November 1, 2008
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Anger, Part 2
I guess God really wants to teach me how to manage my anger. Last night, we went to Ralphs and got some beef. When we got home and opened up the package and separated the slices, we saw that the beef was brown and had a funny odor to it. It’s the kind of smell beef gets when it has gone bad. I knew I couldn’t cook it, so I got back in my car and headed back to the store. There, the manager protested, “it’s supposed to be like that.” I was suprised that he was arguing with me, but he conceded in allowing me to return it when I insisted that it was spoiled. Then he told me to get in line. I felt offended. First of all, he was treating me like I didn’t know any better and then he was going to send me back in line? He should’ve apologized for wasting my time and he should’ve opened a register and taken care of me right there. I got my money back and then went across the street to a competing grocery and made my purchases there instead.
I was very mad while I was grocery shopping at Albertsons and still mad as I drove home. But then while I was driving, I realized that I was being given another chance to choose forgiveness. That’s it. I just have to choose it. I am faced with two doors. Do I walk through the door of continued anger or the door of forgiveness? I realized all over again for the second time that day – when I hold anger, I can’t hold anything else at all.
I think the key for me is to realize that I have a choice: to be angry or to forgive. When I don’t realize I have a choice, I always go on and on in anger. But when I realize that there’s a choice, the choice becomes a lot easier to make.
Comments (5)
i appreciate this. thank you!
Thought-provoking. I agree that anger is usually not the right response, but what do you think of righteous anger? Perhaps it’s that Christ displays it (e.g. when at the temple) without the propensity to sin, where that’s such a huge stumbling block for us as fallen beings (Psalm 4:4). But I can’t help thinking that a sense of anger at wrongdoing and injustice can be, when properly placed, a good and needed thing. Your thoughts?
@ennahart - Very good point. Thanks for the reminder about righteous anger. My anger usually comes as a natural response to injustice — and that is definitely good. We should be mad about wrongdoing and injustice, and we should fight for what is right. But I think what I’ve been struggling with is not the simple righteous anger but the fact that I continue on and on in seething anger, grumbling, etc, which consumes me so much that I can’t think about anything else and makes me be grumpy at everyone around me. Maybe we need to have righteous anger, but it is also righteous to forgive soon after and pray for those who wrong us.
Ah yes, I see. So then it seems the choice is, rather, to allow my anger to lead to sin or to forgive. Anger itself can be constructive if we conceive of it in terms of righteous anger (I am thinking of public interest and poverty lawyers especially, whom I know can be motivated by a sense of anger at injustice)…though for all practical purposes, your point is well taken, since we lapse into the consuming-grumbling-resentful byproducts of anger much more than the selfless ones. :) (Corrie ten Boom comes to mind as a striking counterexample.) thanks for the response!
Man, i totally know… great post.