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Trying to control anger by behaviorial
techniques may provide some help, but it doesn't address the root issue,
the reason for the anger
We all have reasons to be angry: people haven't
treated us well; we aren't understood by those around us; we had
difficulties in our childhoods; we haven't gotten to live out our dreams;
and so on.
We believe that we should be treated well, should have what
we want, should have things the way we want them. When our lives don't go
that way, we get angry.
Anger is our response to the difference
between what is and what we think should be.
We think that the way to deal with this discrepancy is to
try to get the world to change, and to punish it with our anger when it
doesn't.
That is a dead-end situation. The world simply won't give
us what we want when we want it. Even the most wealthy and powerful fail to
create that kind of environment around them. And their anger and
frustration are often magnified by their failure.
The way out of our anger is not by changing reality but by
seeing it as it is.
The truth is you are not the center of the
universe. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the universe was created
for us -- for all of us -- by one who knows each one of us perfectly and
entirely, by one who wants only the best for us, by one who is able to
bring peace and purpose into our lives.
So what? How does that philosophical
"fact" help me get through my days?
By itself, it doesn't.
Accepting God's existence and his desire
for us to know him and be in right relation to him serves one purpose in
our lives: it gets us to pay attention to God.
That's our part in all of this.
We are to pay attention to God, to read about what he has
done, to attend to him deliberately in prayer, to participate in
worshipping him with other people of faith.
Since God is the source of every good
thing that exists, it simply makes sense to pay attention to him.
When we do attend to God, when we treat God as who he
really is, and begin to see ourselves as who we are in relation to him,
then God does the work of changing us into real people, people of real
substance, people of God, people who don't have to get angry all the time.
This takes time and it takes surrender on our part, but it
can happen. God will change us as we allow him to.
God can make our chronic anger something
that we no longer need. That's real freedom.
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