Recognizing Anger – Part 2
Proverbs 15:18 “A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.”
Proverbs 19:19 “A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again.”
Proverbs 22:24 “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered.”
Proverbs 29:22 “An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one
commits many sins.”
When dealing with relationships, anger is something that must be looked at. Or, perhaps I should say that anger ought to be identified. Some people’s anger is easy to recognize because the person ‘explodes,’ but some types of anger are not so easily recognizable, but yet are just as damaging.
The first type is the anger where the person ‘explodes,’ ‘blows up,’ like with a small bomb. He gets everything out, but he most usually kills any relationships with those around him. It is hard for this person to build any real lasting relationships as he often loses friends as one never knows what might set that person off. People are always on guard to make sure that they do not ignite the fuse to cause the person to ‘explode,’ so to speak.
Explosive anger is often aimed at hurting others. Anger like this is directed towards a person or persons. In an abusive relationship, explosive anger is at work. The husband explodes towards the wife and often the wife in turn towards the children. The Bible talks about a hot-tempered man. We see from our text that a hot tempered man commits many sins. This is the type of anger that can lead to murder, and often does.
In dealing with anger, another aspect that we need to recognize is holding in anger. Instead of exploding – he implodes. This type of anger also hurts relationships. When one is around a person who holds in anger, one senses that something is not right and therefore begins to hold back from any real commitment to the person or relationship.
This type of anger is hard to recognize. You realize that something is definitely wrong, but you cannot put your finger on what the problem really is. A person who holds in anger is like a fish out of the water. He is slippery. Trying to get a grip on what the problem is we find the solution slipping out of our hands.
A person who explodes gets everything out. This is good, but this anger directed towards another person hurts others. The person who implodes hurts himself. Eventually this anger comes out, but in a different form such as with ulcers, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries and manyother diseases that harm the physical body.
A person who is holding in anger becomes irritable, sullen, tense and miserable and never seems to be able to say anything nice about another person or thing. Needless to say, this is not the type of behavior that attracts other people. Consequently relationships suffer.
It is important for a person who is imploding to recognize how this type of anger hurts themselves, their own body. This person needs to change his behavior patterns and the way he thinks. Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”
Dealing with this type of anger it is important for this person to first recognize that this is anger and call it for what it really is: SIN. Because the heart is deceitful we can very easily be deluded into thinking that because we did not explode that we do not have the problem of anger.
The third type of anger is perhaps the most subtle and I believe the most deadly: blaming others. The way to break a relationship the fastest is to start blaming. Perhaps we do not look at this as anger, but in reality this is what it is.
Right at the dawn of human history we see this anger being manifested. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden and God came down and asked them what they had done, we see the blame game being played out. Adam blamed God (the wife YOU gave me), then blamed his wife and Eve blamed the serpent and this has been the story ever since. It is always someone else’s fault. No one wants to take responsibility.
Today we live in an environment where personal responsibility by an individual is not required. Someone gets fired from a job and it is the employer’s fault. Things don’t seem to work out at home it is someone else’s fault. People just don’t seem to understand that it is their own fault.
In building and maintaining relationships it is important for us to recognize anger and to deal with it. Later we will be looking at how to deal with anger in a biblical way.