Rage
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Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.-Psalm 37:9
There’s a lot of anger going around these days. You can see it on people’s bumper stickers. Or in stories about people behaving really badly on planes, or in restaurants or in stores - or just about anywhere.
And while you may not act out in anger in such noteworthy ways yourself, I bet you know what anger feels like. I bet a lot about the pandemic has made you feel angry. Let alone stuff in the news. None of us are strangers to anger.
Anger is an important emotion. It is meant to alert us when an injustice has been done. Without anger, we would not have the motivation to stand up for what is right when the world is being unfair. So anger is not all bad. We can listen to our anger to understand how we’re being called to improve ourselves, our community and our world.
But I don’t think the psalmist is talking about the kind of motivating anger that spurs us toward justice in Psalm 37. Instead, I think the psalmist is referring to the kind of anger that is hot-headed and knee-jerk and can create its own injustice - the kind of rage we’ve been seeing lately from people in the news. As I said, we’ve all felt angry at this long, drawn out pandemic. But not all of us take that anger out on our barista at the coffee shop. Not all of us put a bumper sticker on our cars that fling obscenities to whoever happens to be behind us. Not all of us end up in a gunfight behind a bar. That kind of rage is akin to a 3 year old having a tantrum. It is pure gut emotion flung out at anyone who happens to be in its way.
When my children were small and angry enought to hit or to scream or to have a tantrum, my response was always, “You seem very angry. I know what it is like to feel angry. You know, you can be angry and think at the same time. Yes you can - you can think right now. I would like you to think about how it would feel if someone pushed you into the toybox. I want you to stop and think before you hurt your brother.”
Hey, sometimes it worked.
Feelings are like the weather - inevitable and temporary. Everyone feels feelings and sometimes they are really strong feelings, especially during stressful times! Without stopping to think about it, we can allow our feelings to spurt out at others in a way that has nothing to do with justice or kindness. Stopping to think, take some deep breaths, and to give our strong feelings to God, (who can take anything we can dish out without being hurt,) might help keep us all from being the kind of people that need to be subdued by air marshals. As the psalmist says, stewing in our strong feelings of anger, annoyance and resentment only leads to trouble.
At our Sunday service I’ll be preaching about love and forgiveness - two huge themes for us as people of faith. May we find ways to practice love and forgiveness - for others and for ourselves - even when we feel a potential temper tantrum coming on.
Our readings for this Sunday are here.
