A young man arrived recently at my office in suicidal despair. Tim, a Christian, was distraught over a moral lapse he had promised himself would never happen. He and his fiancée, Elizabeth, had made a pact to avoid sexual involvement before marriage. But one night he stayed too late and the unthinkable happened. Consumed with guilt he continually and almost compulsively asked Elizabeth to forgive him.
Over time, she became increasingly concerned about his deepening depression. He simply could not forgive himself. He felt he’d failed God and his girlfriend, and had decided to punish himself by forsaking his most meaningful aspiration—to enter the ministry. He grieved over the apparent death of his dream:
How could I let this happen? I’ve ruined everything. My dreams are gone. My virginity is gone. My relationship with Elizabeth is forever affected. And, to make things worse, I am certain that God’s done with me. In fact, I’m done with me.”
The turning point in his therapy came when he had unearthed an emotion he’d denied to his own awareness. The emotion? Anger. He’d felt hurt and angry that Elizabeth hadn’t stopped him but had instead accepted his amorous advances. He knew he was responsible for his misbehavior but underneath he also blamed her. Recognizing his anger spurred a new round of guilt for such an “inappropriate” emotion. But, with encouragement, he sat down with Elizabeth and discussed his feelings with her, acknowledging that he was not trying to excuse his sin.
He was relieved when she understood and accepted his anger—she willingly shared responsibility for that evening’s events. Once purged of his secret anger he was finally able to forgive himself, and accept God’s forgiveness. His depression lifted and he once again began to live with hope and optimism.
Tim’s depression had been only partially related to his guilt about the sexual incident itself. When he also acknowledged and accepted the anger he harbored toward his fiancée, it was then that he was able to deal with his feelings appropriately.
Acknowledging anger
Of all our emotions, anger is usually the least well-managed. Some people lament their uncontrolled explosions, while others have trouble expressing their anger at all. Many are chronically depressed, unable to handle the reality of their angry feelings or to determine their source. Angry depressives may struggle with inappropriate, hair trigger rage, often aggravated by their gloomy pessimism about life itself. On the other hand, they may succumb to a stifling withdrawal that looks more like apathy. These are the extremes, between which people experience many variations. But neither extreme is an appropriate way to address life’s daily stresses.
Some people—particularly Christians who view anger as a sin—refuse to acknowledge their anger for fear of exposing their unworthiness. Others suppress anger in order to avoid uncomfortable conflict. However, both are dishonest—in fact, we often limit our anger to nonverbal expression so that we can deny that we feel that way. The worst part is that bottling up our anger denies us the only opportunity we have to use our feelings to discover the source of our emotional pain.
Communicating anger
In order to avoid the crippling effects of resentment, we must talk through our anger with the person toward whom we feel it. Yes, it’s possible to privately let go of some anger. But most often we harbor it and, as a result, it grows into an emotional cancer, eating away at our relationships, eventually destroying our chances for a happy, meaningful life.
I’m not advocating brutal disclosure without tact or kindness, nor any kind of retaliatory accusation. It’s just as dishonest as denial to verbally hammer someone to a pulp, claiming all the while that we’re “just telling the truth”. Instead, we’re talking about revealing our insides while also accepting the other’s right to believe and feel differently.
For some, such acceptance seems foolish and “defending their honor” seems like the nobler path. But the true ignobility of retaliation is revealed by its contrast to Christ’s example and Peter’s call that we follow it:
While being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to Him who judges righteously” – 1 Pet. 2:23
This is possible for us with the healing, character-building power of Christ.
The affects of avoiding anger
Returning injury for injury demeans the self and sacrifices one’s peace of mind. It is stooping to the same deficit of virtue as the other person. The resentful heart is primarily a path to unanticipated damage and chronic depression, similar to the aphorism,
Bitterness is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die,”
When we become hardened by a vindictive spirit, something life-sustaining dies within us. Our empathy and compassion fades—we neglect intimacy in our most meaningful relationships. We polarize our world into allies and enemies, most of whom are oblivious to the original injury. A resident defensiveness settles in, spelling a life of unhappiness, depression, and paranoia. The sin of internalized rage wraps its poisonous fingers around our own soul and squeezes out every drop of tenderness and kindness, leaving an empty shell of cynicism and cruelty. It has killed many marriages and friendships. Alas, humility is a hard sell to the overindulged and the terribly wronged, who mistakenly equate it with the philosophy of the doormat.
To “turn away from evil and do good” (1 Pet. 3:11) is always challenging, even under the best of circumstances. But God offers His sufficient love and supreme power to strengthen us to do what is foreign to our human nature. This offer is our wake-up call to rally the resources we have in Him and significantly change the ways we treat each other.
