Anger reveals itself everywhere these days. I just listened to a teaching on Zephaniah. She talked about handling the truth. Like the line from A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson asks “What do you want” and Cruise replies “I want the truth” and Nicholson rebuts “You can’t handle the truth”.
If the prophets in Zephaniah’s time told the king the truth, the king killed them. Zephaniah was lucky. He only got life in prison.
Someone makes an assertion that is blatantly a lie, or maybe to be kind, a mistake. Someone else points out the facts. Wow! Just wait for the bombs to quit going off.
I have a policy on social media. If someone reposts those angry and usually inaccurate memes, I mute them. My emotional health is soooo much better.
But let’s look at ourselves. Do you remember the last time you were angry? Really angry?
I can. And I’m ashamed of the moment some 10 years or so later. Anger springs from many things. Often a sense of inadequacy.
John Climacus has an observation, of course. The first toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart if stirred; the next, to keep thoughts silent when the soul is upset; the last, to be totally calm when unclean winds are blowing. Anger is an indication of concealed hatred, of grievance nursed. Anger is the wish to harm someone who has provoked you.
As we climb the ladder of Divine Ascent, “On the eighth step the crown is freedom from anger. He who wears it by nature may never come to wear another. But he who has searched for it and won it has conquered all eight together.”
Faith Venture 
Leave a comment