Be Angry But Don't Sin

II. The backstab approach

However, think about this for a minute. If you had one to choose from, who would it be? Would it be someone who is bluntly irritating but straight forward with you? Or would you rather have someone who is nicer than punch but then goes and stabs you in the back? Wouldn’t most of us tend to prefer the first? Yet how many of us tend to BE the second? Does your family have a pet sister in law or brother in law with glaring deficiencies that everyone likes to talk about? I bet you do. I bet most of you also have a pet worker that tends to irritate everyone, and so everyone talks about him.

Why do we do this so often? Sometimes it’s simply about revenge. Sometimes it’s due to cowardice. Sometimes it’s due to jealousy. Remember Joseph and Potiphar’s wife? She was angry with him because he denied to sleep with her. So how could she get back? With her tongue! James says in chapter 3:8, “no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” If we don’t have the courage to tell someone face to face what we have wrong with them, we can get them back by simply telling others.

If you think about it, some of the first slander involve the Garden of Eden. Adam badmouthed Eve to take the heat off of himself. “The woman YOU gave me, she gave me some fruit and I ate it.” As if Adam just happened to be walking by and ended up duped by this tricky woman. When the heat is on us, we tend to point the finger on other people. You could see a blatant example of this politically after Hurricane Katrina. The Democrats blamed Bush for not responding quickly enough on the Federal level. The Republicans blamed the Democrats not preparing for it on the local level. They both add innuendos about each other to take the heat off of themselves and excuse themselves. We do the same. We say, “I would be more giving, but my wife spends too much money.” “I would be more involved, but my husband won’t let me out of the house.” Instead of being truthful that we are selfish or that we just don’t want to do something, we add deceit into the picture so we don’t look so bad.

A part of it is also just a sense of frustration and maybe our desire to get some justice out of the matter. If John isn’t doing his job, and I am having to cover for him, how am I going to respond? I’ll cover for him, but I’m going to let every person in this office know that I’m not happy about it. I’m going to see some justice on John by making sure that he doesn’t get away with his laziness. I’ve got to expose his laziness so everyone can see what a louse he really is and what a hard worker I am. Sure, I might exaggerate it a little, but he deserves it for what he’s making me do.

However you justify it - even when you speak the TRUTH about somebody behind their back - that’s still slander when you are doing it simply to get back at them. Paul says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. You cannot justify telling the truth about someone just because they made you mad. Get rid of it, Paul says. Knock it off. Why? Paul says, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” How would you like to live with someone who constantly complained about other people and even went so far as to distort the truth about them? Imagine if you KNEW the whole time that this person who was so irate with everyone else had plenty of weaknesses that made you angry as well. That’s how the Holy Spirit feels - who lives in you through your baptism. He hears every lie and every truth you speak. He knows why you say what you say. As you get angry at other people for their deficiencies, deep inside He knows how lazy you are. He knows how self righteous and arrogant you are. He knows by all rights you have no right to be so angry with other people when they wrong you and insult you. It saddens Him to have to live with that kind of an attitude day in and day out. Learn to let it go. Get rid of it. It isn’t going to do you any good to hold onto every injustice against you and proceed to tell other people about it. That will only make you think about it more. What is worse is that So don’t try the backstab approach to anger.