‘How can I be slow to anger?’ (Proverbs)

Two men were playing racket ball.  They had their rackets attached to their wrists.  One of the men was taking everything a little too seriously.  He began to roll his eyes.  Then he started to self-talk, calling himself an idiot.  Finally, he lost it.  He threw the racket to the ground, forgetting that it was tied to his wrist. The racket hit his shin and blood began to squirt everywhere.  He took that racket off his wrist and taught it a lesson.  Then he came to his senses.  He realised he had been a fool.  Eventually the two men began to laugh.  But his friend thought, ‘I wouldn’t want to be his wife’.

Why do we feel so foolish after we lose our temper?  We feel foolish because we have just acted like a fool.  ‘A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly’ (14:29).

A hot temper is infectious

Commenting on the man with the racket ball rage, Ed Welch points out that this man was from a family of racket smashers.  They loved each other, but competition was war.  When you lost a game, you smashed things.

Proverbs warns us to avoid those who can’t control their temper.  ‘Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare’ (22:24-25).  Uncontrolled anger is infectious.

The problem for children is that they can’t avoid an angry parent.  As a result, the anger passes through the generations.  Racket-smashers breed racket-smashers.  We want to learn to control our anger for the sake of those we love.   

Not only does uncontrolled anger damage our family, it affects the communities that we are a part of.  Who wants to live beside an angry neighbour?  Who wants to face an angry colleague?  Churches can be destroyed by the angry.  ‘A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but one who is patient calms a quarrel’ (15:18).

As well as hurting those around us, uncontrolled anger hurts ourselves.  Research shows many health effects of uncontrolled anger.  Nothing sets you up for stress, depression and heart attacks like anger.  ‘A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot’ (14:30).

A hot temper is addictive

Uncontrolled anger is a hard habit to break.  ‘A hot-tempered person must pay the penalty, rescue them, and you will have to do it again’ (19:19).  You rescue a hot-tempered man from the trouble their rage has caused, and you soon release that they have got themselves into more trouble from another tantrum.

Psychologists used to encourage people to vent their rage, but they have come to learn better.  ‘Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end’ (29:11).  

A psychology magazine re-produced a letter that had been sent to a newspaper counsellor:

‘Dear Counsellor,

You told that mother of a three-year-old with anger problems to let him kick the furniture to get the anger out of his system.

Well, my younger brother used to kick the furniture when he got mad.  He is thirty-two years old now.  He is still kicking the furniture (what’s left of it).  But he is also kicking his wife, the kids and anything else that gets in his way.

Last week he kicked the television out of a second story window.  The window was closed at the time.’

Instead of having a hot temper we need to be slow to anger

Given all the destruction that anger causes, it might surprise you that Proverbs doesn’t condemn anger outright.  It says that the solution to our anger problem is not no anger but slow anger.  Our God is slow to anger.

Time and again, in the Old Testament, we read that the LORD is slow to anger and abounding in love (e.g. 103:8).  His anger is controlled and reasonable.  In the New Testament Jesus got angry with leaders who were more interested in protocol than they were in a man being healed (Mark 3:5), when people were using the temple as a means of personal profit (John 2:13-17), and when his disciples kept children away from his blessing (Mark 10:14).

The Proverbs commend the slow to anger.  ‘A hot-tempered man stirs up strife.  But the one slow to anger calms a dispute’ (15:18).  ‘He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.  And he who rules his spirit, then he who captures a city’ (16:32).  Those who can’t control their anger are weak.

Our problem is that our anger reveals the disordered nature of our loves.  We watch the news and see the terrible harm caused by an evil dictator and we remain unmoved.  We should be angry.  Then we get bored and go to change the channel, but can’t find the remote control, and we are full of self-centred rage.

What does our anger say about us?  It says that we are self-righteous.  In our anger we often assume that we are right and everyone else is in the wrong.  It says that we are selfish.  We insist on getting our own way.   It says that we are arrogant.  Our sarcasm declares, ‘You’re stupid and I am not.’  Our judgementalism says, ‘I am better than them.’  We are hypocrites who see the offences of others in High Definition, and we see our own faults through rose-tinted glasses.  Jealousy says, ‘I deserve what you have, and you don’t’.  When we are hurt, we withdraw attempting to punish the other person.  Yet the Proverbs tell us ‘not to say, “I will repay evil”’ but to ‘wait for the Lord and he will deliver you’ (Proverbs 20:22, see also, 25:21-22).  ‘A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger.  And it is his glory to overlook a transgression’ (19:11).    

How do we change?

Admit your anger.  Proverbs is very good at convicting us about the nature of our anger.  We have to stop blaming our rage on other people or unfavourable circumstances.  Jesus said that ‘from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Luke 6:45).  People, tiredness or hunger don’t cause us to be angry, they simply help surface the anger that lies within.

Confess your anger.  Our anger is primarily aimed at God.  Our anger prays ‘my will be done’ not ‘your will be done’.  God is in control of our lives, and we accuse him of not doing a very good job.  He calls us to be calm and we tell him to mind his own business.  When God took on flesh and dwelt amongst us, we condemned him, mocked him, spat on him and applauded as he was pinned on a cross to die.  Yet ‘when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).  ‘Sorry’ is a wonderful powerful word.  We say sorry to God and then to those we have hurt.  Ask him for the grace to forgive as we have been forgiven. 

Thank God that he has taken the punishment for all our angry outbursts and all our self-righteous tantrums.  ‘Whoever conceals his sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy’ (28:13).   Uncontrolled anger is slavery and Christ has come to set us free.  Cultivating a life of gratitude is a great antidote to anger.  Thank him for the fact that he goes on forgiving you.  Thank him that he is committed to changing you.  Thank him that though you need strength to control you anger (16:32), he has given you his Spirit.  Pride wants to justify our rage, but a humble heart simply delights in being forgiven.

Recommended:

Tim Keller’s sermon on anger is excellent.  So excellent that when I heard it I thought, ‘how am I going to preach on this subject without simply lifting what he has said?’

Also, I enjoyed reading Ed Welch’s book, ‘A Small book about a big problem.’

I am a person devoid of any original thought and lean heavily on what others write and preach.