The Path Out of Anger

I’m motivated and solution-oriented. Working in business and consulting, one would hope so. No one wants a consultant who shrugs their shoulders at a problem.

But my solution orientation only gets me so far when it comes to my struggle with anger. If sanctification were like cramming for a test or brainstorming on a whiteboard, I’d probably be pretty patient, gentle, and self-controlled by now. God gave us a different kind of sanctification, though, one that doesn’t come with shortcuts or a fast-forward button. To become patient like Christ, we have to get close to Him, and close to His people. It’s fundamentally a relational journey, and one God’s Spirit is eager to lead us on.

Understanding Anger

Emotions are like a swirling mix of different colored paint, write Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith in Untangling Emotions. It can be hard to discern them carefully within us, and hard to know where one ends and another begins. Emotions serve useful, God-given purposes, writes Groves, including as motivation. The surge of energy that comes with a wave of anger can be useful in motivating us to act quickly in defense of someone being attacked or to draw attention towards injustice.

If we’re honest, though, our anger (which includes frustration, irritation, and annoyance) is almost never “righteous anger.” The life of our Savior Jesus is instructive. Jesus “shows no anger at the one who betrays him, expresses no fury at those who arrest him, gives vent to no rage at those who accuse him, exhibits no wrath at those who bear false witness against him, and shows no indignation at those who crucify him" (Ash 101). The Gospel accounts show Jesus acting from righteous anger only in a few rare circumstances, usually towards religious hypocrites or those acting arrogantly in their sin.

In contrast, our anger is almost always sinful. Groves writes, “Anger that you act on instinctively, without thinking it through, is so likely to be sinful and godless that you might as well say ‘always’” (Groves 179).

Anger’s tendency to both produce energy and destroy makes “fire” the perfect analogy for it, so it’s no surprise that Scripture is filled with fiery descriptions of anger and its effects. Anger can be “kindled” (Jeremiah 17:4), it can “blaze hotly” (Numbers 11:10), “burn within” someone (Esther 1:12) and consume like a “devouring fire” (Isaiah 30:27). Descriptions like these are used in Scripture for both God’s and human anger, but only God’s anger is said to be slow: “You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15). The righteous anger of God, unlike sinful anger, stems from a deliberate (and therefore slower) reflection on injustice.

Anger As Idolatry

In addition to often being sinful, anger is also deceptive. In the heat of our anger, we get tunnel vision, seeing only the person or circumstance angering us. But our anger tends to point beyond those people or circumstances to a deeper, less obvious issue in our hearts.

In other words, whatever angers us is probably not the root of our problem. Emotions express and reveal what we love, value, and treasure. Anger expresses and reveals something we treasure in our heart and feel we must have but don’t. This is idolatry, plain and simple. We elevate an idol above God and his providential plan for our lives, and we react in anger when we don’t get what we desire.

What idol does sinful anger reveal? This idol, writes Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley in The Heart of Anger, is God-like control. They write, “In our sinfulness, we believe things should be in our control. We believe that we should, somehow, be able to rise above the ordinary frustrations of life…such things shouldn’t happen. Not to someone like me. Not when, in the madness of my sin, I am functioning under the misapprehension that I am God” (Ash 33). Anger is therefore “connected with the sin behind all sins—our essential desire to take the place of God” (Ash 43).

Take me as an example: As a parent of three young children, I tend to get angry when the chaos level in our home rises higher than I’d prefer. Kids yelling and running around inside? Angry. Kids distracting each other when they should be doing their chores? Angry. Kids going to the bathroom for the 3rd time after lights out? Angry!

What does this reveal about my heart? I value order and efficiency—these things make me feel at peace and in control. I’ve taught my kids to be orderly and to obey promptly. When I believe my guidance has been spurned, or when they’re loud and chaotic, I feel like I’ve lost both a sense of peace and the control I feel I’m entitled to. My idol is a desire for God-like control over my kids and my environment, and when I feel that slipping away, I lash out in anger to try and force it back into my grasp.

Understanding Anger Cognitively

What is happening in my brain in these moments of anger? Psychologists tell us that when we experience emotional distress that exceeds our capacity, the “relational” part of our brain kicks off, and we regress to a 3-year-old way of relating to others (fight, flight, or freeze) (NIH 1). We become concerned only with taking care of ourselves and getting out of the distress. So we act towards others, including those we love, in unloving ways. We may raise our voice, leave the room, or give someone the silent treatment.

And in those moments, because the “rational” part of our brain continues functioning properly, we invent a justification for our behavior, even co-opting Scripture to do so. “I was righteously angry,” we might think, or we might blame the other person for causing us to be angry. Our brains revert to infant maturity in how we relate (i.e. selfishly), but use our adult-level intellect to justify our behavior.

This is why so often anger feels right and noble, writes Groves. The angry person’s world appears “full of ‘idiots,’ ‘jerks,’ and ‘selfish people who don’t play fair’” (Groves 174). This is why if you’ve ever seen yourself angry on a video, you realize how sad and pathetic it looks. Lashing out or shutting down towards people we love for minor offenses is neither reasonable nor Christ-like. And even if the offense is major (or feels major), our God calls us to react with patience and kindness.

The Fruit of the Spirit

The fruit of the Spirit, writes Paul in Galatians 5, is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” For Christians, the works of the flesh, which include “outbursts of anger,” are crucified with Christ. United to Christ, we are led by His Spirit, a Spirit of patience, gentleness, and self-control. This has become the new inner identity of all who repent of their sin and have faith in the sacrifice of Christ on their behalf. For Christians, the fruit of the Spirit reflects who we really are now in Christ: patient, gentle, and self-controlled.

But we must “keep in step with the Spirit,” writes Paul. We must act in accordance with our Spirit-renewed identity. This takes prayer, work, time, and Christian discipleship.

Addressing Sinful Anger - Identifying the Source

How do we start? Step one in addressing sinful anger is identifying our idols. For me, they are order and efficiency, two things which are good but not more important than God or people made in his image. When I lose these things, I feel sadness at my loss of control and the feeling of peace in my heart which results from it. In frustration, and in a strategic move to gain control back quickly, I lash out in anger towards those closest to me.

What is the idol that you crave and become angry when you don’t have it? Ash and Midgley offer a few common ones tied to emotions that tend to lie beneath our anger:

• Fear: Our spouse or child is late getting home and isn’t responding to calls or text messages. We fear for their safety, and react in anger as we feel helpless and vulnerable, unable to determine what is going on and whether there is cause for worry.

• Frustration: My child disobeys my instruction, and in my pride I am frustrated that my authority is being rejected.

• Sadness: An illness or injury won’t go away, so I feel sad at my loss of health and grow angry at the unhelpful doctors who have failed to meet my hopes and expectations.

• Shame: An error I made at work gets pointed out publicly and I feel shame and worry about gaining a reputation for incompetence, so I seethe internally with anger.

The church community God has placed us in is the ideal place to uncover the idols underneath our anger. Consider sharing your self-observations with close family member, Christian friend, or pastor and ask for input.

Addressing Sinful Anger - Engaging Your Anger

Once you’ve identified a potential idol, step two in addressing sinful anger is recognizing it and engaging with it. Naming the pattern when it happens (either out loud or silently) is critical because it raises your awareness of what you’re feeling. If you mindlessly react without thinking, you lose the opportunity to make a different choice in your anger. Naming your anger also helps create a sense of separation between you what you’re feeling in the moment. Though God created us as emotional beings, we are not our emotions, and it is possible (and right) to feel things and not always act on them.

Here’s an example of how this works: I regularly get allergy shots as a treatment for seasonal allergies, and one side effect is anxiety. When my dosage was high enough to produce this side effect and it happened for the first time, I freaked out. It felt like the walls of the clinic waiting room were closing in on me and I was worried what people would think if I reported the symptoms to the nurse. I did tell them, and they subsequently lowered my dose, but I still get some anxiety when I get a shot each month. When it happens now, I remind myself, “I’m feeling anxiety, but it’s because of the shot, and there’s nothing to worry about.” This acknowledgment doesn’t take the anxiety away, but it creates a sense of separation between me and my feeling, and as a result I don’t worry about it. I know it will pass in about a half hour.

This shows it is possible to experience intense emotions and not to let is control us. We want to be aware of what is going on inside of ourselves, thinking, “Isn't that interesting the way my brain is responding?” This is different from what the world teaches as “mindfulness” because of what we then do with that awareness. Mindfulness practices stem from Zen Buddhist religious philosophy which teaches that suffering is illusory and caused by our passions or desires. The Buddhist strategy, therefore, is to try to stoically empty oneself of passions and desires.

Christians believe, in contrast, that our emotions are part of how God made us. Our God is a passionate God, and we are created in His image. Awareness of our emotions, therefore, helps us not to get rid of them, but pushes us toward the God who is himself emotional and who created us as emotional beings. Groves writes, “Our emotions are fundamentally designed to force us to engage him, and the great lie—which, ironically, both stoicism and hyper-emotionalism buy into—is that we can and should deal with our emotions apart from bringing them to the Lord” (Groves 101).

Addressing Sinful Anger - Bringing Our Anger to God

Step three, then, is bringing our anger to God. Our hope in the midst of anger should ultimately not rest in a system or a technique, even one focused on memorized Scripture. Instead, our hope in the midst of anger should be “in a Savior and Shepherd and ever-present help in time of need who sees us, knows us, loves us, and actually has the power, right here and right now, to help us with the turmoil of our hearts” (Groves 102).

Consider Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemane. Anticipating his imminent torture and execution, he doesn’t recite Scripture verses over and over, condemn himself for his intense feelings, or distract himself and stuff his emotion. Instead, he does two distinctly relational things: he admits his feelings to his friends, and he brings them to God in prayer.

God created us to enjoy him forever. Christ’s death has torn down the wall of separation between us and God. He is with us always through his Spirit. He desires us to know him intimately as he knows us. And so it is right for us to bring our emotion to Him in prayer, crying out to Him like the Psalmist does even when our emotions are raw and unfiltered.

Bringing our anger to God, though, is not simply a useful way to vent. It’s a necessary component to a relationship of love. “Relationships need emotions like fires need oxygen,” writes Groves. In their marriage counseling, Groves and Smith often find when one spouse is feeling unloved, the root of the problem is “a lack of emotional connection, a failure to genuinely share experiences from the heart” (Groves 72). Pouring out our emotions to God in prayer is both a blood-bought privilege and a foundational part of building a relationship with him.

Change Through Relationships

This is also how we change—through close-knit relationships, and chiefly with God. John 15 depicts Jesus as our vine, a vital source of life, rather than simply a professor transferring knowledge to students. Life in Christ is not primarily about thinking right thoughts and making right choices (as important as those things are). It is primarily about being in loving relationship with the God who saved us. This relationship, as well as the relationships God has given us in family and the church, shape our maturity and are God’s chief means of sanctification.

From our earliest days on earth, we are shaped by our relationships. When a baby is upset and cries, and a mother picks up the baby to sooth her, the mother’s heart rate rises out of worry for her child. When the mother soothes the baby, their heart rates come down together as the baby emotionally attunes (or connects) to the mother, “catching” the mother’s calmness. This shapes the child over time, helping her to learn to self-soothe. If a mother doesn’t react in a calm and soothing way, and instead yells at her crying baby, the baby “catches” the mother’s distress instead and learns that frustration and outbursts are the right response to sadness.

Like the baby and her mother, we become more like those with whom we are emotionally attuned. Therefore we should seek out the Lord in our anger, for he knows what it is like to be tempted, and he is eager to comfort and guide us in the midst of temptation. As we attune with our living Savior, he can teach us through his Spirit to react towards temptation as he does.

We should also seek out fellow Christians to confess our anger to, pray with, and receive discipling from. We should surround ourselves with people who are better at handling anger than we are. We need other Christians to call or text in the moment of our struggle—to pray for us or talk to us—and also who can meet with us regularly to disciple and encourage us.

In my journey towards patience, I’ve found it helpful to learn from and be counseled by others who also struggle with anger and who are further down the road than I am. Through this kind of discipleship, and through regularly bringing our emotions to God, we can grow over the long term. We may still feel angry, but we can become better at recognizing it in the moment and choosing not to be controlled by it.

Practical Steps

What does it look like to grow in patience, kindness, and self-control, engaging with our anger in a Biblical way?

Step 1: Identify the Source. Observe the pattern in your life. The last few times you were angry, what events preceded it? What were you feeling? Ask a spouse, close friend, or family member what they’ve observed. Think through what tended to cause anger in your family growing up and see if that sparks ideas about what prompts it in you. Consider talking with a counselor to dig deeper. Journal about the patterns you observe. Ask for input from others, especially pastors and leaders in your church, to identify the underlying emotions and idols your anger might reveal.

Step 2: Engage with Your Anger. When you discover you are angry, name the source, either out loud or silently. “I feel angry right now because it is loud and chaotic and I feel I’ve lost control,” for example. Do this every time your anger flares up, even if it takes every ounce of calmness you can muster. This trains your brain to recognize the pattern and the idol at the root of it and creates a sense of separation between us and what we’re feeling.

Step 3: Bring Your Anger to God and Others. Pray immediately. For example, you can pray out loud or silently, “God, I feel angry because I feel I’ve lost control. Comfort me, and help me release my need to control.” This less-than-10-second prayer is honest and straightforward, and we can trust our Lord to answer us. Confess your anger to someone you’re with, even in the moment (if you can do so without accusing them). Take a 5-minute break from your environment, but don’t bring your phone, which is a temptation to distract yourself and stuff the emotion. Pray, think, count to 50, calm down, and give your brain a chance to reset.

Consider dialoguing with God about your anger in written form to force you to slow down, journalling either in the moment or during devotional time about how you feel and, using Scripture, how you believe God would respond. While you’re journalling, reflect on what you’re grateful for, as both science and Scripture show that gratitude helps us cope with emotional distress (Philippians 4:6). Find someone who is further ahead of you in their journey towards patience (like a pastor or elder) and ask for their prayer and counsel.

Step 4: Make a Plan. In your conversations with other Christians, make a plan for how to address your anger. Ask a brother or sister if you can call or text them in moments of temptation, and then call them when temptation hits. If someone is the regular target of your anger, like a spouse or roommate, make a plan for how they can support you when anger flares. For example, ask ahead of time if you can take a 5-minute break in a different room to cool off when needed, or if there’s a “code” you can use to indicate you’re feeling tempted in the moment (e.g. “I’m stressed about work and am feeling tempted today”). This enlists others as allies in the fight and can elicit prayer when you need it the most.

Conclusion

Our journey of sanctification can feel glacial in pace, but God will be faithful to sanctify us, working through His Spirit and our effort. God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love before him” (Ephesians 1:4). He who has begun a good work in us will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6).

The Psalmist explicitly praises the patient as mightier than even a conquering army: “Patience is better than power, and controlling one’s emotions, than capturing a city.” The phrase translated “controlling one’s emotions” literally means to “rule over one’s spirit.” May the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, and may we seek to rule not over the domains of our world, but rather to rule over ourselves.

References:

• Christopher Ash, Steve Midgely, The Heart of Anger.

• J. Alasdair Groves, Winston T. Smith, Untangling Emotions.

• NIH, Anger provocation increases limbic and decreases medial prefrontal cortex connectivity.