Coping With Anger (continued)

In our previous meditation we stressed that ANGER should not always be thought of in negative terms, the Bible confirms that God and Jesus were ANGRY on occasions. It follows, therefore, that there are occasions when it is justifiable for Christians to be angry and it would be wrong for them not to be so! However, a note of caution must always be sounded! Paul makes it clear how we should cope with our anger in this context:

• ‘Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil’, Ephesians chapter 4 verses 26-27. We must not allow our justifiable anger to become tainted by sin – there is no room for vindictiveness, hatred, malice and resentment.
• We must also put a ‘time limit’ on our anger – we must not carry it over to the future. Unrestrained anger allows the devil to gain a foothold in our lives.

We all, of course, have different ways of coping with our anger. One way is to turn it inward and ignore it. Another way is to be aware that we are angry but decide to suppress it and not let others know that we are angry. Yet another technique is to express openly and vehemently how we feel! This often leads to us ‘taking out our anger’ on a person or an object! There were Biblical characters, who resorted to these measures, with disastrous consequences, e.g., Cain, King Saul, Jonah.

There is a fourth, and more constructive, way of coping with grief, i.e., by CONFESSION. We must confess the fact that we are angry – to God, ourselves and others involved. The Psalmist, no doubt, had this in mind, when he wrote: ‘Be angry and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord’, Psalm 4 verses 4-5.

To be continued