The angry thread

 “That’s my secret Cap’. I’m always angry.” - The Hulk, The Avengers

There's a great scene in The Avengers where a massive army of bad guys and all their destructive stuff is coming to destroy everything and Bruce Banner shows up as, well Bruce Banner.  Captain America and the other Avengers are ready for him to "suit up" and encourage him to "get angry" and he turns and says, "That's my secret Cap'. I'm always angry." 

And turns into the Hulk just in time to do some serious business. It's finally, actually a moment when everyone wants him to be angry and we find out he always is...

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Scrolling through old journals, drafts of ideas/posts/emails, handwritten and online, over the past few weeks - looking for wisdom, patterns, and such - as the Spirit has been taking me on a personal tour of me, showing me what I’ve been asking to see…

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24)

The Spirit does not disappoint. Kind of like the character in The Shack when he gets to see what he’s made of when given the opportunity. You ask for it, you got it.

I know we’re 100% forgiven and God does not hold our sin against anymore - this isn’t that kind of “search me Oh Lord”, as it were.  

This is a “I know where I stand with you and that we’re good. Now, if it’s helpful, show me what I need to see about me so I can trust and depend on you more” kind of thing.

There has been a lot of revelation! It’s quite amazing. And it takes a while to digest and process a lot of it - the shock of my own intensity when I allowed myself to be brutally honest - the immature thinking I would revel in, etc - God usually seems to bring things up when it’s the right time and when we need it, even if we think “we’re not ready”.

A lot of it has been walking through relatively recent interactions with people and even more has been walking through even earlier times; all the way back to my “growing up years” and family history.  Some profound information - some of which I’ve seen before, but have new insights in this new and different light. 

It’s been a whole gamut of things from how we learned to interact with each other, how we learned to see life and people, how we learned to feel and hold or express emotion, and a lot more.

I can clearly see threads running through from childhood, through the decades, and right into my heart and mind today - with some even dangling a little out into an imagined future.

I’ll unpack some of those in the times ahead as they make sense with organizing my thoughts about deconstruction and rebuilding, but for now it’s been unpacking learned assumptions, learned expectations, and emotions - especially anger.

In Ephesians 4, Paul says “In your anger don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down while you’re angry”.

Anger was one of those things that we heard a lesson on occasionally during a Bible class or maybe a sermon. 

The gist of any message or class was typically “get over it - don’t be angry”. On a rare occasion, I remember hearing some practical tips about forgiveness and “letting go of things” so that you’re not carrying a burden around, but generally speaking it was “we’re all really uncomfortable around people who are angry, so don’t be angry”.

It’s interesting if you read through all of the Bible to see how many times different people really got angry. Even Jesus. 

In the Old Testament, God was pretty open about his anger burning against people. Jesus was pretty incensed at the religious leaders for keeping people away from knowing God.

Looking back over my personal experience in churches - from way back and all the way through - there seemed to be no room for it in the life of churches or believers or people in general - like it’s all squelched. 

It was always okay to be “righteously angry” about some good cause or reason. Often that meant that if the person giving a talk about something was angry about it, that it was okay to be angry it for everyone else too.

No one really talked about processing your feelings by getting the facts (if there are any) out in the open about the thing that is making you angry and dealing with the actual issues, problems, or situations.

Rarely did you get someone to say, “Tell me what’s going on” and help you problem solve and move on to next things, even if next things weren’t positive and actually included learning to accept hard truths or difficult situations. 

I’m beginning to see that change in a few areas of culture, and that’s a positive thing - hopefully that will continue as the culture swings from one style of interacting to another.

In the meantime, it seems that many people in real, day to day life, are afraid to be angry - afraid to let it be known to others that they are angry for fear of looking crazy, or for fear of making people fearful.  

Sure, there are some who always seem angry and on the attack - often that is a survival skill they’ve picked up to defend themselves and to avoid being let down - and, to me, that’s almost a separate kind of thing.

We’ve probably all seen someone lose their temper - we see it in politics, in sports, in social media debates, etc. - and it often gets a rise out of us - usually we’re either angry with them or angry at them, depending on the topic.  

We’re not sure what to do with it except get together with others we think might be angry about stuff that we’re also angry about.  Or just stuff it down.

And I’ve seen a lot of people not be able to articulate what they’re feeling because they feel like it’s selfish to be angry, and ultimately, sad, about something. 

I think it’s why Paul said not to sin in your anger - knowing full well that we are going to be angry at things occasionally, righteous things and very unrighteous things.

Paul was very ticked off a few times. He spoke harshly about Peter, James, and John. He split company with Barnabas and wouldn’t work with him anymore because of a dispute about a coworker. 

Anger is a normal response to times when you feel as if something is wrong, unfair, unjust, hurtful, etc.

And behind that anger is often a sadness - a sadness that things didn’t turn out like you’d hoped or wished or had been told it would be.

Anger can be like the tide - it comes and goes. I have forgiven lots of people for things and still get angry about those things occasionally and have to bring my brain back around and process things again - like when you run into people that bring things up again or tell you new stories that remind you of past things and the anger comes all up inside of you again.  It's exhausting and you get tired of being angry.

And with practice, over time, you can see the extremes dampening, your response time changing, and then, maybe a time when you have no response or maybe even a “wow, I've come a long way since then.”

I remember some of my earlier years when my dad was a bit off his rocker and caused a great deal of hell for us. I would stew and seethe over situations, ruminate the feelings, and endlessly speculate about how things could have been and should have been different. 

I think it was somewhere in the mid-20’s when I realized I wasn’t mad about it anymore, just irritated. By my 30’s/40’s it was replaced with a little bit of empathy and compassion for my dad as I learned about the hell he grew up with/in.

Time and perspective can make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it helps.

So, learning what to do practically with those feelings and emotions is a re-learning for me with God‘s Spirit at this different stage of life.

The discipline of working through those things and processing the past together with the present is very important, for me. Might not be as important for others, but I find it useful.

It's a healthy reminder of how I contributed to and/or contribute to the frustration and anger of others in my life and I can and should own my part of those kinds of dynamics and be at peace with the awkward social dance that we all do.

Opening photo albums from 50 years ago or a journal from a year ago used to be a minefield - they’re still surprising on occasion - and now they’re becoming more a garden of grace as time passes, perspective changes, and the Spirit guides.

Sure, I still get ticked off occasionally about things and don’t agree with how some things in life go or went - I don’t think the absence of anger is healthy nor does denying reality or excusing wrongs bring good growth in the long run - but God can and does that whole Romans 8:28 thing for sure.

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Coming at some point - sitcoms and expectations - how Happy Days planted the idea that things will always work out and then jumped the shark