BP 163
Anger is a tricky emotion. It can come from heaven or hell. It can kill others and it can kill you. I’m not talking about anger from others, but your anger. Your own anger can kill you, and not just bodily but from the inside out. Every day people die before their time because their emotions eat away at their souls (and then leak out and do further damage to their bodies). How many people experience high blood pressure, heart rhythm abnormalities, and even stroke from anger that leaks out from the soul through the body?
Bitterness, hatred, rage, and unforgiveness accompanied by resentment compromise both the physical and the psychological-relational heart. Our hearts were created for relationship, but those relationships can be annihilated by an anger that burns bridges.
Do you remember what the Holy Spirit instructed Paul to write in Ephesians 4? “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil . . . Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” It sounds like God wants us to know that not being angry can be sinful but also that being angry can lead to sin.
I’m sure most of us know how anger can lead to sin, but how many of us understand that not being angry can lead to sin? That’s right, denying or suppressing our anger can be sinful. So, if you think that striving to be like Jesus is to never be angry, think again.
If we are angry and try to hide it, it might be an act of sin against yourself and God and the other person. God calls us to speak truth. God’s word tells us to speak the truth in love. Does “in love” mean without anger? Not always. Anger and love are not necessarily contradictory or mutually exclusive. They often co-occur. In fact, sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to speak the truth in loving anger. Some of our most heart-felt prayers to God may even be spoken in anger.
Just check out Psalm 88:13ff where the Psalmist writes:
“But I, O LORD, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O LORD, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.”
(In the NIV, the last line reads, “Darkness is my closest friend”. In the original Hebrew text, it literally reads, “My closest friend is darkness.” “Darkness” is the final word in this psalm!)
The emotions evident in this honest psalm appear to be anguish, fear, and anger. The Psalmist even sounds like he is accusing God of abandoning him! Interestingly, God allows this man’s angry and anguishing psalm to forever be preserved in His Book. Why?
Tim Keller says that God allows this psalm to be in His Psalter because “it is a prayer.” He says that God knows how desperate men and women speak/pray. God would rather have one of his saints speak the truth in anger than hide it behind pseudo godliness or a Pharisaic spirit.
God knows that hiding emotions like fear and anger is the practice of emotional dishonesty. Form with no true content. God wants us to be honest. He wants us to speak the truth in . . . niceness? No, in love. Niceness borders on self-sufficiency, not God-sufficiency. Crying out to God even in anguish and anger is honest and leads to reliance on God.
Do you recall what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:8ff? “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
Do you think Paul and his fellow believers may have felt some anger in their despair? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. We practice intimacy with God and others when we move toward them with our honest emotions even when anger may be present. On the contrary, we practice hiding, dishonesty, and distancing when we do not share our emotions. (Of course, it is always wise for us to decide which battles to fight or which emotions we believe will be constructive to share with others. And our goal is not to vent but to cultivate relational intimacy.)
The primary point of this post is to look at one way that believers in Jesus do not express anger well, namely, by being passive aggressive. VeryWellMind discusses the definition and manifestation of passive aggressive anger. This newsletter says, “Passive-aggressive behavior is defined as behavior that is seemingly innocuous, accidental, or neutral but that indirectly displays an unconscious aggressive motive. People who are passive-aggressive are indirectly aggressive rather than being directly aggressive. For instance, passive-aggressive behavior can appear in the form of resistance to another person’s requests by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubbornly.
“Someone who is passive-aggressive often lets others take control while someone who is aggressive is more confrontational or directly forceful. So, someone who is passive-aggressive exerts their control over situations in a less direct or recognizable way.”
According to VeryWellMind, people might be demonstrating passive aggressive behavior when they:
- “Ghost” you, or seemingly disappear
- Give you a backhanded compliment (“I saw you did the dishes. I was surprised.”)
- Give you the silent treatment
- Indirectly refuse your request (not tell you no, but also not do what you’ve asked)
- Make excuses rather than say what is on their mind
- Procrastinate when you’ve asked them to do something
- Respond to your requests with sarcasm or subtle digs
Instead of being open, honest, and direct, passive aggressive individuals partially or totally swallow their anger only to have it leak out in passive ways. Maybe they don’t want to be directly angry because they fear the angry response of the other person, or they were taught by an emotionally unpredictable adult that they were never supposed to be angry, or they decided that those around them didn’t deserve to see their vulnerable emotions and so they made a vow to forever hide them.
Take a young woman named Jazz, for example. She did not realize it for years because passive aggressive anger is often subconscious, but in her twenties, she came to see that she had not been living her life to be the person God had made her to be. Not at all. Instead, she had been living her life to not be like her father. Her father had not abused her physically or sexually, but as a way to deal with his own anxiety and shame, he had controlled those around him including his wife and children through over scrupulous religiosity and countless rules around manners at the table, the clothes they wore, and presenting a perfect public image.
Because of her anger toward her controlling father, most of Jazz’ energy was directed toward passively resisting her father. She channeled her anger toward him by subconsciously trying to be the opposite of him. She never was directly angry with him, but in the secret world of her heart, anger smoldered and manifested in constant passive disobedience.
Since her father professed to be a Christian, Jazz walked away from God and church at the age of sixteen as a passive aggressive expression of her anger. Because her father wanted her to attend a Christian college, Jazz matriculated at a secular university. She also drank to access, did drugs, and slept around because her father repeatedly insisted that she not do these things. In short, Jazz lived to be angry with her father in passive ways. It consumed her.
As is always true with passive aggressiveness, Jazz hurt herself the most by practicing this indirect expression of anger. Yes, she may have hurt and frustrated her father but at the high cost of defying who she was just to be who he wasn’t.
So, what is the application of this blogpost?
Be angry—in healthy ways. Do not go to the two extremes of anger. One extreme is to entirely swallow anger but then have it leak out in unhealthy ways like Jazz’ passive aggressiveness. The other extreme is to vent anger on a whim like an unpredictable volcano. If you remember from other posts on this blogsite, the two extremes of Leakage and the Volcano are signs that you are not using The Well to healthily move toward others but instead move against them (volcano) or move away from them (leak).
So, take an inventory and see if you are being passive with your anger instead of direct. You will live longer if you own your anger and then express it in ways that invite relationship instead of in a manner that either burns the bridge of loving intimacy or simply walks away from it. Passive aggressive anger seems to focus more on blaming others than taking responsibility for one’s own anger. It sees others as being controlling and then defies them with seemingly innocent resistance. Learn how to maturely move toward people with an honest expression of your heart rather than passively ignoring the other person or simply being a chronic contrarian with God and other people.
Yes, it might be easier to be passive and non-direct with your anger. But passive anger that sits in your stomach and stresses your heart could kill you after many years–and you might die alone. Who wants to be with someone who always resists them?
So, learn how to be more like Jesus even in your anger.
“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. [Passive aggressive anger?] Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you” ~ Matthew 21:28ff
