Anger Issues

It seems as though one can find anger around every corner in daily life. If you turn on the news, you’re bound to hear a story sooner or later about someone with anger problems who harmed another person or an animal because they were angry about one thing or another. You may encounter politicians or their supporters of different ideological persuasions shouting at each other everywhere from city council meetings to the US Senate. If you go to the grocery store, you may hear someone complaining to a store employee or having a go at another customer because they cut in line. If you go online and scroll through your social media feeds, there’s no shortage of anger boiling over there regarding social, political, environmental, and other issues. Anger can be caused by both external and internal events. What is anger? Anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity. It can range from feeling mild irritation to intense rage. Anger is accompanied by physiological and biological changes. The stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, increase causing heart rate and blood pressure to go up. Is anger an issue? Expressing anger. The instinctive way to express anger is to respond aggressively. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to perceived threat. The mental, physiological, and emotional response inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and behaviors that prepare us to defend ourselves when we are attached. People use conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. Three approaches people use to deal with their anger are assertively expressing, suppressing, and calming. Expressing your angry feelings in an assertive – not aggressive – manner is the healthiest. Anger can be suppressed, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger. Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can [...]

Do you ever feel guilty for being angry over something you care about? Or do you find yourself feeling justified in your anger toward certain events or people? There’s no shortage of things that make us angry, and you don’t have to look far to find them. In response to political and social issues, everyday occurrences like bad traffic or being treated poorly by others, anger is a far too common reaction to the world around us. Add to that the stress that has been generated by being in a pandemic over the last few years, and we have a cocktail of worry and anger. And it’s not just Americans that have been feeling this way. According to the latest Gallup Global Emotions Report, in the last few years, the world has been a more worried and more stressed-out, sadder, and angrier place than it has been at any time in the past fifteen years. The Bible helps us to come to grips with the complexity of anger, helping us to understand the roots of our anger, as well as the devastating effects of our anger. While we learn from the following Bible verses about anger that God also gets stirred to wrath, we are shown that God gets angry because of sin and that he is slow to anger. The description of God’s character from Exodus 33:19, for example, emphasizes the merciful and gracious character of the Lord, whose steadfast love and forgiveness extend to thousands in contrast to the few upon whom he visits his anger. Our inclinations often run in the opposite direction. The Bible warns us that anger can be either righteous or sinful, which is just one of many reasons why letting go of anger can be something to aim for. The Bible verses about [...]