DEALING WITH ANGER

By Rev Ezekiel A. Ajibade

Anger is one the strongest and most destructive emotion. The dictionary defines it as a strong feeling of grievance and displeasure. Anger happens when someone violates our rights, our principles or our personally acceptable sense of judgment. It happens when you are bitter against someone who has done something wrong against you. You are mad because someone steps on your toes or hurt you and your feelings. Then you react and possible want to avenge. Anger indeed is a product of selfishness. The “I” in you is offended and you want to let that person know you can not be passive or silent about it.

Many times we excuse our anger because we feel that is the best reaction we could give in a certain circumstance and we also feel “who wouldn’t react like that anyway?” Yet the Bible is unequivocal when it comes to condemning anger.
Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. (KJV). Ecc 7:9

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go. (KJV). Prov 22:24

Anger and folly are biblical synonyms. You are a fool when you are angry and you are a man or woman to be avoided because you are dangerous. Anger therefore has no excuse. Benjamin Franklin once said,
“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”
Marcus Aurelius also said,
“How much more grievous are the consequence of anger than the cause of it?

The Physical Dimension of Anger
When we go angry we destroy many things including those that have taken us years to build. We say words that when we come back to our senses we deny we ever said or we wish we never said. And interestingly, words are like egg. Break it and let it spill, you can never re-pack it. Anger and rage has once made a man to break the head of his wife with a pestle. Anger had made a woman to destroy all the household electronics of her husband. Anger has made people to stab each other with knives and broken bottle. Anger is the reason many men beat their wives blue and black, many parents beat their children to the point of comma, leading to being hospitalized or leaving an indelible scar. Anger at the way another road user drove has caused a lot of accidents and several deaths following. Out of anger people have abandoned projects, stormed out of meetings that would have profited their lives or their communities. Out of anger many have destroyed their destinies and that of others. On and on we can continue. We all have examples around us and indeed we have either been a major actor in anger before or have been victims. Anger is indeed destructive. No wonder the scripture says, the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20

The Medical Dimension to Anger
It has been estimated that 60-80 per cent of illness today are emotionally induced and anger and fear are the chief among these emotions. The simple fact is that our entire physical body is intricately tied to our nervous system and anytime this system is tensed up through anger, it affects one part of our body or the other adversely. Whenever you are emotionally tensed up, the tension first strikes the emotional centre and message is sent to other organs of the body. Changes in the emotional centre takes place through these mechanisms:
- There is a change in the amount of blood flowing into an organ
- The secretion of certain glands are affected
- There is an effect on the tension of the muscles.

Now when you are angry many things are likely to happen:
- Your blood vessel can automatically dilate and since the cranium (that part of the skull that covers the brain) is a rigid structure without room for expansion, your anger can lead to severe headache.
- The flow of blood to your stomach and other vital organs could be restricted and this can lead to ulcer and many other stomach diseases.
- There is a muscle over the human stomach that is emotionally controlled. When you are angry, it will tighten down and restrict the flow of blood to other vital organs of the heart, stomach, liver, intestines, lung, gall bladder etc.
- The more the anger or emotional rage is prolonged, the more we cause severe damages to these vital organs. This also makes our resistance to infectious diseases reduced.

Other diseases as high blood pressure, colitis and goiter have been at times linked with emotional problems. In fact a psychologist once said that he estimated that as many as 97 percent of his patient with ulcer had them because of anger while an ulcer specialist would like to concur that the figure is actually 100 per cent when he heard this statement. The question is, is it worth it? The millions of Naira spent on medical bills and drugs could be channeled into other things that will make our life better and more enjoyable. We had better choose life!

The Spiritual Dimension to Anger
Ephesians 4:29 says
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.

Anger does not stand alone. It has a big family of bitterness, malice, clamour, envy, resentment, intolerance, criticism, revenge, wrath, hatred, seditions, jealousy, attack, gossip, sarcasm and unforgiveness. Now in which ever form it manifests, anger grieves the Holy Spirit. It makes the Spirit sad and he cannot function in our lives. God’s working is hindered because we are bitter and our lives have become hostile to God and man. Nobody wants to come near a mad man. At this time we find it difficult to pray and if we do, we feel dry and can’t enjoy that sweet presence of the Holy Spirit. The worse is for us to pretend as if nothing is happening. If we pretend, God cannot be mocked or deceived. We are the ones to keep deceiving ourselves.

Help in times of Anger
- Value your relationship with God and his Spirit more than any prevailing circumstance that might upset you.
- Work on your temperament. Some temperaments are more prone to anger than others. Sanguine and Choleric are more prone to anger.
- Deal with the fundamental issue of selfishness. Love is the conqueror of selfishness. I Cor 13
- Never sleep over your anger. Eph 4:26
- Separate zeal for righteousness (otherwise called holy anger) from emotional and destructive anger. Neh 5:6; Mark 3:1-5; Matt 21:12-13; Luke 19:45-48.
- Remember that anger is an emotion and an emotion is always warm, even hot. Say out loud to yourself, “don’t be a fool. This won’t get me anywhere, so skip it.”
- Count ten or say the first ten words of our Lord’s Prayer. Before you do that ten times, the anger would have lost the power over you.
- Anger is a great term expressing the accumulated vehemence of a multitude of minor irritations. Take each irritation and make it an object of prayer.