A Year-Long Exploration of the Sermon on the Mount: Week 16

Chapter 16 – Anger

 

Anger. There sure is a lot of anger in the world today. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but it feels like people are getting angrier as time marches on. Does anyone else feel that?

 

Certainly, there are reasons to be angry. God tasked us as human beings to care for the world and we have practically destroyed it. We fill the air with pollution. We kill each other, whether through war or murder. We allow people to starve by claiming there isn’t enough food in the world for everyone. We look the other way as the number of people without a permanent address increase daily. Looking around at what we have done to ourselves, we should be angry. Anger is what stirs action. Anger is what brings forth passion.

 

But the anger that Jesus speaks about in Matthew 5:21-22 is not the anger that propels forward social justice matters. No, it is the anger that breeds contempt for another person. There is nothing wrong with feeling angry. It is a natural human emotion, and one that if you push down and hide away only gets worse. But when anger festers, or when you choose to be angry at someone indefinitely, making the decision not to talk things through and work pat the anger, that’s when it might turn to contempt.

 

As Dallas Willard says, “The intent and the effect of contempt is always to exclude someone, push them away, leave them out and isolated…Contemptuous actions and attitudes are a knife in the heart that permanently harms and mutilates peoples’ souls.” (p. 95-96) I have experienced a lot of instances throughout my life where I was excluded from events. Whether on purpose or not, I’ll never know. But there are two times in particular that have stuck in my mind for a very long time and will likely remain there as part of my core memories. (Cue characters from Inside Out.)

 

I had a group of high school friends who went our separate ways after high school but continued to meet up at least once a year, usually because our one friend who had moved to Australia had come to visit their family back here in Canada. One year, I was scrolling Facebook and saw a post where all of them had gotten together, but no one had invited me. I’ll never know what happened and I never got the courage to ask.

 

At one time, I was part of a pipes and drums band where I thought we were all friends. I guess I wasn’t actually considered a friend because they literally planned a Barbecue weekend with me sitting at the table where the host asked each person individually to come, except for me. Again, I don’t know the reasons for this, although I have my guesses.

 

Was there anger involved in these stories? I don’t know. But there was certainly contempt which led to exclusion isolation, and a permanent harm to my soul. This is what Jesus calls us to avoid. Rather than be angry with our siblings in Christ, talk things through. Maybe there was an injustice done that can be rectified. Maybe there were feelings hurt that could be mended with an apology. But to hold a person in anger and contempt leads to harm and the ending of friendships.