By Reverend Laurie DeMott

What does it look like when you are angry? Are you the volcanic type, exploding in a huge kaboom that sends everyone running for the hills or are you the cold silent type whose anger freezes the room?

And what makes you angry?

And most importantly, why do those things make you angry?

Anger is listed in tradition as one of the seven deadly sins and yet I'm guessing that there isn't a single person in the room who can honestly say they have never been angry. We all get angy. We may get angry for different reasons and our anger may be expressed in different ways, but anger is a normal part of the spectrum of human emotion, so much so that our reading from Ephesians acknowledges the impossibility of erasing anger from our lives. "Be angry", Ephesians 4:26 begins. Now, we know there is a qualification coming but it is important to note from the outset that whatever else this verse in Ephesians may say about anger, it begins by saying right off the bat, it is OK to be angry. Anger does have a place and a purpose in our lives.

In his book, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, Frans de Waal tells the story of a mother wolf who had to leave her pups behind in the den for a few hours so that she could do some hunting. As a researcher watched, the mother wolf headed down the forest path a few feet and then just below a small crest in the path, she crouched down, faced back toward the den, and waited. A few minutes later, one of the bolder pups stuck his nose out of the den and began to trundle down the path following his mother's scent. As he came over the crest of the hill, his mother leaped out of hiding, and snarled and snapped at her pup. The startled pup tucked his tail between his legs and high-tailed it back to the den while the mother wolf watched his retreat. She then turned back down the path and went off on her morning hunt and this time, the pups remained obediently in the den.

The biologist watching that scene would describe it using dispassionate words like, "the mother issued warning vocalizations" but we would describe it by saying the mother wolf was angry at her disobedient pup. She anticipated his disobedience and, catching him red-handed, she gave him an angry talking to: "What are you doing out of the den?" she snapped. "I thought I told you to stay put. Now get back there and do what you are told!"

Anger is a fundamental emotion that has evolved in social animals as a means of correcting undesirable behavior to keep the community safe and functioning properly. So too in humans, anger has evolved as a fundamental and necessary component of the human life so much so that we would be very suspicious of the person who never got angry. And I'm not talking about the person who can maintain a cool head -- I'm talking about some person who never even feels a moment of anger. Imagine a man walking down the road with his elderly mother when a boy rides by on his bike and plows the woman over, knocking her to the ground with complete disregard. We would expect that man to at least feel some anger on behalf of his mother. Different men might express it differently -- some might explode at the boy in a verbal tirade, others might calmly take the boy by the scruff of the neck and say, "I think you should apologize", but if a man just shrugged his shoulders and walked on completely unmoved by the rude boy's treatment of his mother, we would wonder about the quality of his humanity.

Anger, then, has evolved as a means of giving warning to those around us that we feel someone has violated our standard of acceptable behavior. Every outburst of anger, every simmering resentment is initiated by a sense that someone has behaved inappropriately. Someone has been disobedient to family mores, or jeopardized the safety of your family or community, or practiced an injustice toward you or to someone you care about, and so you, just like the mother wolf correcting the disobedience of a wayward pup, bare your teeth and snarl and snap in warning. "Be careful," our anger says to others, "you are crossing unacceptable lines."

Think about the things that make you angry. From our large more abstract anger at global wrongs like war or pollution to those small fits of temper we have when a car in front of us is driving too slowly, we simmer and rage because someone has violated our sense of what is acceptable and how we are expected to act around one another.

Scripture recognizes that anger is important as a corrective for unacceptable behavior. Over and over again, the biblical writers warn the people that God's wrath burns hot against them because they have been worshipping idols or have forgotten the poor. Jesus gets angry at the Pharisee's intolerance and calls them a few choice names, like brood of vipers. He even has a famous fit of temper in the Temple when he throws around tables and drives out the money changers. Rather than prescribing an unflappable personality for the Christian, the Bible actually calls us to be angry at injustice knowing that anger can give us the energy to fight the powerful on behalf of the powerless and bring society into alignment with God's will. Think of the number of times you have read of some successful crusader who has changed an unjust law or started an important new program because something made them angry.

The latest issue of Atlantic Monthly has an article by a business executive named David Goldhill who writes, "My father walked into the hospital [two years ago] with pneumonia .... but over the next five weeks a wave of secondary infections acquired at the hospital overwhelmed his defenses ... and he became a statistic, merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up at hospitals. [A simple check list of handwashing and sterilization protocols has been shown to reduce these infections in hospitals by two thirds but many hospitals see the protocols as belittling to staff and have refused to implement them.] My survivor's grief," he writes, "has taken the form of an obsession with our health care system" and one of the results of his anger is his well-researched and persuasive article in the Atlantic Monthly.

When we think of the important work Goldhill is doing trying to bring change to hospital care, or of the work of organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, we know that anger can drive us to improve society and strengthen the health of our communities. "Be angry," Ephesians tells us, not only giving us permission to express our irritation and frustration but even urging us to feel anger on behalf of those who have been wronged. If we wonder about the man who doesn't get angry because a knuckleheaded kid ran his bike into his mother, shouldn't we also wonder what is wrong with us if we aren't angry at a world where hunger is an accepted fact of life, where the convenience of consumers is valued more highly than the quality of our land, air, and water, and where war is so ordinary that it doesn't even make the top stories on the news anymore?

"Be angry" Ephesians says. Not only is it OK to be angry, sometimes it is right and good to be angry so that your anger can fuel your desire to work for change.

But, of course, before you go charging off allowing your anger to fuel your sense of righteous indignation, you must be certain that you have a right to be indignant. Let's face it, not every injustice we perceive is a true injustice, especially when those injustices are on a more personal level. Sometimes there is more to the story than we know or sometimes our sense of what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable is no more than personal opinion. George Carlin once said, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

And sometimes our sense of righteous indignation is really no more than complete self-absorption. A little child may throw a fit because she can't have all of the cupcakes to herself, but that doesn't mean that she has a right to all of the cupcakes!

Proverbs 14:29 says, "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but the one who has a hasty temper exalts folly."

The Bible uses the phrase "slow to anger" frequently indicating that while anger is a legitimate expression toward injustice, we must take the time to consider carefully whether our sense that an injustice has occured is accurate or whether it is just the result of our own hurt feelings or self-centered world view.

A colleague at the office always waits until the very last minute to meet a deadline whereas you prefer to work at a steady pace ticking off small chunks of the project little by little. You are constantly irritated by your colleague's procrastination feeling that he is being inconsiderate of his team, but is your anger really justified if he in fact does get the work done on time? Or is your anger based on a self-centered belief that all the world should conform to your work style?

Your husband decides to go out with some friends on a night when you were really hoping to spend a quiet evening together. Has he really committed an injustice or is it that you are expecting him to be able to read your mind? Is your indignation based on an impossible expectation?

When my son John was 12, I frequently babysat his four year old cousin, Naomi, and Naomi was at that age where she would follow John around and get into his things. Whenever he'd lose his patience, I'd say, "John, just remember, she's only 4." Finally, one day he shouted back, "If I hear one more time that I'm 12 and she's only 4, I'm going to explode!" The 12 year old John saw the situation as completely unjust but any older wiser person knows that the reality is that you cannot expect a four year old to have the comprehension and self-control of a 12 year old. His perceived injustice was in reality an unreasonable expectation.

The Bible tells us to be slow to anger, to take the time to analyze the situation which is frustrating us and ask whether our anger is over a legitimate injustice or whether honestly we are angry because other people behave differently than we do, think differently than we do, are just different than we are. Maybe we are harboring resentment just because our feelings were hurt, or because someone has had the gall to not live their lives according to our timetable and our needs.

And even in those cases where we come to the conclusion that a true injustice has been done to us, maybe it is too late to change what has been done. For better or for worse, time has marched on and anger will not have the power to change the wounds inflicted by the past.

"Be slow to anger," the Bible says. Consider whether anger will have purpose before you take it into your heart because if it has no purpose, no outlet to give that anger meaning, it will only simmer and boil within you eating away at your heart.

I know a woman who was dealing with a difficult situation in her life who told me that she had found great relief in a small exercise she performed every night. "I know it sounds kind of silly," she said, "but every night before I go to bed, I place my hands over my heart and I imagine myself drawing out all of the anger. And then I take that anger that I'm now holding in my hands and put it away in my dresser drawer for the night. The next morning when I get up, I go to that drawer and I ask myself, 'Do I need to carry this today?' Some days, I think I do because I know I need to work on it and let it drive me, but other days I think, 'No, today I will just leave it in the drawer until I am more ready to bear it.' One day I hope to be able to leave it there forever."

Or as in the words of Ephesians 4:26, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." Let your anger at injustice drive you. Let your anger on behalf of others be the catalyst to work for change. But let the anger that has no purpose except to feed your own sense of self-pity and pride be put away when the sun goes down, every night for a hundred nights if necessary, until one day, you will finally be able to leave it there forever.