I found this CD in my library and I listened to it. It is amazing how much I learned, and, also it is amazing how little I knew about anger. I did not know that anger can be a deadly sin. This CD changed my life. I share with you a little bit of it, but if you want to know more please visit the LIGHTHOUSE Catholic Media at www.lighthousecatholicmedia.org and order the CD. It costs only 2 or 3 dollars, but it can change your life, just as it changed mine. God Bless You.
Anger and Forgiveness
Któż jak Bóg! There is One God and no other!!!
By Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald
Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald is an award weaning medical doctor, a successful Catholic psychotherapist and author on family issues, and a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. In 1987 he was honored as Canadian Family Physician of the year for his leadership in training doctors and nurses for the medical relive effort during the great famine in Ethiopia. He personally led the first of these themes into the famine stricken countries. He was ordained a permanent deacon for the diocese of Pembroke, Ontario, in 1992. Since then Deacon Bob has made many appearances on Canadian television and has traveled widely in this country giving talks, retreats, and preaching in parish missions. Catholic psychotherapist Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald provides a spiritual and psychological prescription for overcoming the sinful anger that poisons the mind of Christ within, causing alienation and division. His practical wisdom shows that only by learning how to forgive can we hope to promote healing and understanding in our relationships and enjoy the blessings of a forgiving heart.
Anger and Forgiveness By Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald
Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald is an award weaning medical doctor, a successful Catholic psychotherapist and author on family issues, and a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. In 1987 he was honored as Canadian Family Physician of the year for his leadership in training doctors and nurses for the medical relive effort during the great famine in Ethiopia. He personally led the first of these themes into the famine stricken countries. He was ordained a permanent deacon for the diocese of Pembroke, Ontario, in 1992. Since then Deacon Bob has made many appearances on Canadian television and has traveled widely in this country giving talks, retreats, and preaching in parish missions. Catholic psychotherapist Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald provides a spiritual and psychological prescription for overcoming the sinful anger that poisons the mind of Christ within, causing alienation and division. His practical wisdom shows that only by learning how to forgive can we hope to promote healing and understanding in our relationships and enjoy the blessings of a forgiving heart.
1. Anger – Family War
2. What is Anger?
3. The Types of Anger
4. Jesus and the Holy Anger
5. Theological Foundation for Regarding Anger as Sin
6. Basic Truths about Anger
7. The Remedies for Anger: Concept of Moods
Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald is an award weaning medical doctor, a successful Catholic psychotherapist and author on family issues, and a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. In 1987 he was honored as Canadian Family Physician of the year for his leadership in training doctors and nurses for the medical relive effort during the great famine in Ethiopia. He personally led the first of these themes into the famine stricken countries. He was ordained a permanent deacon for the diocese of Pembroke, Ontario, in 1992. Since then Deacon Bob has made many appearances on Canadian television and has traveled widely in this country giving talks, retreats, and preaching in parish missions. Catholic psychotherapist Deacon Dr. Bob McDonald provides a spiritual and psychological prescription for overcoming the sinful anger that poisons the mind of Christ within, causing alienation and division. His practical wisdom shows that only by learning how to forgive can we hope to promote healing and understanding in our relationships and enjoy the blessings of a forgiving heart.
1. Anger – Family War
2. What is Anger?
3. The Types of Anger
4. Jesus and the Holy Anger
5. Theological Foundation for Regarding Anger as Sin
6. Basic Truths about Anger
7. The Remedies for Anger: Concept of Moods
1. Anger - Family War
Let’s talk about title Anger – Family War. In the book of Syrah chapter 27, 30 we read:
“Anger and fury are both of them abominable and the sinful man shall be subject to them.”
There are many things which can destroy the peace of the family life. But nothing does this more powerfully than anger. Sinful anger is a distorted emotion which possesses the mind of the one who is angry, destroys the mind of Christ within him or her, crushes the one on the receiving end, and of course, it terrifies the children. It never heals anything. It only leads to resentment or hurt and even to desire for retaliation or revenge. It can lead, at its extreme, to murder in families where once there had been love. Anger is indeed family war. And it brings abut alienation, division, separation, divorce, and broken children who learn that love in not to be trusted. All the angry men and women will always justify their anger. But Jesus would never be convinced by their arguments. The consequences of sinful anger to a family are too evil for any justification to be plausible.
Because of original sin we all have inherited a fallen nature. As a result of that our disordered natural instinct is capable of flaring into anger as an involuntary response without the consent or our will. And, so at this point there is no actual sin. Actual sin occurs if when we recognize that the anger has reasoned within us that we then fuel at and save the feeling by willfully entertaining more angry thoughts.
When I went through the medical school in the late 1950thies and early 1960thies, my professors in psychiatry thought me that feelings were morally neutral. That is to say those feelings were neither good nor bad. Then, as a young student I accepted this without question, but now I know that this philosophy is dangerous. It does not heal. It does untold damage to our psyche and it stands in open opposition to Scripture and to God’s wisdom, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthian 3, 19
“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”
Your see, precisely because these so called wise men and women believed that feelings were morally neutral they were than forced to the absurd conclusion that it is acceptable for me to hate my father. It is acceptable for me to feel lust. It is acceptable for me to be furious with my brother. It is acceptable for me to be violently jealous of my neighbor. There is no problem! This is no sin! And therefore, I need not confess these experiences in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You see, by neutralizing emotions, and relegating them to the simplistic level of mire animal reflexes, we excuse them as being only human. And we absolve ourselves from any moral wrong doing. But is absolution not reserved to God alone through His priests? You see, once again the evil snake has slithered into our garden and is telling us that we can do good or evil, and we can become like God. The old sin of Adam and Eve is being re – presented to us in a bright new 20th century package which is called Secular Psychology.
The situation becomes totally absurd when we look at how modern psychology is forced to treat anger. Many psychologists continue to insist that the only way to deal with anger is to encourage the patient to express it. This gives rise to a serious contradiction. On the one hand psychology says that anger is neither good nor bad, yet, on the other hand treats an angry person as though he was sick. As a medical student, I once attended a psychiatry seminar and watched the professor of psychiatry work with a poor angry patient in front of 200 eager students. He handed the man a pillow and he said:
“This pillow is your father. Now do to the pillow what you would like to do to your father. Express your anger.”
So, the patient proceeded to pound the pillow and to yell and scream until he was totally spent. What puzzled me at that time was that the patient looked a lot worse going out than when he came in. And yet the professor
beckoned with pleasure at the job well done. But now, I know that the opposite is true. The therapist, by encouraging the patient to express anger was simply teaching the man how to be even more angry. He was actually creating anger upon anger with his so called therapy, rather than alleviating it.
Anger sis the most common problem I encounter in my psychotherapy practice, and from my experience, it also ought to be one of most common sins brought to a priest in confession. Not only that, but it is the most prudently understood of all human emotions. It is staggering to realize just how much is taught and written about anger by psychiatrists in an effort to excuse it and justify it to a modern world caught in a futile freeze of denying sin.
2. What is Anger?
So, what is Anger?! Anger is actually defined by The Oxford dictionary as the disordered, note – the disordered desire to correct or to punish someone. It is disordered because the correction or punishment is motivated by passion or fury. It is also disordered because the corrective methods used by any angry person, such as mental cruelty, cursing, physical abuse, or other forms of violence are sinful on and off themselves. This violates the Christian dignity of our brothers and sisters, and they do the violence to the God of Peace.
Anger displaces its ugly face everywhere. Husbands and wives find themselves expressing anger towards each other. Parents react angrily towards their children, and so brothers and sisters learn what? They learn to be angry with one another. Anger from within the home, then, of course, it leaches outside of the home to be inflicted on relatives, neighbors, and fellow workers. Just as a person grows in size from a childhood to adulthood, so do ones anger grow. An angry little boy grows up to find himself to be a slave to a man – size anger. Unchecked, it can begin to rule the person completely.
3. The Types of Anger
It is important to understand that there are two types of anger:
1. Sinful anger
2. Just anger
Sinful Anger
Let us consider sinful anger to begin. Sinful anger can be classified into 4 categories:
1. Firstly, there is the simple emotion of anger which flares up in response to a perceived insult or hurt. It is confined, straight forward, and easy to understand. Because is obvious. It dies on as soon as it starts and it is directly related to an immediate event.
2. The second type of anger is what I call Conditioned Anger. It is much more deeply entrenched. It has its origin deep within our past due to event often long forgotten and which we have not yet brought to a healthy closure. As a result, as soon as something occurs, which consciously or unconsciously triggers that past hurt, we resurrect the old pain and respond with irrational, displaced anger. In other words we displace it from the true cause which was the event in the past onto a person in the present. Conditioned anger is in, a fact, the re – living of a past unresolved event.
3. Thirdly, the deadly sin of anger. Now this is much more serious but surprisingly, it is not in itself an actual sin. What do we mean by that? What we mean is; it is really a predisposition to sin. In other words, a person suffering from slavery to the deadly sin of anger is not walking around 24 hr a day in a fit of anger or rage stamping his feet and braking things. What it means is that he is constantly and exquisitely poised to brake into rage at the slightest provocation. As soon as this person precedes an insult whether it will be real or imaginary, than the angry explosion occurs. The volcano erupts. And so this form of anger is deadly because it is going to kill ones soul, unless that person is released from its bondage. In fact, it is a form of satanic oppression. Such a person has given Satan a foothold, through his own cooperation he is given the spirit of anger a lace in his soul and he is therefore under its suggestibility. Although, his will is weakened, he is still nevertheless able to say “no” to the angry promptings of this adverse spirit.
4. Now, the forth type of sinful anger is the most dangerous and the most aggravated of all. And it is in a fact diabolical possession. Whereby an intelligent evil spirit is welcomed into ones heart. Such an unhappy soul is in a constant state of anger and totally dominated by an intelligent evil spirit. Now while all four categories of sinful anger are ultimately self generated, only the first two can be helped by psychotherapy alone. The deadly sin requires both psychotherapy and prayers for deliverance. While satanic possession requires actual exorcism which can only be performed by officially designated exorcist, by the bishop. And this is followed, of course, by psychotherapy for the distressing aftermath. All of the sinful angers need the Sacrament of Reconciliation, not only for the cleansing of the damaged soul, but also for the grace to fight any subsequent temptation to anger.
Just Anger
Now, just anger is defined by the Church as not sin at all. In fact it is not really anger as we understand it. It is much better described as Righteous indignation. The difference between just anger and sinful anger is actually quite simple to recognize. We know that our anger is justified when we are angry on behalf of another person who is being violated or abused or in response to some serious injustice in the world. For example, we might be justifiably angry at the murder of millions of unborn babies in our world today, or we might be angry at the torture and killing of innocent people in a war zone. Just anger and sinful anger therefore are better defined not by the personal characteristics of what it is to be angry, but rather by the object on behalf of which I am angry. Not only that, just anger is always in right proportion. The actions which arise out of just anger are always moderate in degree. For example, if we feel anger at the plight of children caught up in horrors of a war we might legitimately respond by collecting food and clothing and sending these to the war torn region. In other words, just anger never results in sinful actions. As St. Paul says in Ephesians 4, 26:
“Be angry but sin not!”
See, sinful anger is different because it is usually always on behalf of myself. I feel unfairly attacked, or hurt, or used. My anger is always out of proportion, and my thoughts, words, and actions are inevitably immoderate, destructive, and offensive to man and to God. You only have to look into the face of an angry person to know that you are not looking into the face of Jesus who is meek and humble of heart.
4. Jesus and the Holy Anger
Many people who are troubled by their human angry emotions try to justify these by pointing to Jesus and the cleansing of the Temple. However, if one examines all for Gospel account, the word anger is never used to describe Jesus’ strong actions. So, you see we are not justified when saying:
“Well, Jesus got angry therefore we can be angry!”
There is simply no basis from which to assume that Jesus was experiencing the same kind of anger to which we give in so frequently. On the contrary, it is absolutely certain that even if Jesus was angry it must have been of an entirely different variety from what we call sinful anger. For the very reason, that Jesus was utterly incapable of sin. And so, we can surmise that Jesus was not reacting on His own behalf. And that turns ought to be the case. Scripture tells us in Mathew 21, 13 that Jesus shouted:
“My house shall be a house of prayer but you are making it a den of thieves”,
in other words, His Father’s house. And this is the key to Jesus’ reaction. He was acting purely on behalf of His Father, not on behalf of Himself. He was indignant at the incredible offense being given to God in His house by the profanation of God’s Holy Temple. Jesus was displaying the holy anger of God. As the perfectly pure One, He had the right to purify the Temple. God’s anger is holy. And then we are told in John 2, 17 when Jesus was cleansing the Temple that His disciples recall the words of Scripture
“Zeal for Your House will consume me.”
In other words, Jesus was displaying a righteous indignation, a zeal for the Temple, not giving in to the self indulgent rage. There is a printed handout distributed by a pregnancy center in the United States which teaches the following ironies ideas about anger.
1. Anger brings about needed change, a good change.
2. Anger can make an impression for truth, we get honest.
3. Anger is a strong motivator, it makes us move.
4. Anger can be used to rebuke or correct, Jesus got His point across.
Now I cannot agree with any one of those statements. As a Christian I reply:
1. Anger does bring about change, but never a good change.
2. Anger never makes an impression for truth because the thoughts which generate our anger are always distorted.
3. Anger is indeed a strong motivator, it makes us want to hurt someone and do something about it.
4. Anger can be used to rebuke or correct, but it always over – rebukes and over – corrects.
And it is a blasphemy to compare Jesus anger with our sinful anger. Yes, Jesus did get His point across but it was not in sin. So, what do the Scriptures have to say about anger? It is impossible, I suppose, to appeal to a higher authority than Jesus Himself. His actual words are above any challenge and we are obliged to give them our total obedience. And so, Jesus states in Mathew 5, 21 – 22:
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Jesus here is linking anger with murder. How can that be!? This is a serious, serious principle that Jesus is trying to teach us in His new teaching, The New Testament. In the very same discourse, He says in verses 27 – 28:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Therefore, according to Jesus just thinking lustfully is in the same category as actual adultery. And so, likewise being angry is a kin to murder. The reason for this is that just as lust is the precursor to adultery, so anger can so often be the precursor to murder. Anger therefore is not a neutral emotion, it has powerful moral implications and Jesus warns us sternly against it. James 1, 19 – 20:
“Keep this in mind dear brothers; let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for a man’s anger does not fulfill God’s justice.”
Anger therefore is a sin against justice. Colossians 3, 8:
“You must put all that aside now, all the anger, and quick temper, the malice, the insults, the foul language.”
Even the Old Testament holds anger to be a grave sin. Proverbs 29, 22:
“The hot head provokes disputes.”
Someone in a rage commits all sorts of sins. There is however a very common misinterpretation of Scripture which many people use to justify anger and to pass it off as simply a human emotion. And it is to be found in the words of St. Paul in Ephesians 4, 26 which I quoted earlier. And St. Paul says:
“If you are angry let it be without sin.”
This is so often taken to mean that it is acceptable to be angry as long as no does not sin with it. However, Paul is not suggesting that it is permissible to be sinfully angry. In the original Greek manuscript Paul uses the word “είναι θυμωμένος” for be angry. This form is only used once in the entire bible and it refers specifically to an inner attitude of indignation to words, a person, or an injustice. In other words, Paul is talking here about righteous indignation or just anger. He is not referring to sinful anger at all. In fact, in the very same passage he goes onto saying in a verse 31:
“Get rid of all passion and anger.”
So on the one hand Paul says be angry, yet on the other he says get rid of all anger. And so, he clearly means something very different from the popular modern interpretation since he would most certainly not contradict himself.
5. Theological Foundation for Regarding Anger as Sin
There is the powerful theological foundation for regarding anger as sin. And, so it should be combated by means of our will and by means of God’s grace. We should not excuse it. Ruther we should confess it. Nevertheless, we must have great compassion for those Christians who still struggle with anger and feel impotent against it. And this talk is not meant to inflict guilt on those who suffer with the problem. On the contrary it is design to bring them the good news. There is freedom from anger if you want it. And that freedom will be found in truth, for as Jesus promises in John 8, 32:
“The truth will set you free!”
We need not buy into the satanic lie that we cannot help it because that nearly sets us up to have a life long problem with anger and therefore with sin and much to the delight of the evil one. Let us consider someone whose temper flares up instantly. It could occur so fast that the anger appears to be an uncontrollable reflex reaction. Many indeed would even conclude that this person simply cannot help himself thereby absolving him from all responsibility for his anger. But this is an error. If a video would to be taken of the onset of the anger, and if it would be played, replayed at slow speed one could discern several stages and the development of that anger.
1. Firstly, some person or some event presses the man’s buttons.
2. Secondly, the subject then recognizes that his button is being pressed.
3. Thirdly, and very important there is not a window of choices, a time interval during which the person chooses how he is going to react to having his button pressed. In this particular case he chooses anger. But he could just as easily choose to respond with humor or humility.
4. The forth stage in the development of the anger is of course the person acting out the choice that he has made.
This man has in fact practiced his anger so much over the years that he has become very good at it. And he has shortened his window of choice to the point that the anger appears to have become irresistible. This is the deadly sin of anger referred to at the beginning of this talk. One point must be emphasized at this stage:
Because of original sin we all have inherited a fallen nature. As a result of that our disordered natural instinct is capable of flaring into anger as an involuntary response without the consent or our will. And, so at this point there is no actual sin. Actual sin occurs if when we recognize that the anger has reasoned within us that we then fuel at and save the feeling by willfully entertaining more angry thoughts.
This is compatible to the phenomenon of sexual arousal in which our animal instincts can be unconsciously triggered and we become sexually alert. There is no sin in this unless we choose to use our minds to derive and maintain pleasure from the arousal, now we are guilty of the sin of lust. Likewise, reflex anger is not a sin, but as soon as we engage our will to fan its flames, than we are sinning. In short, original sin is our inheritance, actual sin is our choice. But we can learn to unlearn our angry choices. We can learn to expand our window of choices so instead of choosing anger we give ourselves time to choose Jesus, an option for peace. It is really nothing more that what my father used to tell me when I was a boy:
“Son – he said – always count to ten before becoming angry. Then you will find that there is a better way”.
Well, of course when I became a clever medical student I just knew that he was too simplistic and that he was wrong. But you see, I was the one who was wrong. Buy that time, I had only acquired knowledge, but my father had something much more beautiful, and more powerful, and more precious than knowledge. He had wisdom. You see, there is a major difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is nothing more than stored information, but wisdom is inspiration, inspiration from the Holy Spirit. And it comes to
holy hearts. Every human being has a heart, not every human being may have a very high IQ or a great intellect. But every single human being has a heart and that heart when it is subjected to the holiness of God by surrender and saying “yes” to the will of God, that heart will receive the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. The beauty of it all is that the simplest of the human being can have this wisdom. Knowledge, no matter how great can only bring one against the mystery of God, and no further. While wisdom, no matter how little, can begin to allow us to penetrate that mystery.
6. Basic Truths about Anger
Now, there are some basic truths about anger which can be very helpful if we take them to heart.
1. First of all, anger leads to family war. It violates justice, it submerges love, and eventually love can be destroyed. An angry person is compelled by his anger, and so family violence is inevitable leading to wife abuse, husband abuse, and child abuse.
2. Anger is always easily justified in ones own mind. I am not disputing ones reasons for becoming angry, I too can always give very good reasons but that still does not change the fact that my anger is destructive, harmful, and sinful. If I want to be angry I have the power to think it, I have the power to do it, and I have the power to justify it. O, I can provide some very good reasons for rubbing a bank, but these could never justify braking the law.
3. Anger is painful. It is paralyzing and it prevents a person from getting what he or she wants. It blocks healthy psychological functioning. Certainly, it my crush my victim and I may think that I have won a victory but I, in fact, my victim is more likely to harbor resentment, and hurt, or fear, and be demised by my anger, and, so my short – term gain will be lost in a long run. The most likely consequence is that I have now made an enemy who may plot to revenge upon me at a later time.
4. Nobody makes you angry! The events of this word do not make you angry. You do not catch anger like you catch a virus from someone with the flu. The truth is that you generate your own anger. And you do it by what you are thinking. In other words, your angry response occurs from what you are telling yourself about another person’s bad behavior. All emotions, anger included, are secondary to the thoughts in your head. If you think angry thoughts, you will soon feel anger in your body. The feeling will tend to trigger angrier thoughts and so you will feel more angry. And this spiral of anger culminates in rage or fury but it all begins with what you choose to think.
5. The thoughts that generate your anger and which make your anger worse are always distorted thoughts. They are lies. They are lies which become more and more irrational the angrier you become. For example, suppose my wife insults me and I think:
“How dare she! She has no right to be my judge!”
So I start to feel angry. Then the next thought might be:
“She does not love me or she would never say such a harmful thing.”
Well, now I am a lot more angry.
“O! Why did I ever marry such an unfeeling person!? I can stand her anymore.”
I am now approaching a rage.
“That is it; I should call a lawyer and get a separation. O, I have been betrayed!”
Well, you see, now I am in a fury. I am not thinking straight. I am holding onto crazy thoughts. And, so I decide to do crazy things. I am out of control. And now I might find myself striking her and violating the temple of the Holy Spirit, the body of the woman that God gave to me as my life’s companion. And if my children happen to be watching and listening then I am teaching them anger by example. They are learning from me that anger and violence are valid ways to solve a problem.
6. Anger often occurs because we think that another person is being unfair. But, you see, if you try to see the word through that other person’s eyes, you may be very surprised to find that that person does not think he is being unfair at all. We behave as though there is some kind of universal standard of fairness, but there is no such thing. Or there is a universal mole but that is far above any vague notion about fairness. Other people rarely believe that they are being unfair. On the contrary, they are more likely to think that you are being unfair by being angry with them.
7. Much of our anger is due to poor self – esteem. A poor self image makes us very vulnerable to anger because the slightest negative remarks strike us as a major attack. But that is irrational. It is irrational to blame someone else for my own poor self – esteem or my own feelings of unworthiness. If someone really is attacking me that is actually his problem, not mine. He is responsible for his anger, not me. I am only responsible for mine.
8. Many therapists, as we said before, believe that a person must give vent to his anger in order to gain relief. But this is absolutely untrue. Anger is not a release of pressure, anger is increase in pressure. The angrier one gets the longer it takes to recover. And if you do not get angry in the first place than you have nothing to recover from.
9. Anger is not stored up in the body nor is it natural. Anger is mostly a habitual response when a person looses his bearings or he is feeling insecure. People who have their bearings have more understanding of another person’s behavior. They say something like:
“O, he does not mean it.” Or “Well, he is obviously upset today and he does not know what he is doing.”
In this way they are more likely to opt for a compassionate attitude rather than an irrational anger.
10. Anger is usually learned from ones family of origin. If mom or dad got angry a lot, then the children probably have learned anger by imitation. A child is not born angry. They have to learn how to do it.
11. If a person gives up anger, this does not mean that he says goodbye to a rich emotional life. On the contrary, he will still have strong feelings but they will be positive feelings, rewarding feelings, such as compassion, humility, and humor, and even joy.
12. Giving up anger is not the same thing as pretending not to be angry or suppressing it in an unhealthy way. The whole idea is that the person experiences a provocative situation and understands it. The instinctive reaction is one of compassion then which displaces any temptation to become angry in the first place. For example, if you see a parking space in a busy parking lot in a shopping mall, and you make for it guesses what in your mind. You are thinking that is my parking space. Is not it that true? And so, just as you are getting close to it, someone else backs into it. And you say:
“Look it that inconsiderate person! How dare he still my space!”
But you see if you keep your bearings, and you keep your understanding disposition, then you are more likely to say: “O, well he must be under a lot of pressure to do a thing like that. Well, come to think of it, I have done the same thing in the past. I will find another spot.” You see, an understanding neutralizes anger.
7. The Remedies for Anger: Concept of Moods
So, let us take a look at the remedies for anger. And before talking how to combat it, it would be helpful to understand the concept of moods. This is very important. Everybody has moods, all of us, and the Holy Father has moods as well. And our moods go up and down like an elevator, many times in a day. Now, imagine that your mood elevator is in a building with a one hundred floors, a hundred stories. Then, when it is above the 50th floor and rising, it is bright and nicely decorated. The apartments are becoming more and more beautiful and nicely decorated. Windows are becoming more and more sparkling clean and, when we look though these windows, we can see clearly for miles and miles. But when the elevator goes down below the 50th floor and descending, the apartments are becoming darker and more depressing, and the windows are becoming dirtier. So, that what we see out there looks threatening and distorted. Because it looks that way to us we believe that this is how things really are. In other words, in a low mood we believe in our distorted perception of the world around us. Therefore, when our elevator is up, we are in high mood and we know that because we experience hone feelings, such as joy, and peace, and gratitude, and compassion, and hope, and humility. Our thoughts are positive and they are in perspective. We can see clearly. And, so what we see is the way the world and our problems truly are. We are seeing reality as it is. We can trust our assessment of reality. We can trust our own thoughts, and our own decisions, and our own perception.
But in a low mood it is not like that at all. We risk generating negative feelings like anger, or fear, or jealousy, or guilt, or shame. Our thoughts are negative, and most importantly, our thoughts cannot be trusted. The lower the floor we are on, the more distorted our thoughts become. And, so when we look out through those dirty windows we are not seeing reality as it truly is. And we should not trust our thoughts when we are in this state. It is though as it we were temporarily out of kilter, temporally out of our minds, if you like. It is our low mood thoughts which generate our negative feelings. But theses thoughts appear real to us, you see, and we are tempted to believe in them and to act upon them with often disastrous results. You know, a great writer by the name of Cervantes crated a character called Don Quixote. And he was a medieval knight, he was very brave, but he was not very bright. And one day he thought he saw huge giants in a distance, and he feared that they would come and kill the people in his town, so he drew his sword, road out against them, and set about trying to kill them. But what he never seem to realize was that they were not giants at all. They were only windmills. Well, it is the same with our minds, when we are in a low mood we think that we see all kinds of problems out there, all kinds of giants out there. But they are not there at all. They are only our own thoughts, they are only harmless windmills. Don Quixote must have been in a low mood that day.
Healthy people relate to their low moods in a wise way. And they refuse to be fooled by their distorted thoughts. Unhealthy people, however, continue to believe in their own distorted thoughts when they are in a low mood, so they act upon them and do all kind of damage, both to themselves and to others. There is not much that can be done to avoid having moods, moods are fact of life. But, we can act in a wise way when we find ourselves in a low mood. Therefore the first principle is to know when we are in a low mood. How do we do that? It is very simple. Ask yourself: “where is my elevator right at this moment.” If the answer comes back “60, 65, 70”, all is well with the world. Leave it alone. It is not broken, so do not try to fix it. But if the answer comes back: “30, 25, 20”, then the alarm bell should go off in your head. I am now in a low mood, and, I know what to do about it.
1. And the first thing that we must do is to recognize it is the low mood, as I said, and then we refuse to make any decisions when in a low mood. I will say it again; when you are in a low mood never make any major decisions. For example, if I am upset with my children, I am sure you would agree, it would be ridicules for me to put them all in a foster home. If I ever did such a thing, I am quite sure, that I would soon regret it. And the reason for that is that eventually my elevator would come back up. It would come back out of that low floor that it had been at the level zero when I decided to put my kids away. And when the elevator comes up, which it always does, then I would be wishing that I had my children back. I would wander how I ever could have been so stupid and dim in the first place.
2. Secondly, never ever try to analyze a low mood. Do not look for its cause while you are in a low mood. Now, I know that this flies against all modern notions of how to deal with a low mood. After all, it seems reasonable that if do not try to find out what is causing my low mood then I will never know what to do about it. Right?! But you see this is wrong. This is precisely what should not be done and the reason is quite simple. Let’s imaging that my elevator is at the 40th floor. I am feeling a bit despondent and maybe anxious. And, so I say to myself,
“I am not feeling a 100%; I wonder what it is causing this.”
Now, you can be sure that my conditioned thinking will never fail to come up with a distorted reason. It will give me a reason, all right. And it might go something like this,
“O, I know what the problem is, it is my job. I sit for hours all day listening to other people’s difficulties, and problems, and I am exhausted at night. But not only that; some of my patients do not seem to get much better with my help?! Now, maybe that means that I am not a very good therapist. Or, maybe I am not ought to to be a therapist. Maybe I should quit and look for another job all together.”
So, where do you think my elevator is now? O, I was on the 40th floor to begin with and that was not too bad, but now I am down somewhere around the 4th floor, maybe I am down even in the basement looking up. I am much worse off, you see! Analyzing my mood only made my elevator go down further. It would have been much better if I had simply accepted my low mood and remained on the 40th floor. All I had to do was to wait until my elevator went back up because as I have said already it always does. And then when it did come back up I might be thinking something like this:
“You know, I am lucky to have such a good job. I meet all kinds of beautiful people and they share their intimate problems with me. That is a privilege for me! It certainly makes me feel good when a patient gets better, but of course that are some who take a long time about that, but that is all right, I can journey patiently with that person.”
So, what happened here did my job suddenly changed? Of course not! My mood was the only thing that changed. And so my thoughts changed with it. My job did not change but my attitude towards it did. As a famous psychotherapist once said:
“In a low mood, my car is a clunker, in a high mood, my car is a classic.”
It is the same old problem of the glass which is half filled with water. Is either half – full, or half – empty. And I will describe it as a half – full if I am in a high mood, and I surly will describe it as half – empty if I am in low mood. But the reality is still the same. It is only to the half – way mark and that is that.
3. Never try to solve problems when you are in a low mood, because they will look entirely different to you when you come back to your high mood. For example, consider an argument between a husband and a wife. He is in a low mood, and he is thinking:
“O, we had a terrible fight last night, the things she said to me they were terrible things. O, that must mean that she dose not love me any more. O no, my marriage is braking up. Maybe I should protect myself and call a lower. My whole world is coming apart.”
But you see, if he could just recognize that he is simply in a low mood, and if he refused to believe his distorted thoughts, and if he refused to act on them and to try to solve his problem with his wife at that point, then eventually, up comes the elevator. Now, he may think to himself:
“Boy, we really had a good one lost night. O, my wife was so mad at me. But then, I cannot blame her. I was so unreasonable. She was feeling really insecure and threatened by what I was doing, but she did not mean what she was saying. I know she still loves me, so I know what I am going to do! I am going to call the flower shop and sent her some roses, and I am going to apologize.”
You see, when I am in a low mood I think it is being caused by my problems. But it is the other way around. It is my low mood which makes me think that I have such a big problem. And even if I do have a problem, my low mood thinking will make it appear larger than it really is. Just like Don Quixote’s giants.
4. Be silent, keep quit. If you speak out of a low mood than the words which come out of your mouth will simply be your distorted thoughts. And, since these thoughts are lies, and not true, you will do untold harm. Again, dispute with your wife and you are in a low mood and you are saying:
“O, you do not care about me, you do not love me anymore. I wish I have never married you; I should have married Susan Jones. She understood me better than you do.”
O, this is crass nonsense! When you come back up into a higher mood and regain your sanity, your thoughts will be back on track. And you will now that your wife loves you, and that she understands you better than anyone else on the planet, including Susan Jones. Perspective and sanity will have returned. Therefore, when you know that you are in a low mood, and you know that by asking yourself frequently – where is your elevator right now – then, make the resolution right there and then not to do any harm with it. All you have to do is to simply tell yourself – yes, I am in a low mood. Then, patiently wait and your elevator will come up again. In a mean time, do nothing. You know, it is kind of like a child with measles. Measles is a virus illness and no one can do much about that. But the child is probably feeling anxious because they are sick and they wonder if something terrible is going to happen. But, when mom comes along and puts some nice cold cloth on the child’s forehead, and feeds them ice cream, and gives them nice cold pop drink, and sues them, and tells them stories, the child feels secure. Well, you see insecurity is the bottom of all of our low moods. When we are in a low mood, we have emotional measles. And we need to feel more secure. And one way to help yourself to feel more secure is to accept the low mood, do not judge yourself as a bad because you are having one, and do something nice for yourself, have a cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut. Go for a walk, read a chapter of a book that you enjoy. Whatever it is, just wait, sue yourself, until the mood goes away, up comes the high mood, and you can then interact with reality and with life once more. And trust in it. So, anger then usually arises out of a low mood. And if a person is in a low mood and starts to entertain angry thoughts than the feeling of anger is sure to follow. He does not to have to be a slave though, to these impulses. Strangely enough, it is much easier than we might think to become a person of peace, and to receive the gift of piece which Jesus Himself promises. And here is how:
a) Decide to give up your anger, make the decision that you are tired of being an angry person. And you say, how can I do that? A decision is not going to make any change. Yes, it is! And I will tell you why. I once met a very elderly gentleman. And he was a tall, straight, and strong man. And, as we were talking, I suppose I was about nineteen – years – old at that time, and as we were talking I said something like:
“Yeas, that really makes me angry!”
And he immediately turned to me and said:
“No, it does not! “
And I said:
“Yes, it does!”
And he said:
“No, it does not. You are choosing to be angry, you do not have to. Let me tell you something. When I was your age, I was 6’3” tall, I was 225 lbs, and it was all muscle. And so therefore understandably, I got a job as a security in a bar. And one evening, I am in a bar, and there were four lovely young ladies sitting at the table, and enjoying a cocktail and having a conversation. When a man came in, half drunk already, and he sat down at the table next to the young women. And as he drunk more and more he became more and more drunk and he started to become abusive to the girls, and he started to become sexually suggestive to them. So, the barman said to me – Put that man out, he is not getting anything more to drink. – So, I went over and I said: Sir, you have had enough to drink and we want you now to leave. – Well, the man went into a rage and he started to swing his fists at me. So, I grabbed his arm and I bent it up behind his back. But you see, I had now gone into a rage of my own. And instead of just simply putting him outside of the door and closing the door behind him, I threw him through the door. And the man landed on the sidewalk and hurt his head and he ended up spending three months in a hospital. And as I stood there looking down on this unconscious man I was terrified of my own rage. And I made a decision, right there and right then, a serious powerful decision, that I had had it with anger. And I was never going to become angry, and I kept that promise. And I have never been angry ever since that day.
b) Take responsibility for your own angry feelings. See, your anger was only a thought generated in your own head as merely a habit in response to loosing your own bearings. Do not insist that your anger comes from outside of yourself! That only justifies it. As soon as you say insults make me angry then you are locking yourself into anger. There after, every time you are insulted, for the rest of your life, you will immediately become angry, because that is the decision you had made. You decided that insults made you angry. But your anger is not linked to the outside world. It is only in your own mind. The cause is your thoughts; the effect is your anger. And as I have said, if you decide that insults make you angry that is precisely what is going to happen down the road. If you decide that you are never going to be angry again it is very, very likely that you will have overcome this serious problem.
c) Try to stop seeing so much malice in what other people are doing. The imputing of motives is obituary and it occurs in your head. You do not know what another person’s motive really is; you do not know what they are really thinking. You are not a mind reader. Even allowing for the fact that maybe someone is acting out of malice towards you, it is still your mind which decides how you are going to respond. The imputing of motives is a habitual suspicion of others and this is not the mind of Christ. Blaming others is a function of the ego. And I am going to say something very important, and I am going to say it twice. And it is this:
The size of your ego is the exact measurement of the distance between yourself and God. In other words, the more I am egotistical the more proud I am, the more self – absorbed I am; the grater the distance between me and my loving God. John the Baptist understood this perfectly well. He said:
”I must decrease while He must increase.”
In other words, I must shrink my ego, and my self – centerness and vanity in order to allow the life of Jesus Christ to grow within me. And you know, the more we learn to do that the closer we are to God, and the more we absorb His peace, and the more He is able to imbue us with the peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that destroys all sinful anger. A violent husband and father is just such a person; he sees malice when none exists. And in order to counteract this tendency within us, we must cultivate the habit of seeing more innocence in what other people do. As Jesus said on the Cross, in Lk 23, 34:
“They do not know what they are doing.”
People, you see are more often negligent then malicious. Understand this and you will feel more warmly towards people. It helps to remind yourself that whatever is being done to you of course, you have probably done the same thing to someone else at some time in your life. And so, when someone is behaving badly, instead of seeing their bad behavior and then reacting with anger, you see that they are insecure or that they are in a low mood themselves, and so you are adopt an attitude of compassion towards them. And in compassion there is no anger.
c) Discount your thoughts. Accept that these thoughts are distorted and coming from your low mood and not from your life. Angry thoughts and feelings will grow according to the attention you give them. So, disengage your mind, do not dwell on your thoughts but rather say to yourself,
So, it is only a low mood. Things are not as bad as they appear to me right now. I will wait until I am in a better mood.
Then, when I am in a good mood my spouse is a well – meaning – angel, and when I am in a bad mood my spouse is an all – to – get – me – devil. So, how she could be an angel yesterday and a devil today? The answer is moods. Once this is understood, then life becomes a lot less frightening. It is scary to have to fight monsters, but if you know that they are only your own thoughts then these monsters become very easy to deal with and a lot less intimidating.
d) Early recognition. This is really important. Early recognition is the most valuable tool in eliminating anger and valiance. As soon as you recognize that you are a little bit of balance or somewhat low then it will not get any worse because the anger is stopped in its trucks. And you think to yourself, aha this is the way that my spouse talks to me which tends to get me going, at least it always has been in the past. My father said, “Count to ten” and he was absolutely right on. You never have to give in into a low mood. To give in is to say yes to your negative emotions and this always leads to sin. Jesus, on the other hand, asks us to rise above our feeling, to rise above our low moods, to exercise our will, and to do what is right. Everybody has low moods but we are quite capable of setting these aside whenever there is a call to love. I am maybe feeling tired, or sad, or hurt, or defeated, but when I see the old lady next door struggling to take out a heavy garbage bag, am I not able to go to help her? Can I not defeat my feelings of tiredness, or my sadness, or lay aside my mood for a moment to go out and help her?! The fascinating thing is that when I do, my mood is likely to disappear. Why? Because when I do it, I see the smile of gratitude on the face of that lady, and I know that I have done something that is in accordance with the mind of Christ. And that, in an off itself carries with it its own reward. We are to use our will, that is the highest part of our faculty, our will, our ability to choose between right and wrong, and we are to use our will to dominate the lower animal part of our being which is our feelings. So many people today allow their feeling to tell them what to do. And the answer is:
“Well, I did it because I felt like it! Or “I did not do it because I did not feel like it.”
Feelings are the lower part of our being and are fecal, and unreliable, and very often directing us towards a sinful choice. So, we must rise above our feelings and we give to God that which is God’s. And we also find, and this is very interesting, when we move into the pain of another person, what we deliberately journey, as Catherine Dorothy of Madonna House once said, to journey without fear and to man’s hearts and we enter their pain we automatically forget our own pain. And it is self – forgetting that we find ourselves. What an amazing paradox. It is in self – forgetting that we find ourselves.
e) And finally, let me give you one sure absolutely unfailing technique with which to overcome your low mood, and of course to defeat anger. And it is very simple, I wonder how many of you will hear this, and take to heart, and put it into practice. But I guarantee that it works. Simple when your recognize that you are in low mood, that you are in danger from your anger, simple go to a quiet place and spent fifteen minutes praising God. I mean this! Praising God, tell God how wonderful He is, tell Him how beautiful He is, tell Him how powerful He is, how loving He is, how just He is, how kind He is. Thank Him. Thank Him for creating you; acknowledge to Him that every single gift that you have, every single breath that you take is because He has done this for you. Show Him your gratitude. And tell Him that He is a wonderful, and glorious, and beautiful God. Sing on the top of your lungs, voice if you wish. It is a beautiful way to praise God. Pray in tongues if you have that gift. But spent fifteen minutes praising Him! And I guarantee you that at the end of that time your low mood will have disappeared and melted away like a snowball on a summer’s day.
Trust in God! There is One God and no other!
Let’s talk about title Anger – Family War. In the book of Syrah chapter 27, 30 we read:
“Anger and fury are both of them abominable and the sinful man shall be subject to them.”
There are many things which can destroy the peace of the family life. But nothing does this more powerfully than anger. Sinful anger is a distorted emotion which possesses the mind of the one who is angry, destroys the mind of Christ within him or her, crushes the one on the receiving end, and of course, it terrifies the children. It never heals anything. It only leads to resentment or hurt and even to desire for retaliation or revenge. It can lead, at its extreme, to murder in families where once there had been love. Anger is indeed family war. And it brings abut alienation, division, separation, divorce, and broken children who learn that love in not to be trusted. All the angry men and women will always justify their anger. But Jesus would never be convinced by their arguments. The consequences of sinful anger to a family are too evil for any justification to be plausible.
Because of original sin we all have inherited a fallen nature. As a result of that our disordered natural instinct is capable of flaring into anger as an involuntary response without the consent or our will. And, so at this point there is no actual sin. Actual sin occurs if when we recognize that the anger has reasoned within us that we then fuel at and save the feeling by willfully entertaining more angry thoughts.
When I went through the medical school in the late 1950thies and early 1960thies, my professors in psychiatry thought me that feelings were morally neutral. That is to say those feelings were neither good nor bad. Then, as a young student I accepted this without question, but now I know that this philosophy is dangerous. It does not heal. It does untold damage to our psyche and it stands in open opposition to Scripture and to God’s wisdom, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthian 3, 19
“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”
Your see, precisely because these so called wise men and women believed that feelings were morally neutral they were than forced to the absurd conclusion that it is acceptable for me to hate my father. It is acceptable for me to feel lust. It is acceptable for me to be furious with my brother. It is acceptable for me to be violently jealous of my neighbor. There is no problem! This is no sin! And therefore, I need not confess these experiences in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You see, by neutralizing emotions, and relegating them to the simplistic level of mire animal reflexes, we excuse them as being only human. And we absolve ourselves from any moral wrong doing. But is absolution not reserved to God alone through His priests? You see, once again the evil snake has slithered into our garden and is telling us that we can do good or evil, and we can become like God. The old sin of Adam and Eve is being re – presented to us in a bright new 20th century package which is called Secular Psychology.
The situation becomes totally absurd when we look at how modern psychology is forced to treat anger. Many psychologists continue to insist that the only way to deal with anger is to encourage the patient to express it. This gives rise to a serious contradiction. On the one hand psychology says that anger is neither good nor bad, yet, on the other hand treats an angry person as though he was sick. As a medical student, I once attended a psychiatry seminar and watched the professor of psychiatry work with a poor angry patient in front of 200 eager students. He handed the man a pillow and he said:
“This pillow is your father. Now do to the pillow what you would like to do to your father. Express your anger.”
So, the patient proceeded to pound the pillow and to yell and scream until he was totally spent. What puzzled me at that time was that the patient looked a lot worse going out than when he came in. And yet the professor
beckoned with pleasure at the job well done. But now, I know that the opposite is true. The therapist, by encouraging the patient to express anger was simply teaching the man how to be even more angry. He was actually creating anger upon anger with his so called therapy, rather than alleviating it.
Anger sis the most common problem I encounter in my psychotherapy practice, and from my experience, it also ought to be one of most common sins brought to a priest in confession. Not only that, but it is the most prudently understood of all human emotions. It is staggering to realize just how much is taught and written about anger by psychiatrists in an effort to excuse it and justify it to a modern world caught in a futile freeze of denying sin.
2. What is Anger?
So, what is Anger?! Anger is actually defined by The Oxford dictionary as the disordered, note – the disordered desire to correct or to punish someone. It is disordered because the correction or punishment is motivated by passion or fury. It is also disordered because the corrective methods used by any angry person, such as mental cruelty, cursing, physical abuse, or other forms of violence are sinful on and off themselves. This violates the Christian dignity of our brothers and sisters, and they do the violence to the God of Peace.
Anger displaces its ugly face everywhere. Husbands and wives find themselves expressing anger towards each other. Parents react angrily towards their children, and so brothers and sisters learn what? They learn to be angry with one another. Anger from within the home, then, of course, it leaches outside of the home to be inflicted on relatives, neighbors, and fellow workers. Just as a person grows in size from a childhood to adulthood, so do ones anger grow. An angry little boy grows up to find himself to be a slave to a man – size anger. Unchecked, it can begin to rule the person completely.
3. The Types of Anger
It is important to understand that there are two types of anger:
1. Sinful anger
2. Just anger
Sinful Anger
Let us consider sinful anger to begin. Sinful anger can be classified into 4 categories:
1. Firstly, there is the simple emotion of anger which flares up in response to a perceived insult or hurt. It is confined, straight forward, and easy to understand. Because is obvious. It dies on as soon as it starts and it is directly related to an immediate event.
2. The second type of anger is what I call Conditioned Anger. It is much more deeply entrenched. It has its origin deep within our past due to event often long forgotten and which we have not yet brought to a healthy closure. As a result, as soon as something occurs, which consciously or unconsciously triggers that past hurt, we resurrect the old pain and respond with irrational, displaced anger. In other words we displace it from the true cause which was the event in the past onto a person in the present. Conditioned anger is in, a fact, the re – living of a past unresolved event.
3. Thirdly, the deadly sin of anger. Now this is much more serious but surprisingly, it is not in itself an actual sin. What do we mean by that? What we mean is; it is really a predisposition to sin. In other words, a person suffering from slavery to the deadly sin of anger is not walking around 24 hr a day in a fit of anger or rage stamping his feet and braking things. What it means is that he is constantly and exquisitely poised to brake into rage at the slightest provocation. As soon as this person precedes an insult whether it will be real or imaginary, than the angry explosion occurs. The volcano erupts. And so this form of anger is deadly because it is going to kill ones soul, unless that person is released from its bondage. In fact, it is a form of satanic oppression. Such a person has given Satan a foothold, through his own cooperation he is given the spirit of anger a lace in his soul and he is therefore under its suggestibility. Although, his will is weakened, he is still nevertheless able to say “no” to the angry promptings of this adverse spirit.
4. Now, the forth type of sinful anger is the most dangerous and the most aggravated of all. And it is in a fact diabolical possession. Whereby an intelligent evil spirit is welcomed into ones heart. Such an unhappy soul is in a constant state of anger and totally dominated by an intelligent evil spirit. Now while all four categories of sinful anger are ultimately self generated, only the first two can be helped by psychotherapy alone. The deadly sin requires both psychotherapy and prayers for deliverance. While satanic possession requires actual exorcism which can only be performed by officially designated exorcist, by the bishop. And this is followed, of course, by psychotherapy for the distressing aftermath. All of the sinful angers need the Sacrament of Reconciliation, not only for the cleansing of the damaged soul, but also for the grace to fight any subsequent temptation to anger.
Just Anger
Now, just anger is defined by the Church as not sin at all. In fact it is not really anger as we understand it. It is much better described as Righteous indignation. The difference between just anger and sinful anger is actually quite simple to recognize. We know that our anger is justified when we are angry on behalf of another person who is being violated or abused or in response to some serious injustice in the world. For example, we might be justifiably angry at the murder of millions of unborn babies in our world today, or we might be angry at the torture and killing of innocent people in a war zone. Just anger and sinful anger therefore are better defined not by the personal characteristics of what it is to be angry, but rather by the object on behalf of which I am angry. Not only that, just anger is always in right proportion. The actions which arise out of just anger are always moderate in degree. For example, if we feel anger at the plight of children caught up in horrors of a war we might legitimately respond by collecting food and clothing and sending these to the war torn region. In other words, just anger never results in sinful actions. As St. Paul says in Ephesians 4, 26:
“Be angry but sin not!”
See, sinful anger is different because it is usually always on behalf of myself. I feel unfairly attacked, or hurt, or used. My anger is always out of proportion, and my thoughts, words, and actions are inevitably immoderate, destructive, and offensive to man and to God. You only have to look into the face of an angry person to know that you are not looking into the face of Jesus who is meek and humble of heart.
4. Jesus and the Holy Anger
Many people who are troubled by their human angry emotions try to justify these by pointing to Jesus and the cleansing of the Temple. However, if one examines all for Gospel account, the word anger is never used to describe Jesus’ strong actions. So, you see we are not justified when saying:
“Well, Jesus got angry therefore we can be angry!”
There is simply no basis from which to assume that Jesus was experiencing the same kind of anger to which we give in so frequently. On the contrary, it is absolutely certain that even if Jesus was angry it must have been of an entirely different variety from what we call sinful anger. For the very reason, that Jesus was utterly incapable of sin. And so, we can surmise that Jesus was not reacting on His own behalf. And that turns ought to be the case. Scripture tells us in Mathew 21, 13 that Jesus shouted:
“My house shall be a house of prayer but you are making it a den of thieves”,
in other words, His Father’s house. And this is the key to Jesus’ reaction. He was acting purely on behalf of His Father, not on behalf of Himself. He was indignant at the incredible offense being given to God in His house by the profanation of God’s Holy Temple. Jesus was displaying the holy anger of God. As the perfectly pure One, He had the right to purify the Temple. God’s anger is holy. And then we are told in John 2, 17 when Jesus was cleansing the Temple that His disciples recall the words of Scripture
“Zeal for Your House will consume me.”
In other words, Jesus was displaying a righteous indignation, a zeal for the Temple, not giving in to the self indulgent rage. There is a printed handout distributed by a pregnancy center in the United States which teaches the following ironies ideas about anger.
1. Anger brings about needed change, a good change.
2. Anger can make an impression for truth, we get honest.
3. Anger is a strong motivator, it makes us move.
4. Anger can be used to rebuke or correct, Jesus got His point across.
Now I cannot agree with any one of those statements. As a Christian I reply:
1. Anger does bring about change, but never a good change.
2. Anger never makes an impression for truth because the thoughts which generate our anger are always distorted.
3. Anger is indeed a strong motivator, it makes us want to hurt someone and do something about it.
4. Anger can be used to rebuke or correct, but it always over – rebukes and over – corrects.
And it is a blasphemy to compare Jesus anger with our sinful anger. Yes, Jesus did get His point across but it was not in sin. So, what do the Scriptures have to say about anger? It is impossible, I suppose, to appeal to a higher authority than Jesus Himself. His actual words are above any challenge and we are obliged to give them our total obedience. And so, Jesus states in Mathew 5, 21 – 22:
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Jesus here is linking anger with murder. How can that be!? This is a serious, serious principle that Jesus is trying to teach us in His new teaching, The New Testament. In the very same discourse, He says in verses 27 – 28:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Therefore, according to Jesus just thinking lustfully is in the same category as actual adultery. And so, likewise being angry is a kin to murder. The reason for this is that just as lust is the precursor to adultery, so anger can so often be the precursor to murder. Anger therefore is not a neutral emotion, it has powerful moral implications and Jesus warns us sternly against it. James 1, 19 – 20:
“Keep this in mind dear brothers; let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for a man’s anger does not fulfill God’s justice.”
Anger therefore is a sin against justice. Colossians 3, 8:
“You must put all that aside now, all the anger, and quick temper, the malice, the insults, the foul language.”
Even the Old Testament holds anger to be a grave sin. Proverbs 29, 22:
“The hot head provokes disputes.”
Someone in a rage commits all sorts of sins. There is however a very common misinterpretation of Scripture which many people use to justify anger and to pass it off as simply a human emotion. And it is to be found in the words of St. Paul in Ephesians 4, 26 which I quoted earlier. And St. Paul says:
“If you are angry let it be without sin.”
This is so often taken to mean that it is acceptable to be angry as long as no does not sin with it. However, Paul is not suggesting that it is permissible to be sinfully angry. In the original Greek manuscript Paul uses the word “είναι θυμωμένος” for be angry. This form is only used once in the entire bible and it refers specifically to an inner attitude of indignation to words, a person, or an injustice. In other words, Paul is talking here about righteous indignation or just anger. He is not referring to sinful anger at all. In fact, in the very same passage he goes onto saying in a verse 31:
“Get rid of all passion and anger.”
So on the one hand Paul says be angry, yet on the other he says get rid of all anger. And so, he clearly means something very different from the popular modern interpretation since he would most certainly not contradict himself.
5. Theological Foundation for Regarding Anger as Sin
There is the powerful theological foundation for regarding anger as sin. And, so it should be combated by means of our will and by means of God’s grace. We should not excuse it. Ruther we should confess it. Nevertheless, we must have great compassion for those Christians who still struggle with anger and feel impotent against it. And this talk is not meant to inflict guilt on those who suffer with the problem. On the contrary it is design to bring them the good news. There is freedom from anger if you want it. And that freedom will be found in truth, for as Jesus promises in John 8, 32:
“The truth will set you free!”
We need not buy into the satanic lie that we cannot help it because that nearly sets us up to have a life long problem with anger and therefore with sin and much to the delight of the evil one. Let us consider someone whose temper flares up instantly. It could occur so fast that the anger appears to be an uncontrollable reflex reaction. Many indeed would even conclude that this person simply cannot help himself thereby absolving him from all responsibility for his anger. But this is an error. If a video would to be taken of the onset of the anger, and if it would be played, replayed at slow speed one could discern several stages and the development of that anger.
1. Firstly, some person or some event presses the man’s buttons.
2. Secondly, the subject then recognizes that his button is being pressed.
3. Thirdly, and very important there is not a window of choices, a time interval during which the person chooses how he is going to react to having his button pressed. In this particular case he chooses anger. But he could just as easily choose to respond with humor or humility.
4. The forth stage in the development of the anger is of course the person acting out the choice that he has made.
This man has in fact practiced his anger so much over the years that he has become very good at it. And he has shortened his window of choice to the point that the anger appears to have become irresistible. This is the deadly sin of anger referred to at the beginning of this talk. One point must be emphasized at this stage:
Because of original sin we all have inherited a fallen nature. As a result of that our disordered natural instinct is capable of flaring into anger as an involuntary response without the consent or our will. And, so at this point there is no actual sin. Actual sin occurs if when we recognize that the anger has reasoned within us that we then fuel at and save the feeling by willfully entertaining more angry thoughts.
This is compatible to the phenomenon of sexual arousal in which our animal instincts can be unconsciously triggered and we become sexually alert. There is no sin in this unless we choose to use our minds to derive and maintain pleasure from the arousal, now we are guilty of the sin of lust. Likewise, reflex anger is not a sin, but as soon as we engage our will to fan its flames, than we are sinning. In short, original sin is our inheritance, actual sin is our choice. But we can learn to unlearn our angry choices. We can learn to expand our window of choices so instead of choosing anger we give ourselves time to choose Jesus, an option for peace. It is really nothing more that what my father used to tell me when I was a boy:
“Son – he said – always count to ten before becoming angry. Then you will find that there is a better way”.
Well, of course when I became a clever medical student I just knew that he was too simplistic and that he was wrong. But you see, I was the one who was wrong. Buy that time, I had only acquired knowledge, but my father had something much more beautiful, and more powerful, and more precious than knowledge. He had wisdom. You see, there is a major difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is nothing more than stored information, but wisdom is inspiration, inspiration from the Holy Spirit. And it comes to
holy hearts. Every human being has a heart, not every human being may have a very high IQ or a great intellect. But every single human being has a heart and that heart when it is subjected to the holiness of God by surrender and saying “yes” to the will of God, that heart will receive the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. The beauty of it all is that the simplest of the human being can have this wisdom. Knowledge, no matter how great can only bring one against the mystery of God, and no further. While wisdom, no matter how little, can begin to allow us to penetrate that mystery.
6. Basic Truths about Anger
Now, there are some basic truths about anger which can be very helpful if we take them to heart.
1. First of all, anger leads to family war. It violates justice, it submerges love, and eventually love can be destroyed. An angry person is compelled by his anger, and so family violence is inevitable leading to wife abuse, husband abuse, and child abuse.
2. Anger is always easily justified in ones own mind. I am not disputing ones reasons for becoming angry, I too can always give very good reasons but that still does not change the fact that my anger is destructive, harmful, and sinful. If I want to be angry I have the power to think it, I have the power to do it, and I have the power to justify it. O, I can provide some very good reasons for rubbing a bank, but these could never justify braking the law.
3. Anger is painful. It is paralyzing and it prevents a person from getting what he or she wants. It blocks healthy psychological functioning. Certainly, it my crush my victim and I may think that I have won a victory but I, in fact, my victim is more likely to harbor resentment, and hurt, or fear, and be demised by my anger, and, so my short – term gain will be lost in a long run. The most likely consequence is that I have now made an enemy who may plot to revenge upon me at a later time.
4. Nobody makes you angry! The events of this word do not make you angry. You do not catch anger like you catch a virus from someone with the flu. The truth is that you generate your own anger. And you do it by what you are thinking. In other words, your angry response occurs from what you are telling yourself about another person’s bad behavior. All emotions, anger included, are secondary to the thoughts in your head. If you think angry thoughts, you will soon feel anger in your body. The feeling will tend to trigger angrier thoughts and so you will feel more angry. And this spiral of anger culminates in rage or fury but it all begins with what you choose to think.
5. The thoughts that generate your anger and which make your anger worse are always distorted thoughts. They are lies. They are lies which become more and more irrational the angrier you become. For example, suppose my wife insults me and I think:
“How dare she! She has no right to be my judge!”
So I start to feel angry. Then the next thought might be:
“She does not love me or she would never say such a harmful thing.”
Well, now I am a lot more angry.
“O! Why did I ever marry such an unfeeling person!? I can stand her anymore.”
I am now approaching a rage.
“That is it; I should call a lawyer and get a separation. O, I have been betrayed!”
Well, you see, now I am in a fury. I am not thinking straight. I am holding onto crazy thoughts. And, so I decide to do crazy things. I am out of control. And now I might find myself striking her and violating the temple of the Holy Spirit, the body of the woman that God gave to me as my life’s companion. And if my children happen to be watching and listening then I am teaching them anger by example. They are learning from me that anger and violence are valid ways to solve a problem.
6. Anger often occurs because we think that another person is being unfair. But, you see, if you try to see the word through that other person’s eyes, you may be very surprised to find that that person does not think he is being unfair at all. We behave as though there is some kind of universal standard of fairness, but there is no such thing. Or there is a universal mole but that is far above any vague notion about fairness. Other people rarely believe that they are being unfair. On the contrary, they are more likely to think that you are being unfair by being angry with them.
7. Much of our anger is due to poor self – esteem. A poor self image makes us very vulnerable to anger because the slightest negative remarks strike us as a major attack. But that is irrational. It is irrational to blame someone else for my own poor self – esteem or my own feelings of unworthiness. If someone really is attacking me that is actually his problem, not mine. He is responsible for his anger, not me. I am only responsible for mine.
8. Many therapists, as we said before, believe that a person must give vent to his anger in order to gain relief. But this is absolutely untrue. Anger is not a release of pressure, anger is increase in pressure. The angrier one gets the longer it takes to recover. And if you do not get angry in the first place than you have nothing to recover from.
9. Anger is not stored up in the body nor is it natural. Anger is mostly a habitual response when a person looses his bearings or he is feeling insecure. People who have their bearings have more understanding of another person’s behavior. They say something like:
“O, he does not mean it.” Or “Well, he is obviously upset today and he does not know what he is doing.”
In this way they are more likely to opt for a compassionate attitude rather than an irrational anger.
10. Anger is usually learned from ones family of origin. If mom or dad got angry a lot, then the children probably have learned anger by imitation. A child is not born angry. They have to learn how to do it.
11. If a person gives up anger, this does not mean that he says goodbye to a rich emotional life. On the contrary, he will still have strong feelings but they will be positive feelings, rewarding feelings, such as compassion, humility, and humor, and even joy.
12. Giving up anger is not the same thing as pretending not to be angry or suppressing it in an unhealthy way. The whole idea is that the person experiences a provocative situation and understands it. The instinctive reaction is one of compassion then which displaces any temptation to become angry in the first place. For example, if you see a parking space in a busy parking lot in a shopping mall, and you make for it guesses what in your mind. You are thinking that is my parking space. Is not it that true? And so, just as you are getting close to it, someone else backs into it. And you say:
“Look it that inconsiderate person! How dare he still my space!”
But you see if you keep your bearings, and you keep your understanding disposition, then you are more likely to say: “O, well he must be under a lot of pressure to do a thing like that. Well, come to think of it, I have done the same thing in the past. I will find another spot.” You see, an understanding neutralizes anger.
7. The Remedies for Anger: Concept of Moods
So, let us take a look at the remedies for anger. And before talking how to combat it, it would be helpful to understand the concept of moods. This is very important. Everybody has moods, all of us, and the Holy Father has moods as well. And our moods go up and down like an elevator, many times in a day. Now, imagine that your mood elevator is in a building with a one hundred floors, a hundred stories. Then, when it is above the 50th floor and rising, it is bright and nicely decorated. The apartments are becoming more and more beautiful and nicely decorated. Windows are becoming more and more sparkling clean and, when we look though these windows, we can see clearly for miles and miles. But when the elevator goes down below the 50th floor and descending, the apartments are becoming darker and more depressing, and the windows are becoming dirtier. So, that what we see out there looks threatening and distorted. Because it looks that way to us we believe that this is how things really are. In other words, in a low mood we believe in our distorted perception of the world around us. Therefore, when our elevator is up, we are in high mood and we know that because we experience hone feelings, such as joy, and peace, and gratitude, and compassion, and hope, and humility. Our thoughts are positive and they are in perspective. We can see clearly. And, so what we see is the way the world and our problems truly are. We are seeing reality as it is. We can trust our assessment of reality. We can trust our own thoughts, and our own decisions, and our own perception.
But in a low mood it is not like that at all. We risk generating negative feelings like anger, or fear, or jealousy, or guilt, or shame. Our thoughts are negative, and most importantly, our thoughts cannot be trusted. The lower the floor we are on, the more distorted our thoughts become. And, so when we look out through those dirty windows we are not seeing reality as it truly is. And we should not trust our thoughts when we are in this state. It is though as it we were temporarily out of kilter, temporally out of our minds, if you like. It is our low mood thoughts which generate our negative feelings. But theses thoughts appear real to us, you see, and we are tempted to believe in them and to act upon them with often disastrous results. You know, a great writer by the name of Cervantes crated a character called Don Quixote. And he was a medieval knight, he was very brave, but he was not very bright. And one day he thought he saw huge giants in a distance, and he feared that they would come and kill the people in his town, so he drew his sword, road out against them, and set about trying to kill them. But what he never seem to realize was that they were not giants at all. They were only windmills. Well, it is the same with our minds, when we are in a low mood we think that we see all kinds of problems out there, all kinds of giants out there. But they are not there at all. They are only our own thoughts, they are only harmless windmills. Don Quixote must have been in a low mood that day.
Healthy people relate to their low moods in a wise way. And they refuse to be fooled by their distorted thoughts. Unhealthy people, however, continue to believe in their own distorted thoughts when they are in a low mood, so they act upon them and do all kind of damage, both to themselves and to others. There is not much that can be done to avoid having moods, moods are fact of life. But, we can act in a wise way when we find ourselves in a low mood. Therefore the first principle is to know when we are in a low mood. How do we do that? It is very simple. Ask yourself: “where is my elevator right at this moment.” If the answer comes back “60, 65, 70”, all is well with the world. Leave it alone. It is not broken, so do not try to fix it. But if the answer comes back: “30, 25, 20”, then the alarm bell should go off in your head. I am now in a low mood, and, I know what to do about it.
1. And the first thing that we must do is to recognize it is the low mood, as I said, and then we refuse to make any decisions when in a low mood. I will say it again; when you are in a low mood never make any major decisions. For example, if I am upset with my children, I am sure you would agree, it would be ridicules for me to put them all in a foster home. If I ever did such a thing, I am quite sure, that I would soon regret it. And the reason for that is that eventually my elevator would come back up. It would come back out of that low floor that it had been at the level zero when I decided to put my kids away. And when the elevator comes up, which it always does, then I would be wishing that I had my children back. I would wander how I ever could have been so stupid and dim in the first place.
2. Secondly, never ever try to analyze a low mood. Do not look for its cause while you are in a low mood. Now, I know that this flies against all modern notions of how to deal with a low mood. After all, it seems reasonable that if do not try to find out what is causing my low mood then I will never know what to do about it. Right?! But you see this is wrong. This is precisely what should not be done and the reason is quite simple. Let’s imaging that my elevator is at the 40th floor. I am feeling a bit despondent and maybe anxious. And, so I say to myself,
“I am not feeling a 100%; I wonder what it is causing this.”
Now, you can be sure that my conditioned thinking will never fail to come up with a distorted reason. It will give me a reason, all right. And it might go something like this,
“O, I know what the problem is, it is my job. I sit for hours all day listening to other people’s difficulties, and problems, and I am exhausted at night. But not only that; some of my patients do not seem to get much better with my help?! Now, maybe that means that I am not a very good therapist. Or, maybe I am not ought to to be a therapist. Maybe I should quit and look for another job all together.”
So, where do you think my elevator is now? O, I was on the 40th floor to begin with and that was not too bad, but now I am down somewhere around the 4th floor, maybe I am down even in the basement looking up. I am much worse off, you see! Analyzing my mood only made my elevator go down further. It would have been much better if I had simply accepted my low mood and remained on the 40th floor. All I had to do was to wait until my elevator went back up because as I have said already it always does. And then when it did come back up I might be thinking something like this:
“You know, I am lucky to have such a good job. I meet all kinds of beautiful people and they share their intimate problems with me. That is a privilege for me! It certainly makes me feel good when a patient gets better, but of course that are some who take a long time about that, but that is all right, I can journey patiently with that person.”
So, what happened here did my job suddenly changed? Of course not! My mood was the only thing that changed. And so my thoughts changed with it. My job did not change but my attitude towards it did. As a famous psychotherapist once said:
“In a low mood, my car is a clunker, in a high mood, my car is a classic.”
It is the same old problem of the glass which is half filled with water. Is either half – full, or half – empty. And I will describe it as a half – full if I am in a high mood, and I surly will describe it as half – empty if I am in low mood. But the reality is still the same. It is only to the half – way mark and that is that.
3. Never try to solve problems when you are in a low mood, because they will look entirely different to you when you come back to your high mood. For example, consider an argument between a husband and a wife. He is in a low mood, and he is thinking:
“O, we had a terrible fight last night, the things she said to me they were terrible things. O, that must mean that she dose not love me any more. O no, my marriage is braking up. Maybe I should protect myself and call a lower. My whole world is coming apart.”
But you see, if he could just recognize that he is simply in a low mood, and if he refused to believe his distorted thoughts, and if he refused to act on them and to try to solve his problem with his wife at that point, then eventually, up comes the elevator. Now, he may think to himself:
“Boy, we really had a good one lost night. O, my wife was so mad at me. But then, I cannot blame her. I was so unreasonable. She was feeling really insecure and threatened by what I was doing, but she did not mean what she was saying. I know she still loves me, so I know what I am going to do! I am going to call the flower shop and sent her some roses, and I am going to apologize.”
You see, when I am in a low mood I think it is being caused by my problems. But it is the other way around. It is my low mood which makes me think that I have such a big problem. And even if I do have a problem, my low mood thinking will make it appear larger than it really is. Just like Don Quixote’s giants.
4. Be silent, keep quit. If you speak out of a low mood than the words which come out of your mouth will simply be your distorted thoughts. And, since these thoughts are lies, and not true, you will do untold harm. Again, dispute with your wife and you are in a low mood and you are saying:
“O, you do not care about me, you do not love me anymore. I wish I have never married you; I should have married Susan Jones. She understood me better than you do.”
O, this is crass nonsense! When you come back up into a higher mood and regain your sanity, your thoughts will be back on track. And you will now that your wife loves you, and that she understands you better than anyone else on the planet, including Susan Jones. Perspective and sanity will have returned. Therefore, when you know that you are in a low mood, and you know that by asking yourself frequently – where is your elevator right now – then, make the resolution right there and then not to do any harm with it. All you have to do is to simply tell yourself – yes, I am in a low mood. Then, patiently wait and your elevator will come up again. In a mean time, do nothing. You know, it is kind of like a child with measles. Measles is a virus illness and no one can do much about that. But the child is probably feeling anxious because they are sick and they wonder if something terrible is going to happen. But, when mom comes along and puts some nice cold cloth on the child’s forehead, and feeds them ice cream, and gives them nice cold pop drink, and sues them, and tells them stories, the child feels secure. Well, you see insecurity is the bottom of all of our low moods. When we are in a low mood, we have emotional measles. And we need to feel more secure. And one way to help yourself to feel more secure is to accept the low mood, do not judge yourself as a bad because you are having one, and do something nice for yourself, have a cup of coffee and a jelly doughnut. Go for a walk, read a chapter of a book that you enjoy. Whatever it is, just wait, sue yourself, until the mood goes away, up comes the high mood, and you can then interact with reality and with life once more. And trust in it. So, anger then usually arises out of a low mood. And if a person is in a low mood and starts to entertain angry thoughts than the feeling of anger is sure to follow. He does not to have to be a slave though, to these impulses. Strangely enough, it is much easier than we might think to become a person of peace, and to receive the gift of piece which Jesus Himself promises. And here is how:
a) Decide to give up your anger, make the decision that you are tired of being an angry person. And you say, how can I do that? A decision is not going to make any change. Yes, it is! And I will tell you why. I once met a very elderly gentleman. And he was a tall, straight, and strong man. And, as we were talking, I suppose I was about nineteen – years – old at that time, and as we were talking I said something like:
“Yeas, that really makes me angry!”
And he immediately turned to me and said:
“No, it does not! “
And I said:
“Yes, it does!”
And he said:
“No, it does not. You are choosing to be angry, you do not have to. Let me tell you something. When I was your age, I was 6’3” tall, I was 225 lbs, and it was all muscle. And so therefore understandably, I got a job as a security in a bar. And one evening, I am in a bar, and there were four lovely young ladies sitting at the table, and enjoying a cocktail and having a conversation. When a man came in, half drunk already, and he sat down at the table next to the young women. And as he drunk more and more he became more and more drunk and he started to become abusive to the girls, and he started to become sexually suggestive to them. So, the barman said to me – Put that man out, he is not getting anything more to drink. – So, I went over and I said: Sir, you have had enough to drink and we want you now to leave. – Well, the man went into a rage and he started to swing his fists at me. So, I grabbed his arm and I bent it up behind his back. But you see, I had now gone into a rage of my own. And instead of just simply putting him outside of the door and closing the door behind him, I threw him through the door. And the man landed on the sidewalk and hurt his head and he ended up spending three months in a hospital. And as I stood there looking down on this unconscious man I was terrified of my own rage. And I made a decision, right there and right then, a serious powerful decision, that I had had it with anger. And I was never going to become angry, and I kept that promise. And I have never been angry ever since that day.
b) Take responsibility for your own angry feelings. See, your anger was only a thought generated in your own head as merely a habit in response to loosing your own bearings. Do not insist that your anger comes from outside of yourself! That only justifies it. As soon as you say insults make me angry then you are locking yourself into anger. There after, every time you are insulted, for the rest of your life, you will immediately become angry, because that is the decision you had made. You decided that insults made you angry. But your anger is not linked to the outside world. It is only in your own mind. The cause is your thoughts; the effect is your anger. And as I have said, if you decide that insults make you angry that is precisely what is going to happen down the road. If you decide that you are never going to be angry again it is very, very likely that you will have overcome this serious problem.
c) Try to stop seeing so much malice in what other people are doing. The imputing of motives is obituary and it occurs in your head. You do not know what another person’s motive really is; you do not know what they are really thinking. You are not a mind reader. Even allowing for the fact that maybe someone is acting out of malice towards you, it is still your mind which decides how you are going to respond. The imputing of motives is a habitual suspicion of others and this is not the mind of Christ. Blaming others is a function of the ego. And I am going to say something very important, and I am going to say it twice. And it is this:
The size of your ego is the exact measurement of the distance between yourself and God. In other words, the more I am egotistical the more proud I am, the more self – absorbed I am; the grater the distance between me and my loving God. John the Baptist understood this perfectly well. He said:
”I must decrease while He must increase.”
In other words, I must shrink my ego, and my self – centerness and vanity in order to allow the life of Jesus Christ to grow within me. And you know, the more we learn to do that the closer we are to God, and the more we absorb His peace, and the more He is able to imbue us with the peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that destroys all sinful anger. A violent husband and father is just such a person; he sees malice when none exists. And in order to counteract this tendency within us, we must cultivate the habit of seeing more innocence in what other people do. As Jesus said on the Cross, in Lk 23, 34:
“They do not know what they are doing.”
People, you see are more often negligent then malicious. Understand this and you will feel more warmly towards people. It helps to remind yourself that whatever is being done to you of course, you have probably done the same thing to someone else at some time in your life. And so, when someone is behaving badly, instead of seeing their bad behavior and then reacting with anger, you see that they are insecure or that they are in a low mood themselves, and so you are adopt an attitude of compassion towards them. And in compassion there is no anger.
c) Discount your thoughts. Accept that these thoughts are distorted and coming from your low mood and not from your life. Angry thoughts and feelings will grow according to the attention you give them. So, disengage your mind, do not dwell on your thoughts but rather say to yourself,
So, it is only a low mood. Things are not as bad as they appear to me right now. I will wait until I am in a better mood.
Then, when I am in a good mood my spouse is a well – meaning – angel, and when I am in a bad mood my spouse is an all – to – get – me – devil. So, how she could be an angel yesterday and a devil today? The answer is moods. Once this is understood, then life becomes a lot less frightening. It is scary to have to fight monsters, but if you know that they are only your own thoughts then these monsters become very easy to deal with and a lot less intimidating.
d) Early recognition. This is really important. Early recognition is the most valuable tool in eliminating anger and valiance. As soon as you recognize that you are a little bit of balance or somewhat low then it will not get any worse because the anger is stopped in its trucks. And you think to yourself, aha this is the way that my spouse talks to me which tends to get me going, at least it always has been in the past. My father said, “Count to ten” and he was absolutely right on. You never have to give in into a low mood. To give in is to say yes to your negative emotions and this always leads to sin. Jesus, on the other hand, asks us to rise above our feeling, to rise above our low moods, to exercise our will, and to do what is right. Everybody has low moods but we are quite capable of setting these aside whenever there is a call to love. I am maybe feeling tired, or sad, or hurt, or defeated, but when I see the old lady next door struggling to take out a heavy garbage bag, am I not able to go to help her? Can I not defeat my feelings of tiredness, or my sadness, or lay aside my mood for a moment to go out and help her?! The fascinating thing is that when I do, my mood is likely to disappear. Why? Because when I do it, I see the smile of gratitude on the face of that lady, and I know that I have done something that is in accordance with the mind of Christ. And that, in an off itself carries with it its own reward. We are to use our will, that is the highest part of our faculty, our will, our ability to choose between right and wrong, and we are to use our will to dominate the lower animal part of our being which is our feelings. So many people today allow their feeling to tell them what to do. And the answer is:
“Well, I did it because I felt like it! Or “I did not do it because I did not feel like it.”
Feelings are the lower part of our being and are fecal, and unreliable, and very often directing us towards a sinful choice. So, we must rise above our feelings and we give to God that which is God’s. And we also find, and this is very interesting, when we move into the pain of another person, what we deliberately journey, as Catherine Dorothy of Madonna House once said, to journey without fear and to man’s hearts and we enter their pain we automatically forget our own pain. And it is self – forgetting that we find ourselves. What an amazing paradox. It is in self – forgetting that we find ourselves.
e) And finally, let me give you one sure absolutely unfailing technique with which to overcome your low mood, and of course to defeat anger. And it is very simple, I wonder how many of you will hear this, and take to heart, and put it into practice. But I guarantee that it works. Simple when your recognize that you are in low mood, that you are in danger from your anger, simple go to a quiet place and spent fifteen minutes praising God. I mean this! Praising God, tell God how wonderful He is, tell Him how beautiful He is, tell Him how powerful He is, how loving He is, how just He is, how kind He is. Thank Him. Thank Him for creating you; acknowledge to Him that every single gift that you have, every single breath that you take is because He has done this for you. Show Him your gratitude. And tell Him that He is a wonderful, and glorious, and beautiful God. Sing on the top of your lungs, voice if you wish. It is a beautiful way to praise God. Pray in tongues if you have that gift. But spent fifteen minutes praising Him! And I guarantee you that at the end of that time your low mood will have disappeared and melted away like a snowball on a summer’s day.
Trust in God! There is One God and no other!
