I know many of you have seen the images on the news about what happened at Virginia Tech this past week. As I was watching, I thought, this really puts what we talk about last week to the test. Last week we started our series on the book of James and we looked at how we react to trials, suffering, pain and temptations.
It came home for me even more when I found out that one of my cousins who goes to college in Baltimore, that she went to high school with one of the girls who was shot. It kind of makes you stop and as I thought about it this week, for me it confirmed what we read last week at the beginning of James 1. For many people, the question comes up of whether something like shakes your faith. How can this happen? For me, it confirms even more my need for faith and for God to be a part of my world. Because as we go through these moments, it is difficult to get through them, they hurt, but we are able to see a purpose behind the pain, like we talked about last week. I would encourage you, whether you were here last week or not to go back and listen to our podcast, but to also spend some time in James 1 this week and ask God, how does this apply to what has happened this past week.
Before we move on, why don’t we pray for those at Virginia Tech, their families, and for the rest of our morning.
PRAY
Have you ever had someone who knew how to push your buttons? Sometimes it feels like everyday, you were getting mad at them? Maybe it is a friend, a spouse, a child, a co-worker, a boss.
Have you ever been late for a meeting, not known where your keys were and you flipped out? Have you ever been running behind and you are driving like a maniac? Swerving in and out, tailgating (or drafting if you are nascar fan).
This past week, I wasn’t using our laptop and Katie came in and asked if she could use it. Our battery was running low, and when she moved it, the plug came out and the computer turned off. I flipped out, I was so mad. Do you know how much time it takes a computer to turn on?
Maybe you were driving here today and someone in front of you was taking forever. The nerve, don’t they know that you are going to church?
Maybe you have a family member that was taking forever to get ready this morning. The nerve. And you flipped out. I remember when I was in high school I would stay out late on Saturday night and I did not want to get up and go to church in the morning. My mom would sit out in the car honking the horn waiting for me.
Have you ever had a boss that always seemed to wait til the last minute to give you an assignment? What about a boss or a co-worker who took credit for your work? How does that make you feel?
I got this e-mail this past week, you may have received it from someone that has you on their “forward everything to” list. That is something that makes me mad. Now everyone is going to put me on their list.
This is what it said: An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.
The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.
He took her to the police station where she was
searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.
He said, "I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up
behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, **and cussing at him. "I noticed the Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ’What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ’Follow Me to Sunday-School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."
We laugh, but a lot of times that is us.
Here are some interesting statistics on anger:
• 45% of us regularly lose our temper at work
• 64% of people working in an office have had office rage.
• 38% of men are unhappy at work.
• 27% of nurses have been attacked at work.
• Up to 60% of all absences from work are caused by stress.
• 33% of Americans are not on speaking terms with their neighbors.
• 1 in 20 of us has had a fight with the person living next door.
• British airlines reported 1,486 significant or serious acts of air rage in a year, a 59% increase over the previous year.
• The UK has the second-worst road rage in the world, after South Africa. Followed by the US.
• More than 80% of drivers say they have been involved in road rage incidents; 25% have committed an act of road rage themselves.
• 71% of internet users admit to having suffered net rage. (whatever that is)
• 50% of us have reacted to computer problems by hitting our PC, hurling parts of it around, screaming or abusing our colleagues.
• 27% of managers in the construction industry have sought medical help for stress, anxiety or depression.
• More than one third of Americans are losing sleep from anxiety.
• 1 in 7 adults have sought medical treatment for stress.
• Depression and anxiety have overtaken physical ailments as the chief cause of long-term sickness.
Obviously, I think all of us would agree that anger is something that a lot of us deal with. Some of you are thinking of the person you are going to give this message to, but you probably need this to.
A lot of times, people think when someone gets up to speak that they have figured out the problem and they are talking about what things work for them. I have learned some things about anger, but on a daily basis this is something I struggle with.
The day after I finished writing this message, we went to pick up pizza and a movie. We got to the pizza place, we had called ahead. They gave us the wrong pizza. Then we got to blockbuster, there were 3 people behind the counter, but only one person was working. I stood there thinking, God, this is because I wrote a message on anger isn’t it?
Here is something that I love about the bible, it talks about things like anger. If you have your bibles, you can open them to the book of James. We are in a series right now that is going through the book of James.
So that all of us are on the same page, let me give you a little background. James was written by the brother of Jesus, so on the topic of anger, I bet he has a lot of experience. If you think about the hassle of living in the same house as someone like Jesus, who the Bible describes as perfect in every way. That had to be annoying at different times.
Another thing to keep in mind is that he is writing Christians that are not acting like Christians. The way they are living their lives is exactly like everyone else in the world. James was the first book written in the New Testament. This is why this is interesting, there are 400 years between the Old & New Testament. James was written 15 years after Jesus rose from the dead, so this is the first thing that God says to his followers after 400 years of silence, which makes James not more important than other books, but makes us take notice of what it says.
This is what it says in James 1, verse 19: 19Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires. 21Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Look at what it says, be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. As men, this is almost impossible right. What do women always complain about, they don’t listen, they just talk and want to solve everything. Have you ever had a girl tell you, I don’t need you to solve this, just listen? You see, it is biblical, listen to her.
So why would God tell us to be quick to listen and slow to speak? It is actually a smart idea. How many times have you put your foot in your mouth and you had to go back and apologize to someone? After the computer incident, I had to apologize, it was ridiculous.
Think about all the things that made you mad this past week. What do they all have in common? Me. So often, we can’t get past ourselves to see the other person.
The great theologian Dr. Phil said this, “Stop thinking the world revolves around you. Is the urgency you feel as strong as you think? A false sense of urgency stems from self-importance. Why should things have to be the way you want them? When you think the whole world revolves around you, then everything takes on gargantuan importance.”
Let’s talk about anger on a practical level though. What do you do when someone hurts you again and again? Maybe you have a family member or friend who constantly breaks promises, what do you do? Katie and I had this happen in our lives. My first reaction was to make a promise to this person and then break it at the last minute so they would know how it felt. Would that do any good? No, because I would feel terrible about a minute after I did it.
What about when someone cuts you off, what is our first reaction? If I speed up, I can swerve in front of them and cut them off. Or we tail them.
What about when you are at the grocery store and a clerk says she is open and someone who just walked up hops in her line, in front of you. I can see the steam right now, that’s happened already. We want to say, “butt-er, she butt in line, she’s a butt-er.”
One thing James doesn’t say is don’t ever become angry. He says be slow to anger. So obviously there is a time when anger is okay. When can you get angry?
One author (Daniel M. Doriani) put it like this, “There is such a thing as righteous indignation, but our anger is rarely righteous. On the one hand, we often become indignant about trivial things: a pokey driver making us late for an appointment; a string of poorly synchronized traffic lights, wasting our time; an unskilled referee wounding our favorite team with a bad call. Such things stir our wrath. On the other hand, we ignore true injustice, especially if it occurs far away and falls upon strangers. Sadly, our anger is often burdened with “self-importance, self assertion, intolerance, and stubbornness.”
The times we should get angry is at injustice, when people wrong other people. When people are living outside of what God wants for them. That should break our heart and make us want to act.
What about when someone continues to make you mad? Continues to hurt you, someone who knows which buttons to push, and might seem like they enjoy pushing those buttons.
There is a principle, that is very hard to live with, but a reality. We cannot control how people interact in our world, or even wreck our world. We can’t control what they do, only what we do.
For Katie and I, we had to say. Everytime this happens, it hurts. It makes you want to cry, but you can’t act back to them the same way. You can’t control what they do. You can talk to them, but if it continues, you can only control what you do.
It is important to point out, while anger is not prohibited, it is not recommended. Because James says in verse 20: 20for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.
When we get angry, we miss out on what God wants for us. We miss out on what God wants to do in our lives. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather have what God wants me to have, than getting tied up in being angry.
But how do you get past anger? How do you live an anger-free life? Is that possible? I think the answer lies in the next verse, in verse 22: 22But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Here is the answer, let the word of God, the scriptures live in you. Spend time in them, spend time with God. By spending time with God, you start to see the world from his point of view, and when you do that, you have to do something about it.
I have interacted with a lot of different Christians in my life. Some of the angriest Christians I have ever met have been the ones who knew the most about the Bible, who knew more Bible trivia than most Christians. The problem is, they knew the Bible, they knew about God. But they didn’t do anything about it, they didn’t live it out. They sponged up so much to the point, that they weren’t doing any good. They weren’t releasing the things knew about God. They were using their gifts in church, they weren’t serving their community.
You see, when you have a servant attitude and see people from God’s perspective, it is really tough to get mad at them. When our friends and family members who don’t know God, when that fact begins to break our hearts, it is tough to get mad at them.
When the reality of poverty begins to break our hearts, it is tough to get mad at the people we see at intersections asking for money or selling newspapers.
James says that if we only hear the word, but don’t do anything about it, we are like someone who looks at themselves in the mirror and then forgets what they look like. We have all seen that person that seemed to look at themselves in the mirror every 5 seconds, like that hair moved. Or maybe, I look better this time around.
When we take what we know about God and live it out, it helps us to not forget what the Bible says. Next week, as we go to Displace Me, it will be a reminder of what the Bible says about the poor and materialism.
This is why we say we want to be a community that is known by love. Everyone in our world gets angry at things, this is an area where people can see something different in us. So often, people describe Christians and churches at places with angry people, love is not something that tops the list.
That is why Jesus always talks about Christians needing to be servants. Putting others before themselves. It is hard to get mad at people you are serving. Richard Foster said, “When you have decided to make yourself a servant, it is impossible for someone to make you feel like a servant.” In the same way, deciding to live a life free of anger is a conscious decision. It is something we decide. This person may hurt me again, but I am not going to get angry about it.
It is interesting that in verse 25 James says: 25But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
I think the word law is an interesting choice of words here. Often, when we think about laws we think about boundaries, things that keep us inside things, away from things. One historian (David P. Nystrom) put it this way, “For James and Jesus, when they talk about the ‘perfect law’ they are describing the freedom that comes from following the law of God.” There is freedom when we are slow to speak, quick to listen, and slow to anger. There is freedom in that.
What is interesting in that clip is that often in our lives, we get angry about the dumbest things. I once saw a couple fight over the fact that he got plastic silverware that was too thin, it wasn’t thick enough. Obviously, they had things that had built up over time that something finally made it too much. Like when we flip out about our spouse because they get the toothpaste out wrong. On one talk show, that was the reason a couple got divorced.
This past week, I put my foot in my mouth. Over the past few years, the guy who was the best man in our wedding and I have been growing apart. He is single and lives in Pennsylvania, and so we are at different stages of life and live in different states. We have been friends since we were 5 and I just got frustrated by the fact that he didn’t return my calls, and on top of that, he is getting married in September and he hasn’t asked me to be in his wedding. So I manned up and sent him an e-mail, and told him I wasn’t going to make the trip to the east coast for his wedding.
Anyway, he calls back, and he’s mad. What do you mean, you aren’t coming? He was under the assumption he had asked me to be in the wedding. Now what would have happened, if a few years ago, I went to him and said, this is bothering, our friendship, where it is now, bothers me. Instead, I let it build and build to the point where I was actually thinking about not going to the wedding of a guy I have known since I was 5, a guy who has been a part of every major thing in my life and vice versa. We all do that. Right now, if someone does one more thing, you are going to flip out and the relationship might be over. It might be over the fact that the kitchen isn’t clean, a room is a mess, whatever. Usually, ridiculous things, because we let them build up. The old saying is true, “never cry over spilled milk.” Why? Because it is already spilled.
Over the last 10 years, I have done a lot of counseling with people. When they come into my office, I will ask why they came to see me. It got to the point, where I stopped taking notes when they started talking. They would ask, don’t you want to write this down? And I would say, no, because this isn’t your problem. It is something else. But I would say it really nice. Often, that is the reality when it comes to anger, we are mad at someone or about something, but we are really mad at someone else about something else. Are we tracking? So for me and Katie, when I get mad, it is probably not at her or even about what she did. With anger, to be free, we need to discover who am I really angry at and what am I angry about, and fix that problem.
Let me close with this. A lot of us connected with the video clip. We have been on both sides of that conversation. We have ripped into people, hurt them deeply because of our anger and we have been hurt deeply by the anger of someone else.
Maybe today, you need to pull someone aside, talk to a friend, a spouse, a child, a parent. Maybe you need to make a phone call and say, “I am sorry. I have hurt you deeply. I have said things I should not have said. I am sorry.”
Right now, many of us in this room are holding on to things that have happened years ago. Things we have carried around on our own. Things that make us angry everytime we think about them. In your program there is a blank piece of paper that I want you to pull out.
It may be a person, a situation, a place that something happened at. Here is what I want you to do. I want you to, if you are ready and you want to get rid of it. To write that person’s name, situation or place down. After you write it down say this to God, I am giving this to you, I don’t want to be controlled by this any longer, because that is what anger does, it controls us. Tell him, I want you to control this and my life.
Then, when you come up to take communion, before you take communion, I want you to rip up the paper and just throw it down in front of the table. Let’s make a pile and next week, when we come back in, none of it will be here. I think this is going to be a real freeing thing for a lot of us.
Let’s pray.
God, we want to be free of anger. Many of us are carrying out pain and hurt and anger that has built up for years. We want to be free. Give us the courage to apologize to the people we need to, and give us the courage to let go of the pain others have caused in our life.
