you and says I'm really hurt why you hurt well because of something you said to me the other day I mean how are you gonna respond to that if I realize that I have hurt somebody my basic human response to that is to want to bring healing is to want to bring soothing salve to get rid of their pain I don't want to hurt people do you I don't want to inflict pain on other human beings and so if somebody comes to me and says to me I'm really hurting say why well it's because of something said move then I all of a sudden start getting mad at myself instead of that person but if a person comes on to me in rage I don't want to hear it and if they become abusive I don't want to listen to them because now they're inflicting pain on me and and I don't understand it and anger and angry responses provoke angry responses until that anger begins to escalate and a war starts where if we can just get past the anger or look behind the anger look underneath the anger to see where the pain is because it's always there it is always there and a person may feel pain in an unjustifiable way as I said people have unrealistic expectations somebody might come to you and say come up to me and say I'm mad at you why you mad at me well because I called your office and wanted to play golf with you and your secretary said you were too busy and I'm really ticked about that you know I'm sorry I don't want to offend you but whatever gave you the idea that you can just call my office and have my secretary schedule a golf game with you you maybe wanted that and you expected your desire to be fulfilled but you had no right to have that expectation and so sometimes we create our own pain and we create our own anger by illegitimate expectations but still it's important for us to understand it so that we can understand our own anger and understand the other person's anger they had an expectation maybe it was a legitimate expectation and I failed to meet their expectation and the weight of responsibility is on my head we actually do offend people and there's a distinction between giving offence and taking a sometimes we take offense when no offense has been made and people will take offense at us when we have done nothing to offend that's also part of human nature but when a person is offended they are hurt and often the response to the pain is anger we need to understand that we also understand the way anger works in relationships and families and homes the office a couple kinds of anger that I want to talk about briefly are those two types of anger that I call situational anger and misdirected anger and these also are closely directed closely-related let's talk see however later let's take misdirected anger a guy comes home from the office he's had a bad day his boss chewed him out he lost an account you know and he dented his car on the way home and he walks into the house and he says to his wife honey I've really had a bad day darling and I hope you'll help me get over it that's not usually the way it works rather he comes in kicks the dog starts yelling at his wife and creates havoc in the household because he's had this buildup of frustration and anger all day and so now he can't afford to let it out to his boss or to his employees at work so he stores it up and brings it home and pours it on his dog on his kids or on his wife that happens every day in America the misdirected anger or its close relative what I call situational anger where we blame people for things that are not caused by people but by accidents or something you walk into the house and the and and you're standing there and the curtain falls down from the wall and drops in the dirt and gets ruined because the dog ran through or something and so you start yelling to each other about this curtains being ruined when neither one of you was at fault it was this situation that was difficult for everybody involved you watch what happens when people are held up in traffic where the situation is frustrating to everybody involved and people who have no contributing cause to the tie up start getting mad at each other start blowing their horns at each other and start fighting with each other because the situation is so frustrating and disappointing and so we need to be alert to that to note situational anger when it comes up and to make sure that when we are angry that it's directed in the right place and that is controlled with the right moderation different ways that the Bible says that we ought to deal with anger and ways not to deal with anger we've looked at some of them but also we are told not to be people who are known for having a short fuse that we are to be people who have the gift and the fruit of the Spirit one of which is self-control well we discipline ourselves not to react in rage every time we're disappointed or injured or wounded or hurt and yet at the same time the danger of that is that when we learn to discipline our anger we then become people who are terrified to express anger at all and then we begin to repress it and store it up and end up in exploding and this happens all the time where you see if somebody overreacting to a situation why is that the case because there's been a pent up history but all of a sudden the straw that breaks the camel's back falls and that stored up anger comes bursting forth and we need to be careful about ourselves I remember my wife and I've been married for 10 years and we were having an argument one day in our kitchen in Boston and I had a glass of Diet Coke in my hand and in the midst of our argument I took that glass and I threw it against the wall shattered the glass in a million pieces and I watched her laugh so what he left she says at last ice what do you mean at last she said before I was a Christian I was known as a hothead I was in fights all the time and I was always getting mad and the first thing I was convicted of when I became a Christian was that volatile temper and I said I can't be like that and so I tried to live a life without ever expressing anger and she says you've been 10 years she says I can never see you get mad like that and he finally did he says it I'm so glad and it was healthy I mean not that I'm recommending that you throw glasses at the wall and break them in your house I'm just saying there can be a dangerous pattern of storing up anger and never never dealing with it because it's going to come out and it's going to come out usually in a destructive way and so if we are to be people who deal with this difficult problem of anger we need the wisdom of God and we need the wisdom and the patience to look for the pain because it's a whole lot easier to respond to pain than it is to respond to anger you

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Keywords: r.c.sproul, reformed theology, God, How to deal with anger, anger, bible teaching, Ligonier Ministries, John mccaurther, anger issues, patricia johnson, patriciajohnson

Id: MhgdYK9vVLA

Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 01 2018