Think for a moment about the different emotions you often experience in a day: happiness, fear, anxiety, anticipation, hope, envy, desire, love, contentment, pride, guilt, jealousy, anger, joy, sadness, surprise; you may even have a few others to add to this list. Consider how you express these emotions, and how others see these emotions affecting your interactions and decisions.
Aaron is a fun person to be around, but if you catch him when he’s mad—look out!
“I can tell his mood by the way he shuts the door,” his wife, Amber, says. “If the door almost comes off its hinges, I brace myself for his first gripe.”
And come it will—followed by a host of other complaints:
“Why don’t you make the kids keep their bicycles out of the driveway?”
“Turn off the TV. There’s racket enough around here without that thing adding to it!”
“Women drivers! They should be kept off the highways after three in the afternoon!”
Aaron’s emotions affect his behavior and his interactions.
Whether an emotion is positive or negative, it produces physical changes in our bodies: heartbeat increases, breaths are shorter, muscles grow tense, digestion is affected. Depending on the situation, we often perspire more and undergo glandular changes that put our bodies in a high state of alert.
Julie looked forward to her date with the young man she thought was the most popular in the entire school. All day long she was excited and nervous. Her appetite disappeared. Even her memory became faulty. She couldn’t remember what homework had been assigned that day or what chores her mother had asked her to complete. The doorbell rang. She heard his voice. Her excitement was at a high point. Her heart began to pound, her hands to sweat. Her face flushed. Making a last check of appearance, she found that her hands were trembling.
Six-year-old Caleb begged his father to take him to watch the airplanes fly in and out of the airport. One evening his father finally told Caleb that he would take him to visit the airstrip viewing area the next day. Caleb was beyond excited. After tossing in his sleep, he was awake bright and early. His body was in such a high state of anticipation that he could hardly sit still throughout the school day. Every chance he got, he talked airport and airplanes to his classmates, his teachers, and anyone else who would listen.
After school he watched by the window for his dad to arrive at home. When his father’s car came into the driveway, Caleb jumped up and down and clapped his hands. “Dad’s here!” he shouted. He ran out of the house to the car. Before his father could get out of the car, he asked, “We’re still going to watch the airplanes, aren’t we, Dad?”
“Of course we’re going,” his dad laughed. Caleb ran back into the house with a shout. He only picked at his supper. He was too excited to be hungry.
Ethan was elated. He had a date, doubling with a buddy and his girlfriend. He whistled as he prepared to leave. His father had given him the car for the evening, and he had gladly cleaned it up for the occasion. But when he arrived home that night he was unhappy, frustrated, and tired. What had happened? His date had been late, the food bill had been high, and his friend and his friend’s date had gotten into an argument. The evening had been a disaster. What a switch from the elation he had enjoyed as he was getting ready! His feelings had changed from pleasant to unpleasant, and his body was responding accordingly.
Our bodies always respond in some way to our emotions. However, those bodily changes, must return to normal in order for us to be comfortable and at ease. When nature is not thwarted, this usually occurs with a minimum of effort. A child who has had an exciting day drops into his bed at night in sheer exhaustion. With adults, letting nature take its course is often not so easily done. However, returning to a state of balance is essential. Even the most tender emotions, pleasant as they are, must subside, allowing bodily processes to revert to normal.
The fact that an emotion is pleasant does not necessarily make the quest for it desirable. The thrill of speed can be dangerous and deadly. The drive of sexual passion can lead you into deep trouble. The enjoyment of companionship can cause you to neglect important details and other relationships in your life.
It is the unpleasant emotions, however, that often lead to the greatest troubles. Unpleasant emotions compel us to act. In the case of anger, the typical impulse is to fight, either verbally or physically. The ultimate aim of fighting is to kill or destroy, either physically or emotionally. Perhaps John had this in mind when he wrote: “Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them” (1 John 3:15).
The difference between mild anger and murder is only a matter of degree. If you accept the truth of this, then you should consider anger and its related emotions as deadly cancers and treat them as such.
Of course, it takes a lot of anger to carry out an impulse to harm someone. But who at some time has not thrown something in disgust? Watch two schoolboys fighting. Neither means to stop until he has conquered the other. Take a look at the news headlines and you will be reminded that angry nations, movements, and ideologies are engaged in deadly struggles. James warned, “For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind” (James 3:16). For anyone who treasures envy and self-seeking in their heart, the impulse to hurt or to destroy is not far off.
Are You Ruled by Wrath?
Karl Menninger, the noted psychiatrist, wrote, “However sweetly we may interpret the fact, the human child usually begins his life in anger … the cry of the child just born has the tone not of lamentation, but of wrath.”1 Many people never lose this natural tendency toward anger.
José was an angry man. He moved from job to job because “worldly people” irked him. Finally, he landed at a firm with an owner who was a Christian. Here was a man he felt he could work for; he looked forward to a happy relationship on the job.
But things did not turn out that way. José was made general manager, having a number of foremen to supervise. One of the foremen used a great deal of profanity. One day José could stand the man’s talk no longer. He called the foreman aside and ordered him to stop swearing when he was on the job. The foreman ignored him. So José warned him again, “Stop it—or you’ll be fired!”
The company president heard of José’s ultimatum. He called his general manager in. “Dave’s got a foul mouth, I know,” the president said. “But he gets more work out of his crew than any of our other foremen.”
He told José to leave the man alone. José was not to impose his private standards on Dave or any other employee. Reluctantly José accepted the president’s directive. But from that day on he felt he was constantly being overruled by the president. One day he stormed into the president’s office.
“Am I the general manager or not?” he shouted.
“Of course you are, and I am the owner of this company,” replied his boss.
José saw red. He continued to shout at his superior. He was furious—from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.
Frustration tends to expose the inner life of a person.
Telling of the incident later, José said, “It takes a lot to get me mad, but when I am, the fur really flies. There we stood, toe to toe, yelling at each other. And both of us profess to be Christians. But you can be sure of this—no non-Christian ever made me more miserable than that man.”
I asked José if his boss had caused him to lose his temper?
“Who else?” José demanded. “The last time he crossed me was the very last straw. I don’t lose control of myself unless I’m forced to.”
Here was a man who claimed to believe the Bible, which includes these words: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
Was this grace available to José? Yes. First, however, he had to take an honest look at himself. When he did, he saw that he brought a spirit of antagonism to his job. He didn’t like to be crossed—whether by the foreman who violated his standard of speech or by the president who refused to let José impose his standard on the other workers. The frustration of not getting his own way exposed the wrath within him. Frustration tends to expose the inner life of a person.
In looking back over his life, José could see that he had possessed an antagonistic spirit since childhood. It had come out at home with his siblings, at school with his friends, in his marriage with his wife and his children, and toward anyone who thwarted him. He did not blow up very often, but when he did, everyone got out of his way. He controlled things pretty well by simply threatening to blow up. At times, however, he met persons who just let him blow. This was true of the people he worked with; and this explained why he moved from job to job. By such moves he was able to dismiss his own problem, saying that his reasons for moving were the worldliness, selfishness, or cantankerousness of others. He always had a good reason for his tantrums.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we are instructed, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26, ESV). What was José doing? He was letting the sun go down on his wrath every day, and every day it accumulated. He even denied that he himself had anything to do with it.
His situation could be likened to a sink with a dripping faucet. Put the plug in and eventually the sink fills up. One more drop and the water will run over. Is it the last drop that spills the water onto the floor? No, it’s the last drop plus all the rest of the drops. José allowed all of his irritation to accumulate. Tiny irritations at home, at church, at work, and on the way to and from work all slowly accumulated. At the same time pressure was building inside of him. Usually he could work off some of the frustration and drain away some of the irritation. But occasionally he was trapped; the last drop, or “the last straw,” would cause him to blow up.
The people in your life may never change their ways. Circumstances may be beyond your control. However, you can open your heart to God, who is able to fill it with his bountiful grace.
For a long time he could not and would not admit that he was an angry man. Therefore, he had no need, no occasion, no desire to pray for forgiveness or grace.
“I get along fine unless someone else is unreasonable,” he said. “And is it my fault if someone else is unreasonable?”
But the Bible says, “Do not let the sun go down on your wrath” (italics added).
When José accepted the fact that the wrath was in him, he was able to find help in dealing with it. And that is the good news for everyone filled with wrath and bitterness. The people in your life may never change their ways. Circumstances may be beyond your control. However, you can do something about yourself. You can open your heart to God, who is able to fill it with his bountiful grace.
But whether you allow God to give you his grace is your decision. Strangely, most people who seek counsel will argue that they have the right to be angry. “Under my circumstances, can you blame me?” they will say in their own defense. Of course they have the right to be angry, but as long as they argue in defense of their wrath, they will see no need nor have any desire to change their own response to their frustrations and thus be delivered from the unhappiness of anger.
Sometimes people ignore their anger by becoming preoccupied with a problem. Julia is a case in point.
“When I get up to sing in church, my chest tightens and I struggle for breath. I am afraid I will fail. Lately I’ve been overcome with a sense of inferiority.”
But she was not inferior. She was, in fact, the best vocalist in the community. What then was wrong?
A closer look revealed that the church in which she sang had a policy that all soloists should rotate Sunday by Sunday, it didn’t matter who was more accomplished. There were many “wanna be” soloists in the congregation. Many of them were not very good singers, but they were put into the rotation anyway. Because of this, Julia had the opportunity to sing only a few times each year. It annoyed her to listen to those who were far less competent than she. When she did sing, it was to people who irritated her.
She had another problem. A women’s circle in the church excluded her because of her age. Though she tried hard to build relationships with members of the group, she was not accepted—only reminded that she belonged in another circle. Here again, whenever she had the opportunity to sing, she sang to the women who angered her.
Julia was not an inferior woman, but she was angry, and her anger led her to also be bitter and resentful. Day after day, week after week, the sun went down on her wrath.
When she looked at herself honestly and faced the truth, she was able to deal with her real problem—her selfish reactions to not getting her own way. She asked God to help her to accept what she could not change. She realized that she had named her feelings of nervousness inferiority, when in reality it was bitterness and wrath.
Feelings of Legitimate Guilt
Anger receives a great deal of attention in mental health clinics and counseling centers all over the world. So does guilt. A mother feels guilty because she screams at her children. A young man feels guilty because he no longer adheres to the behavioral standards by which he was raised. A young professional has been sexually involved with a woman at the office and feels guilty but cannot seem to help himself.
Some writers in the mental health field suggest that guilt feelings are the result of unreasonably high standards of conduct. People feel guilty because they are rejected or criticized. Therefore, they say, we need to accept one another as we are.
Commenting on this point, Orval Mowrer, says:
Our attitudes, as would-be therapists or helping persons, toward the neurotic are apparently less important than his attitude toward himself, [which] in the most general sense is a rejecting one. Therefore, we have reasoned, the way to get the neurotic to accept and love himself is for us to love and accept him, an inference which flows from the Freudian assumption that the patient is not really guilty or sinful but only fancies himself so … and that we are all inherently good and are corrupted by our experiences with the external world.
But what is here generally overlooked, it seems, is that recovery is most assuredly attained, not by helping a person reject and rise above his sins, but by helping him accept them.
This is the paradox which we have not at all understood and which is the very crux of the problem. Just so long as a person lives under the shadow of real, unacknowledged, and unexpiated guilt, he cannot (if he has any character at all) “accept himself”; and all our efforts to reassure him will avail nothing. He will continue to hate himself and to suffer the inevitable consequences of self-hatred. But the moment he (with or without assistance) begins to accept his guilt and his sinfulness, the possibility of radical reformation opens up; and with this, the individual may legitimately, though not without pain and effort, pass from deep, pervasive self-rejection and self-torture to a new freedom of self-respect and peace.2
Sadly, many people cause their own misery. Their guilt is not imaginary, but real. The mother who blames herself for losing her temper with her children and the young people who are ashamed of their behavior are not, Mowrer would point out, struggling with imaginary guilt. Their guilt is real. They will find no relief from it until they face the truth and accept their sins as their own.
But to say, “I am like that,” is going only halfway. Admission leads nowhere unless it implies a desire to change. This means that the mother sincerely wants help with her temper and the young people with their conduct. It also means they must turn to God for help.
How precise 1 John 1:9 is on this point: “If we confess our sins to him [God], he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” The person who confesses this way—having faith that God is able and willing to help them and having a desire for God’s help—is well on the way to peace. The person who admits, “I’m like that,” but does nothing about changing, will not find genuine inner peace. Nor will the person who denies responsibility for the wrong they know they have done.
Freedom from Fear
Another condition that plagues many people is fear. However, the key to freedom from fear is often a backward look.
Carter was filled with a vague fear. “I drive my tractor all alone in a field and find myself gripped with fear. I break out in a cold sweat and I tremble all over.”
A study of his life brought out the answer to his problem. He was racked by smoldering hatred. He and a neighbor had quarreled over who would maintain a fence. He and his wife kept up a running battle over the discipline of the children. He was bitter toward his brother who was a better farmer than he.
Why was he afraid? Because he might lash out at his neighbor and lose the respect of the people in the community. In an angry moment at home he might harm the children or cause his wife to leave him. In his fierce competitiveness with his brother he might make a rash business decision that could ruin his own livelihood.
Do not shy away from self-reflection. It is the real work of experiencing true peace.
Carter had reasons to be afraid. Most people do. But the loving person is not afraid. The Bible tells us:
God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”—2 Timothy 1:7
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
—1 John 4:18, ESV
If no backward explanation for fear can be established, some inward reflection often reveals emotions that we would rather not acknowledge. What James wrote in his short letter may apply: “For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind” (James 3:16). What is causing the fear in your life?
A backward look and an inward evaluation can help us identify what is causing our dissatisfaction and point the way to peace of mind.
Unfortunately, when a person discovers hatred in their heart, they usually find other sin as well. The self-discovery process can resemble an iceberg. Perhaps only anger shows, or fear, or jealousy. But submerged are other emotions that deny them peace. Typically, one emotion can hardly be dealt with singly; it must be dealt with in conjunction with other emotions that affect our everyday lives. Every emotion must be exposed to the light of God’s Word. Do not shy away from self-reflection. It is the real work of experiencing true peace.
Reflection Questions
- How do you express your emotions? How do others see your emotions affecting your interactions and decisions?
- What are some of the physical responses you have with your own emotions?
- “Ruled by wrath” can seem like a strong statement. However, if you are honest with yourself, where is there wrath/anger in your life?
- In what ways is God trying to get your attention through your (legitimate) guilt?
- In what ways is fear keeping you from experiencing true peace?
Take One Action Step
Choose one emotion that is currently interfering with your peace to focus on for a one week. How does this emotion affect you on a day to day basis? Are you willing to own it? Are you willing to confess it to God? What steps do you need to take to deal with this emotion in a positive way?