By Chris WittsFriday 16 Feb 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsDevotionsReading Time: 1 minute
Subscribe to Morning Devotions podcast
Transcript:
There’s a question I’ve been thinking about lately, and it’s this. Why are there so many angry people out there? This is a very interesting issue, but it’s also a very disturbing one, I think to see so many people who’ve got what we call an anger management problem. Are we living under such pressure and this level of anxiety that we have to lash out in anger. Yes, it’s easy to see this driving in city traffic here in Sydney.
Motorists become very angry and aggressive when a fellow motorist does the wrong thing or forgets to put his blinker on or something like that. Or there’s a lack of courteous behaviour on the road. So I’m sure you’ve seen this. It may be due to many things, this anger could be disappointment or the unreasonable expectations, perhaps of themselves.
Or they might have been brought up in a home where Mum and Dad were always angry, or there’s fear and uncertainty, and often there is this bottling up of emotions until they come out and explode. So I’m going to talk about this today and tomorrow and I hope it’s helpful.
Anger Management
I heard about a church minister who had a sign put up in the car park of his church. It said, “This car space is for the pastor only – all other cars will be towed away!!!” and he had three exclamation marks after the word away.
So I think he put them up on a day when he was very angry. He was fed up with the people parking in his spot, so maybe he had a bad day.
But I think if we are professing Christians, we need to be careful about this. What is it that’s going on? Where does this impatience and all this anger come from? Why are so many people walking around as we say with short fuses? Perhaps we’re living in a state of fear and tension in our world, and we get frustrated. Why? Because we don’t know what to do, or we don’t know how to make things better. Well, this is anger and it’s a very difficult subject to talk about.
We usually don’t want to deal with anger. It’s easy to see it in somebody else. But what about from within ourselves. Surely we want a peaceful, happy life. And yet I think there’s an excellent definition of anger, very simple. And you know what it is. It’s fear out loud.
Anger – “Fear out loud”
Fear of events that haven’t happened or fear that we will not be good enough or that we will fail others as well as failing ourselves. We fear many things in our lives that actually will never happen. And at home, I have a very interesting book called “Keeping Your Cool When Your Anger Is Hot” by June Hunt. And in her book, she talks about Sam, who was a fairly even-tempered man. His daughter had actually gone into labour. The first child was coming, his grandchild.
This was a very significant moment because unfortunately, his wife had died eight months previously. So the hospital, it was about three hours away. He packed his lunch, got in the car and the motor wouldn’t start, so he prayed out loud. “Dear God, not today. Of all the days I need my car to start, why won’t it start today”. So he rushed back into the house and tried to phone his mechanic. But it was Saturday. And yes, nothing could be done until Monday because it needed a new starter motor.
Well, Sam started to get quite angry, so he realised he needed to get a bus. He left town in one hour. So he waited in line, and he discovered the company had mistakenly sold more tickets than there were seats. So when the bus arrived, it was full up. “Sorry.” The driver said this bus is full. And so Sam was starting to get really mad.
He even offered to sit in the aisle of the bus, but they wouldn’t allow that. So he went back hoping to get a refund. But it was a non-refundable ticket. His hands started to shake. He was getting in a rage. And you know what he did? He reached over and punched the clerk squarely in the face. And other people had to sort of restrain him. The police arrived. He calmed down. Unfortunately, he was charged with assault, and here he was spending one night in jail, humiliated,
And he was forced to apologise. And, of course, the biggest shame was that he missed out on the birth of his grandson.
It reminds me what the Bible says. Be quick to listen and slow to speak or get angry. If you are angry, you can’t do any of the good things that God wants done. And that’s words from James 1. So we’ll take this further again tomorrow.
Let’s Pray
Lord, how true it is that many of us have an anger problem. Help us, Lord, to seek you and to seek your advice and your guidance. Amen.