Finding the Love of Your Life


02/29/2004 - Anger Management



This morning we continue our series called Finding the Love of Your Life.  It's based on John Ortberg's excellent book Everybody's Normal Till You Get To Know Them .  And the title of today's teaching is "Anger Management."

One of my favorite anger stories involves two baseball players, Billy Martin and hall of fame slugger Mickey Mantle.  Martin was a hot headed second baseman for the New York Yankees who later became their hot headed manager.  He and Mantle were great friends who loved to hunt together in the off season.

One time they went down to Texas to hunt on the ranch of one of Mantle's friends and when they arrived, Mickey told Billy to wait in the car while he checked things out with his buddy.

So he went up to the house and talked to his friend who quickly gave them permission to hunt, but then asked Mantle to do him a favor.  Apparently his pet mule was going blind, and the rancher didn't have the heart to put him out of his misery.  So he asked Mantle to shoot the mule for him.  Mickey said, "Sure, that's no problem."

But when he got back to the car, he pretended to be angry.  He had this scowl on his face and slammed the door and told Martin that his friend wouldn't let him hunt on the ranch.  He said, "I'm so mad at this guy I'm going to drive out to his barn and shoot one of his mules."

So while he's driving like a nut to the barn, Martin's pleading with him, "No Mickey, calm down. Don't do it.  That's not right."  "You want to make a bet, just watch me!" he shouted.

When they got to the barn, Mantle jumped out of the car with his rifle in his hand, ran inside, and shot the mule dead.  And as he was walking away he heard two more shots and there was Billy Martin standing there blowing the smoke off his gun. Mickey yelled, "What are you doing?" And Martin yelled back, "We'll show that son of a gun! I just killed two of his cows too!" Not the best form of anger management!

All of us get angry.  It's one of the most common, most powerful human emotions we can feel.  Hardly a day goes by for most of us without getting angry about something.  And there's no greater challenge to building community with another person than to master the art of anger management.

In her book Community and Growth , Jean Vanier writes, "Communities need tensions if they are to grow and deepen. Tensions come from conflicts ... A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God.  But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly." There's no question that conflict can destroy community, but on the other hand, conflict handled well can take community to a deeper level.

Mishandled anger is a huge problem in our country. According to the FBI, there is one violent crime every 24 seconds, an aggravated assault every 48 seconds, a murder every 23 minutes. In fact, murder is one of the leading causes of death for both young men and women in America today.  Domestic violence is the top cause of emergency room visits by women. During the Vietnam War, more women were murdered at home than men were killed on the battlefield.

But the damage that anger causes isn't just limited to physical violence. Mismanaged anger plays a major role in virtually every divorce which affects 50% of the marriages in America and wreaks havoc in many of the marriages in the other 50% where spouses are separated either emotionally or physically.  Parents who can't control their anger wound their kids and set them up to repeat that same pattern in their own families.  Jobs are lost and churches are split all the time over anger issues.

Jesus knew all about conflict.  He knew that it would threaten the community that exists in any relationship, be it a friendship or a marriage or in a family or at work or in the church. And there is no single statement that came from the lips of Jesus on anger management that is more important than Matthew 18:15, "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and show them their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over."

This one statement of Jesus is the key to resolving conflict in any human relationship.  The manual for conflict resolution is right here and it's found in seven simple steps, easy enough for a child to follow.  Instead of show and tell, it's go and tell.  Go and tell the person who hurt you and make it right.

Sounds simple, doesn't it.  The problem is we so often don't do it.  We tell everybody but the person who hurt us. In fact, this one verse may be the single most violated command that Jesus ever gave.  Why?  Because at each point we face a crossroads.  At each step there are powerful reasons to ignore Jesus and go the other way. So let's walk through the steps one at a time.

Step one is acknowledge the conflict, if there is a conflict. Jesus says if your brother or sister sins against you , but we could probably replace it with when your brother or sister sins against you because to be alive means to be in conflict. It's part of the Dance of the Porcupines. It's part of being slightly irregular, "as is" human beings. People aren't normal, but conflict is.

The first step sounds simple enough, acknowledge the conflict. But here's the first crossroad. Most of us would rather pretend that there is no conflict, that the conflict doesn't exist.  Sometimes we think that lack of conflict is a sign of spiritual maturity, when really it could be a sign of denial or even apathy in a relationship.  So when we're confronted we might say things like, "What's the big deal?  Can't you take a joke? I was only kidding."  And when we do that we can totally invalidate the person who wants to talk about the hurt.

So the place to start is to honestly admit that there is unresolved conflict that needs to be dealt with.  There's been a relational meltdown that needs to be addressed. If we're going to live life in healthy community, unaddressed and unresolved conflict is not an option.

Step two is to own the responsibility of dealing with it.  The word Jesus uses is you not the other person. He calls on every one of us to own the job of conflict resolution, which often brings us to another crossroads.

We don't want to do it.  Instead, we want the person who hurt us to make the first move. "It's not fair that I should have to take the first step, I didn't hurt them.  They hurt me."

In Matthew 18 the issue is going to the person who has hurt us, but in Matthew 5 Jesus says we need to go to a person if we realize we have hurt them. Matthew 5:23-24, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."

You see, either way the first move is always ours. In fact, Jesus says it's more important to make a relationship right than it is to go to church.  It's the most spiritual thing we can do.  There is no hidden Bible verse that says wait for them to come to us. Jesus puts the burden on us in both cases. If we've done something wrong, take the first step. If the other person has done something wrong, we still take the first step.

Why? Because porcupines are stubborn, prickly little creatures. Because there's a surplus of stone throwers and a deficit of peacemakers in this world.  And because people who value community are people who own the responsibility to deal with relational breakdown.

The third step is go.  Don't avoid, but approach the person with whom you have an issue.  This is a huge step in the process and right here the battle is often won or lost.  At this crossroads we wrestle with thoughts like, "Just forget it, it's not that big of a deal."  "I don't want to make them feel bad."  "What they did really shouldn't of hurt me anyway." "Who am I to confront them?" "It could cost the relationship." "What if they come at me with all I've done to hurt them?" "What difference will it make anyway?" The evil one loves to use these thoughts and ideas to sabotage community.

But Jesus says, go .  Don't wait.  We can't wait until we've rehearsed our speech perfectly. We may stutter and stammer all over the place. It's not important that we do it flawlessly. It's just important that we do it. Avoiding issues of hurt kills community and causes resentment to fester inside of us.

Some of us grew up in homes where anger was never acknowledged. The only way we dealt with anger was to "stuff" it. That was the case in my home.  And when you grow up in a family like that you can think, "I should never experience anger.  Anger means I'm a terrible person.  Anger is bad."

But that's a lie.  God gave us with the capacity to get angry.  God gets angry from time to time.  Psalm 30:5 says, For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime.

Anger is like a smoke detector.  It's good to have one on every floor of your house. When it beeps, it tells you that something's wrong. It's good to have smoke detectors. They can save your life.  But it's not good to live with a smoke detector that's always beeping.

Anger is our God given smoke detector to warn us that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.  Anger is meant to motivate us to do something.  And this is what we're to do.  Go to the person who has made us angry.

Now it may be wise to cool down first.  Proverbs 14:17 says, People with a hot temper do foolish things. Wiser people remain calm. (GNB) You may need to buy some time just to allow the rpm's to slow down. That's okay.  You may even want to do a self-check and ask yourself, "Why am I so angry?  And what is it that I want that I'm not getting?"

Anger experts tell us that anger is not a primary emotion.  Remember when you were in elementary school and learned about the three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. All the other colors are made from a mixture of those three. Well in that same way, anger is not a primary emotion. It is a mixture of emotions, such as hurt, frustration, or fear. Those are often the feelings that are underneath the anger. We get angry after we first get hurt by someone or after we first get frustrated trying to accomplish a task or first feel afraid of someone or something.

But once we've cooled down and thought things through we need to "go." The apostle Paul wrote these words to a community that was facing conflict.  Ephesians 4:26, In your anger do not sin.  Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.  We need to address it as quickly as possible.

Step number four is to go to the person.  The crossroads here to gossip and go to a third party and tell them the hurt and anger we feel, before we go to the person themselves. Why?  Because it's easier and frankly more fun to go to someone else and tear the other person apart.  But when we do that we can just make things worse.

That doesn't mean we should never talk about our anger. We all need a sounding board that can help us plan to resolve the conflict.  But if we're going to a third person, it should be with the goal of then moving towards the person who hurt us for reconciliation.

Step five is use sensitivity, go in private. One on one.  Just between the two of you, Jesus says. The crossroads here is the temptation to go and let them have it. Make 'em pay.  Hurt them back.  Embarrass them in front of an audience.  But Jesus says, "No."  Instead, approach them the same way you would want to be approached. Sensitivity is one of the most important parts of healthy anger management.

We don't go to blow off steam or get it off our chest or let it fly. According to Ortberg, research done on anger management over several decades has failed to find a single study that demonstrates that catharsis, or letting your anger fly, is an effective way to manage anger. Instead, it just creates more anger inside us and in the person that we rage all over.  The simplest guideline here is the golden rule: approach others the way that you would want them to approach you.

Step number six is to communicate directly, discuss the problem. Jesus says, Show them their fault.  The temptation here is to beat around the bush and not be totally honest.  Some of us around here talk about saying the last 10%.  Often, after going through all the hard work of setting up a difficult conversation, we get afraid and we shrink back from saying the hardest but most important truth.  We fail to say the very thing that caused us to meet in the first place, the last 10%.  We get vague and fuzzy just when we need to be crystal clear.

Saying the last 10% sounds like this.  "You weren't really listening to me which made me feel like I don't matter to you.  That causes me to pull away in our relationship and I don't want that. I want us to connect more closely. That's why I was hurt."  It's not easy to say that. But that's what Jesus means by showing them their fault.

And finally, step number seven is the goal of conflict resolution and that is reconciliation.  If they listen to you, you have won them over.  The goal is not to even the score or to make the other person pay or feel bad, it's to be reconciled to each other. Restoring the relationship is the goal of conflict resolution.  Getting back into community is the aim.  If it's not, all of the hard work is for nothing.

So those are the seven simple steps of conflict resolution according to Jesus. That's what keeps a community healthy. But sometimes even conflict resolution doesn't work. Sometimes we need a miracle.  And God created one.  It's called forgiveness.  And we'll look at that next time.

There's a story told of Leonardo da Vinci, the brilliant artist, who was working on his famous painting "The Last Supper" when he got angry with a certain man. In fact, at one point he was so angry that he lost his temper and lashed out at the person with some very bitter words. Later on when he returned to the canvas to continue painting he tried to work on the face of Jesus.  But he was so upset that he just couldn't pull it together to do that. So finally he put down his brush and went out to find the man he had blasted and asked his forgiveness.  He reconciled the relationship.  The man forgave him and da Vinci was able to go back to his studio and finish painting the face of Jesus.

The Last Supper is a painting of the Lord's Table, the table that we're about to enjoy together. Does it bring to mind a relationship that needs to be reconciled?  If it does, then you need to make it right quickly. It's hard to spend time with Jesus and stay angry very long. He's always nudging us towards reconciliation.