The Trouble With Anger

I didn’t catch the news until late in the day yesterday.  When I did I heard the sad news of the bombings at the Boston Marathon.  Such senseless violence in my eyes.  Although I wonder if the person or persons who carried out this horrible act thought it was senseless.  Probably not.  Anger tends to have its roots in reason.  Sadly if given the opportunity anger can morph into something beyond reason and rationality.

It got me thinking – wondering how someone can have so much hate inside of them that it leads them to kill people who don’t have anything to do with the core of their hate.  Innocent victims.  Tell me that and eight year old child deserved their wrath or any of the victims for that matter.

As I thought more about this tragedy the reality is this: anger feeds anger and then gives birth to hatred.  Who of us hasn’t become angry?  Have you ever caught yourself hanging on to situations, having angry conversations with someone in your mind, or felt the need to share your anger with mutual friends.  There is something instinctive inside of us that wants to feed on the negativity - the poison.

 

For the vast majority of us, our anger may not get out of hand but it does take up valuable space in our hearts and minds.  A situation occurred recently that has me a little perturbed.  And yes, the human nature side of me wants desperately to be snide – to involve others in my annoyance.  But the Holy Spirit in me is telling me to let it go.  He’s telling me that by wanting others to be as annoyed or angry as I am, I would merely be feeding the anger.  I would be fanning the flame and creating a bigger problem (but misery loves company, right?).  In reality I would be doing the devil’s handy work.  

I admit, it gets hard to change the path my mind takes when I get angry.  But experience has taught me to redirect my thoughts – to turn away from the negative.  Praising God is a good method of redirection and reading His word is a good antidote for the disease.   We may have to fight human nature but I’m pretty sure that if more of us did – we’d have a lot fewer tragedies like what happened in Boston.  

Here is my take away:  Decide whether you want to be an angry person or not.  You can choose to feed on love or choose to feed on anger.  Only one of those has a good outcome.