Self-Justified Anger
“ Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19-21)
Paul empties the cupboard of all the ingredients that tend to foul up the soup. Many of them are locks for being on the list, but there are others that we curl in our eyebrows in dismay. We can easily convict sexual immorality, sorcery, dissensions, carousing, and things like that, but…
Anger? How can an emotion that is part of our DNA be so bad that it’s put in the same mixture as carousing? After all, Jesus got angry at the moneychangers in the temple. Was he displaying one of the works of the flesh? That can’t be! He was without sin.
The truth is… these are angry times, populated by angry people who seem to jump into the pool of irrational behavior frequently. We leap before we look, speak before we think, and react before we pray. Jesus’s anger came as a result of religious shysters who were profiting from the pilgrims’ obedience to the religious laws of their day. Our anger comes as a result of things not going our way. There’s a difference between the two, but deaf ears to hearing the truth.
It seems that anger is now a core value of our political system. It shows its red-faced displeasure in revenge, non-sensical actions, and pouting. What most Americans would love to see is the ability to compromise and have a shared belief that seeks the good of the people. Anger sweeps those hopes into the dustpan and out for the trash. And it seems that when anger gets deployed (Please! I’m not talking about ICE agents when I use that word!) there is a personal sense of gratification that gets the angered person all goosebumpy.
Anger is an outward sign of our need to feel superior. Maybe even more than that, anger is the indicative emotion of our need for the other person, party, or group to feel inferior, to feel the heel of our boot squarely in their personhood. I’d be interested in knowing how much of our charitable giving or contributions to a cause is driven by our anger.
I wish I could say that followers of Jesus are distinctly different, but we aren’t. We are guilty of politicizing our religion according to our flavor and assuming that we are being Christ-like. We get irritated at our neighbors who mow their lawns on Sunday afternoon, but scroll through our cell phones as the pastor’s unheard words ask what message God is trying to get through to us. We get ticked off at the pastor going long in the sermon because it means the Methodists are going to beat us to Cracker Barrel.
Angry spirits drown out the whisperings of the Holy. Peace, on the other hand, is punctuated with moments of silence and comprehension that comes from listening.
You probably know this already, so take this as a refresher reminder. Immediately after the Apostle Paul defined the works of the flesh, he gave us another list. It’s a list of indicators of the Holy Spirit’s activity in a person’s life. They get referred to as the fruit of the Spirit. Here they are again, and I love his lead-in to them.
“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:22-23)
It seems that the first list is all about what I can get, or my group can get, but the second list is all about having Christlike behavior towards all and seeking to do what is beneficial for all.
Explore posts in the same categories: UncategorizedTags: Christianity, Faith, Bible, God, Jesus
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
Words from WW Blog 
Leave a comment