Anger and Forgiveness

Anger / Forgiveness

Perhaps the greatest challenge of our human journey is to endure the shortcomings or others - especially when those failings injure us physically, mentally, or emotionally. There is an instinctive component of our nature which is defensive, or at least, seeks self-preservation. We eat because it is essential to our survival. We clothe and shelter ourselves to avoid the threats of nature that would harm us. We also learn how to respond to interpersonal threats to our survival. We learn not to trust people who are reckless with our safety. We avoid people who are indifferent or injurious to our emotional and mental needs. These are wise and reasonable reactions. But, since we are social animals, we can never completely isolate ourselves from relationships with one another. When those relationships harm us we, our internal sense of righteousness (or simply survival) responds with anger.

Anger is a complicated emotion. Rather than setting us free from people that have harmed us, it actually enslaves us. As rational as our anger at someone may be (a logical response to their behavior), it has historically been proven to be one of the greatest sources of irrational behavior the world has ever seen. For example, the 20th Century was marked by the unparalleled brutality of genocide. Although, he may simply have just been insane, Adolph Hitler's biographies reveal that his anger toward his abusive father lay at the source of his unbridled misanthropy. Although Hitler is an example in the extreme, even a faint shadow of this ill-treatment of our fellow man is to be energetically avoided. We have to come to a state of mental health where anger does not govern, or even influence, our thoughts and actions. Given the certainty of being offended by others, the only way we are able to arrive at this blissful condition is by a personal response to offense other than anger. That response is called forgiveness and it is, at once the most difficult and the noblest response available to us.

To illustrate this challenge to face offense with forgiveness and not anger, I share a real situation that a friend brought to my attention.

It is almost a generic problem. You can substitute unfaithfulness with lying, physical abuse, abandonment. There are myriad ways to offend one another, but the universal response is almost always anger which winds up causing more damage to us than to the one at whom we are angry. We must learn to overcome the impulse toward anger. To be sure, it may be the toughest thing we'll ever have to learn.

Lisa does not have an anger problem. She has a forgiveness problem.

Anger is a symptom of having unresolved conflict, usually as a result of some specific offense for which the person is angry. Lisa is understandably offended by her husband's behavior. Infidelity is perhaps the cruelest cut of all. Lisa has grounds on a human level to be angry at her husband, but she does not have godly permission. Believing that is fundamental to moving ahead to health. There is no human offense which I can find as an excuse to harbor anger toward another person. More importantly, there is no human offense which we are not called to forgive! (See Matthew 5.38-45, Matthew 18.21-22, Matthew 6.12-15, II Corinthians 2.5-10, Ephesians 4.32, Colossians 3.12-13) Until there is forgiveness, the offended one will continually plead her case - constantly accusing, trying, condemning, and punishing the guilty party in an emotional courtroom that never adjourns. As long as the crime goes unpunished, our human sense of justice is not well served.

But that is precisely the catch, "our human sense". Our own redemption in Christ demands that we forsake our human sensitivities and "put on Christ" - asking what would Jesus do and doing it! I am always reminded that our sense of righteous indignation is pathetic compared to what Christ did: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) In God's timeless reality, while Christ was dying on the cross I was doing the very thing for which I need His forgiveness for!!!! Astounding!!!! And humbling, if not altogether humiliating!

I have learned that the great barrier to forgiveness is that forgiveness means the crime goes unpunished. That is the greatest injustice we can conceive of. But still, that is our Christian "obedience of faith." I believe then that it is correct to say that to refuse to forgive is an act of unfaithfulness to Christ and it should cause us all to pause in thought, if not repentance.

Why does God demand that we forgive? Is it just to toughen us up or to show us how forgiving He is? Not at all. In God's forgiveness we learn the secret to our own ability to forgive - it is in our best interest! "I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins." (Isaiah 43:25)

God forgives, not for our sake, but for His! He forgives us so that we can be restored to the praise-relationship He desires for us. If He didn't forgive, He'd have an empty heaven and that just won't suit God. On an earthly level, if we don't forgive one another, we'll have no playmates, no friends, no spouses - no relationships whatsoever since everyone has or will offend us in some way. Often, because of the offense, we just can't find it in us to erase the sin of others. But, we are the ones who truly suffer the punishment. We spend our days in chains in the dungeon of anger - moss growing on our dying soul because we refuse to leave the accused behind, untended and untortured for their crime. We are the ones who need to be set free - FOR OWN SAKES. Forgiving means walking away from the scene of the crime and denying Satan the privilege of torturing us with constantly retrying the offense.

I would tell Lisa that to be free from anger she needs to be free of the harm her husband did to her. Perhaps she should write her husband a dismissal of her case against him (whether he is repentant or not). I know such a simple gesture is more easily said than done, but either Lisa is going to wear herself out banging the gavel and screaming guilty or she is going to have to walk out of that emotional courtroom and get on with her life. Either way, the deed is done. Now it is simply a matter of how much control Lisa is going to let anger have over her life. Forgiveness at this level is the hardest thing to imagine, let alone to do. Without the power of Christ stimulating such forgiveness, there is no prospect of freedom from the anger. The only roadblock I ever see to this situation is the offended party not wanting to let the other person "get away with it." In that case, no one is free - everyone is in bondage.

I have personally been there and I personally know the bondage that I felt until I let it go "for my own sake." Darwin instructed us that "survival of the fittest" was a rule of nature. I think he was right in that to survive we must find a way to be fit - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. But Darwin's survival theory is quite different from God's. Rather than annihilating one another, God calls us to love one another. God's way is more difficult, but I have offended so many in my life, Darwin would have my head on a platter in a split second. The more I think about it, I like God's plan, even if it is far more difficult to accomplish.

Christian love is the most difficult love to express. It begins with acknowledging that others will offend us and that we agree - in advance - to forgive any and all wrongs. Marriage is the most dangerous arena for this love. Day in, day out, living with another person accentuates the diversity of style and opinion that make us unique. Our self-centeredness ensures that our "uniqueness" will frequently cause pain to others. To enter into and to survive in marriage necessitates an attitude of forgiveness that arches over any other motive or hope we place in that God-invented institution.