Do You Have A Problem With Anger?

A recent news story showed a video of two university debate coaches in a heated, out-of-control shouting match with each other. Each hurled profanity at the other and one even dropped his pants to display the backside of his underwear toward the other coach. This is, of course, no way for college students to learn the proper way to debate.

When I was in college, we were taught that if one of the debaters became angry during a debate – that person lost the debate.  Anger prevents rational argument.  Logic is hijacked by emotion.

Proverbs teaches us that, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” (14:29) The result of uncontrolled anger is bitterness, broken relationships, and misery.  The best time in the world to keep your mouth closed is when you are angry.  Someone once said that, “Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.”

We not only hurt others in the furnace of our anger, but we too are burned and scarred.  If you quickly anger over small things, it is because there is so little of the peace of God dwelling within you.  God’s peace does not share the room with a quick temper.  Thus an angry person is truly most angry with himself.  Thomas a’ Kempis gives this unique insight into the mind of an angry person:

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”