Dealing with Anger - 2/2

Sometimes anger really gets you going. I don’t mean to bashing someone with a hammer, I mean the deep determination to wrestle with an issue or a problem until we can get to the bottom of it.

A key thought in this angry state is often to ask questions. Why is this happening to me? Why did they do this? What can I do about it? What is the cause? How do I do things differently?

I’ve noticed that some of my best business decisions have come after a time of processing anger.

It seems that anger really draws the best out of us as we dig deep, and wrestle with things that just didn’t go the way we wanted, or hoped. Perhaps after the betrayal of a staff member, once we get over the anger, we then put in place measures that protect the business a little better. Maybe after contracting a friend or family who then lets us down, or takes advantage of our kind heartedness, we determine to employ those in business who can do the job, rather than those who just happen to be there.

As a young Christian businessman in my early 20s, I was advised not to do business with a Christian businessman in the Coromandel district, because I was likely to get my fingers burnt. Theoretically this shouldn’t happen because by my calculations it should be the religious ones you can trust. I did do the business and I did get my fingers burned. Darn - I hate it when that happens. I tell you, I was pretty touchy about that one for quite a while, but I learned my lesson!

Growing up is hard to do. It doesn’t always go according to plan. Sometimes we get a bum steer, a knock-back, aren’t dealt a full deck of cards and so on. Anger is a natural part of grief, and growing up is a series of losses - we lose the safety of the womb and arrive only to get whacked on the behind even before we can catch a breath. Just when we’re getting used to suckling we’re weaned off onto yucky stuff that would only get fed to babies. Just when we’re getting confident as kids along comes puberty, adolescence, financial responsibility, work, relationships, parenting, old age and once we’ve worked out how much we have still left to learn we’re rewarded by our turn to push up daisies. It could make a man see red, if we were honest about it.

The temptation is to get stuck in the anger phase and not push through to the deeper stuff. I’ve met a lot of people who are angry at God. Sure, on the surface they might appear to have a reason, maybe if one of my kids got hit by lightening I might start asking some questions, but if I stayed angry too long I’d miss the amazing growing experience that comes by working “through” the anger into acceptance, and then even appreciation for the experience.

By the way, do atheists get angry at God too?

I’m not talking like this from a hole in my head either - my twin boys didn’t quite make it into the world and I had to bury them - up at Snapper Rock Cemetery actually. Putting your kids into a tiny casket and then dropping them into a hole in the ground sucks. According to my simple way of looking at things, that shouldn’t have happened. So I think that I speak from experience on this one - it’s a lot better to get angry and then get getting on with life.

While anger can be pretty destructive if we let it go that way, there is also a type of anger that is actually constructive. I call this righteous anger. When we have a position of authority and something is wrong, there can be times that it is right and proper to vent anger. I think back to the time that Jesus let it rip. A whole bunch of religious dudes were clogging up the temple, making a few bob on the side and stopping the good folk getting in to the place allocated for them.

Here’s the beef according to Matthew, phrased in simple PC language suitable for prime-time family viewing:

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.
Matthew 21:12-13

This is one scene I would not have wanted to witness first-hand - the Son of God sorting out the money changers. We’ve all heard the saying when “all Hell breaks loose” but my money is on the other side of the divide. I reckon Jesus would have gotten His point across quite efficiently, and as always in a godly fashion.

Anger needs to be experienced, and then dealt with. That’s the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way.