Why Am I So Angry? James 1:19-22

Introduction

A number of years ago, someone close to me had a shadow show up on a scan. A sizable mass was discovered on one of her lungs, and she was going to require major surgery to remove it. But, for me, the real tragedy of it was always the cause. She didn’t smoke, but her husband, who had passed more than a decade earlier, had smoked in their home throughout their whole marriage. Years of secondhand smoke had now taken their toll on her, and she was paying the price for his vice. He had only wanted her to feel safe, I’m sure, but his actions had actually put her in harm.

My experience is that living in a house with an angry person is very similar to secondhand smoke. Years of walking on eggshells and trying to say the right thing at the right time in the right way and being on the receiving end of explosive outbursts or passive aggressive comments take their toll. Everyone else in the home pays the price for the vice of the angry. It creates insecurity instead of safety. It creates anxiety instead of rest. It makes your home into a war zone instead of a refuge.

One of the questions that I’ve been asked most over the last five years is: Why am I so angry? And, it’s a question that I’ve been primarily asked by dads and husbands. And, let me tell you the reason that you ask the question: Because you’re an honorable man that recognizes something isn’t right. Because you want your family to feel safe with you.

God’s Word

James can help us. He has a unique way of getting to the heart, and he helps us get to the heart of anger. He’s teaching us to be “doers of the word,” and he starts his explanation by presenting to us one of the hardest scenarios for us to live out what we believe — when we’re angry. So, let’s ask this hard question out loud and see what James says: “Why Am I So Angry?” (Headline)

We’re “out” of “control.”

James 1:19–20 “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

Exodus 34:6 “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,”

All week long the family has been looking forward to Friday night. The kids are out for the summer and dad has promised that everyone is going camping on Friday to celebrate. The kids wake up every morning asking if today is the day, and mom has been working all week to prepare for the trip at home while dad tries to get things wrapped up at work. Friday morning comes and everything that can go wrong has gone wrong at work, and by the time evening has come around dad regrets that he’s promised to take everyone camping. He comes home snippy and irritated, cussing under his breath. He loads 500 lbs of luggage, and they’re off. The kids fight in the backseat, and his mind is on all the stress at work. Mom is sharing with him all the plans for the trip they have, and he’s not interested in any of it. He arrives at the campsite to discover that the site is basically under water from the rain and filled with mud. He’s frustrated trying to set up everything in the mud, when his kids start bickering with one another again. And, he just explodes. Everyone gets quiet while he rants and raves and throws the tent stakes that are in his hand. Now, no one really wants to be there, and he spends the entire weekend feeling ashamed.

Scenes like this play out every day, don’t they? What’s happening for dad? He feels out of control, doesn’t he? Nothing is going right, and even though he had good intentions, worse keeps getting worse. So, feeling out of control, he loses control.

And, this is where James starts his discussion on being doers of the word. He’s saying that we should be in control of our responses though we’re not in control of our lives. We should be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” But, that doesn’t sound much like us, does it? We tend to hear what we want to hear so that we can say what we have to say.

God’s anger is “reasonable.”

Now, that description should sound familiar to us. It’s similar to the description that we’ve heard of God throughout the Big Story since we studied Exodus. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” God is not the red-faced maniac of heaven. He is not the dad that requires everyone to walk on eggshells. He’s not the irritable husband who can’t be satisfied. He’s not the mom who cuts with passive aggressive comments. He is patient, not frustrated. He is loving, not irritable. (“Love is not irritable.”) He is dependable, not explosive.

Our anger is “unpredictable.”

So, there’s a contrast being made when James says that the “anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” He’s contrasting how different man’s anger typically is from God’s anger. Man’s anger is unpredictable and spiteful, impatient and irritable. God’s anger is reasoned, rational, and longsuffering. In fact, many of the problems our children have with God is that they picture his wrath as being as irrational and manipulative as the anger they grew up around.

James’ primary concern here is not your intentions, but your behavior. That’s important. God’s doesn’t just want and believe (or intend) the right things. He does them. He’s a “doer of the word” himself. That’s what we saw in Jesus’ life, isn’t it? And so, he’s calling for us to evaluate, not our best intentions as we often do, but how we actually live by the life that God has called us to, not whether we intend to do the word, but whether we are actually “doers of the word.”

And, here’s what you find: More of us have an anger problem than we may realize. Anger isn’t just exploding like the dad did in the story I told earlier. It’s being unwilling to “listen.” It’s being quick “to speak.” It’s being quick to irritability so that your quick “to anger.”

You see, anger comes in all shapes and sizes. So, don’t be quick to point to your husband and wife. Take a long look at your own behavior. Some anger is loud and explosive. Some is quiet and seething. Some is vulgar and harsh. Some is spiteful and manipulative. Are you easily annoyed? That’s an anger problem. Anger is unique to the feelings among the Big 5. Out of depression, grief, anxiety, and lust, only anger has an “against-ness” quality. So to discern whether you have an anger problem, you need only to seek out where you have unjustly set yourself against others. Are you hypercritical of everyone? Are you never happy with the performance of your husband or your children or yourself? Are you easily annoyed? Have you pre-interpreted everything they do in a negative way so that they can’t win? Anger problem. Are you bitter? Do you store away little deposits of anger over time so that they smolder as bitterness and resentment beneath the surface? Anger problem. Do you frequently use insults or often find yourself in conflict? Anger problem.

And, this all boils down to the fact that you feel out of control, and feeling out of control, you lose control. So, we’re angry because…

We “want” “control.”

James 1:20 “for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

Why did the dad explode in a fit on the camping trip? Well, he wanted control. Outburst of anger are almost always in the pursuit of control. Because what happens next? Everyone gets quiet. They cow down. And, over time, just the threat of dad’s outbursts are enough to altar everyone’s behavior so that they tip toe around the landmine. Passive aggressive comments work the same way. So does the silent treatment. They’re manipulation tactics for the purpose of controlling the behavior of the people around you. They’re different tactics with the same angry root aimed to the same end — control.

That is, we’re attempting to assert God’s control without God’s sovereignty. And since we don’t have God’s sovereignty we have to step away from God’s character — “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” — in order to achieve it. So, for us to have some modicum of God’s sovereignty in our family forces us to look anything except like God’s character because we’re not God. Anger flows downhill from our God complex that convinces us that we should have control of all people and all circumstances so that our life is just so. And, it “does not produces the righteousness of God.”

We create a “new law.”

You see, we often replace God’s standards of “righteousness” for our own, and we’re seeking to create “the righteousness of Cody instead of the righteousness of God.” And, we’re attempting to do it by the force of our will and heat of our wrath. Anger is a moral judgment. Anger is when our heart rises up against something that we think is wrong. It’s a physical, emotional, and moral response. And, if we are walking filled with the Spirit, those things violate God’s Law ought to make us angry. We ought to be angry when we see an abused child. We ought to be angry when we see a man abandon his family. We ought to be angry when see someone hate someone else because of bigotry.

But, we usually aren’t angry because God’s law has been egregiously violated. We’re usually angry because our law has been violated. Most of the anger that we have toward our children and our wife and our boss and our coworkers are not because they have sinned greatly against it. It’s because they’ve broken our law, often without even knowing it, and now they receive our wrath.

You see, we create a new law that’s centered around ourselves, not God. Let met tell you what this has looked like for me. Every day, I like to go home and decompress for 30 minutes. And, it’s quite a fragile ecosystem that I have. I want to go home, and I want an ice-cold can of Coke. I want to sit in my spot on the far left of the couch by the end table. And, I want to watch Pardon the Interruption in peace. So, let me share with you legitimate examples of when I’ve been angry, and you can see how silly they are. I go home, and somebody else in the family had the audacity to drink the last coke. Or to not put another one in the fridge so that it’s cold. It frustrates me so bad! Then, someone else is in my spot on the couch. I feel completely naked and out-of-sorts on the other end. Frustrated. Then, someone actually wants to talk to me during my show. Frustrated pause/play over and over until finally I just blow. Has anyone sinned against me? Has anyone intended me harm? Has any injustice occurred? Nope. They’ve broken my law, and that’s why I’m angry.

We want “sovereignty.”

You’re angry at your boss, not because he hasn’t treated you according to the personnel policy, but because he hasn’t catered to your expectations. You’re angry with your parents, not because they’re harming you, but because they’re inconveniencing you. You’re angry because your law has been broken, and you want to control. You want to be sovereign. And, let me peel back this onion a little further. This is why you’re so angry with yourself. You’re angry with yourself because you’re not living up to the standards of your own law. You’re expecting a level of performance from yourself at your job or in your home that goes beyond what God requires, and WHEN you fail, you’re just infuriated with yourself and bitter than God didn’t make you more of a winner.

Listen to me: Your law isn’t the truth. And, your law isn’t the standard. Your law is killing the people that you love. Your law is killing you. Who does everyone fear displeasing most in your home? You or God? Don’t you see how backwards that is? If people fear not producing whatever righteousness you demand, they have no energy left to consider “the righteousness of God.”

You’re out of control and you want control, but you’re not in control. So, if we’re not going to be angry, we’re going to need grace.

We “need” “grace.”

James 1:21–22 “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

James 4:1–6 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.””

When we get into verses 21-22, James is showing us what we need to do so that we’re not so angry. He says that we need to “put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word.” That is, we need to recognize what our anger is, and we need to realize who we’re not. First, we need to recognize that our sinful anger is equated to “all filthiness and rampant wickedness.” Anger is too often dismissed as a respectable sin. A minor vice that shouldn’t be too concerning. We see it more as a personality flaw or an inheritance from our parents. But, neither James nor Jesus takes it very lightly. James calls in “rampant wickedness.” Jesus calls it “murder.” And, if we don’t recognize the severity of our sin, we won’t take it as seriously as it requires. Your anger can keep your kids from loving Jesus because they associate your law with his. Your anger can keep your wife at arm’s length because she’s nervous around you. Your anger can leave you lonely because it’s hard to befriend an angry person.

So, you must recognize who you are and release all of the control that you’ve been seizing. James says to “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” He follows this up with “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” What’s the “implanted word?” It’s the gospel of grace. It’s the recognition that you aren’t perfect and neither are the people you love or the world that you live in. It’s the recognition that you live moment-by-moment according to God’s wisdom, not your own, because you don’t have much. It’s the “MEEKNESS” to surrender the control of your life to Jesus and to trust that his way is best even when it doesn’t look best. And, this is the key to overcoming anger.

Your anger “desires” more.

I think James 4 helps us to see this even clearer. Turn with me there. James 4 can help us understand a lot of things about ourselves, especially anger. He says, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?” Why is it that your so angry with one another and bickering with one another and in continual conflict with one another? Why James? “You desire and do not have, so you murder.” This is an exposition of what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount like much of James. So, he’s not just talking about physically murdering them. He’s talking about the red hot anger that emerges from your heart that gives you the attitude of a murderer. And, what’s the cause? You want something that you’re not getting. You desire more. Anger always does.

And, the desires themselves aren’t bad. Notice that James says these are things that you can pray for. He’s not talking about sinful desires. He’s talking about proper desires, healthy desires, good desires. It can be the desire for to have a better sexual relationship with your wife. It can be the desire to have children who are well-mannered. It can be the desire to have enough financial security that you know your family is taken care of. It can be to have a job that increases meaning in your life. These are all fine desires. But, they can become disordered when they become ruling desires. They become disordered when you’re willing to sin to get them. They become disordered when you act sinfully when you don’t get them.

They become disordered when you believe you’re entitled to a gift — a good health report, the promotion, obedient children, a doting wife, a good night’s sleep. No one is entitled to a gift. And, if you meet someone who believes they are, well, then you’re sure to meet an angry person. Why? Because they’re presuming upon grace, they “desire, but do not have.”

Your anger “needs” more “grace.”

Many angry people will tell all the people in their lives that they just need “more grace.” And, they’re right, but maybe not in the way they think. Notice verse 6. “He gives more grace.” And, what does that lead to? “Giving grace to the humble.” It’s the same thought as “receiving with meekness the implanted word.” Grace rightly understood doesn’t enable us to sin. It draws us to repentance. Grace doesn’t enable our tempers or our seething anger; it confronts it. Because you’re not entitled to a perfect life. You’re not entitled to perfectly obedient children or a job with lots of significance. You’re entitled to God’s anger and God’s wrath. And, He has forgiven you. You’ve already received far more than you could ever desire. So, why are you so angry?

“More grace” doesn’t mean that others should adjust to your anger. “More grace” means that you should repent of your anger. And, by repent, I don’t mean wallow in guilt and self-hatred and shame. I mean resolving in the face of God by the grace of God of committing yourself to the process of long term change.

Is your family walking on eggshells around you? Well, if they are, it means that they don’t feel safe around you. It means they can’t really trust you. You may be frustrated because of the lack of intimacy with your wife. Intimacy comes from trust, and anger sabotages trust. You may be disheartened because your kids never talk to you about anything hard they’re facing. It may be because they don’t feel safe. Your friends may have put space between you, and may be because you’re too easily offended and easily provoked. Well, this morning, there’s grace. “More grace.” And, grace gives you the strength to humble yourself and own it. Grace gives you the courage to say I’m sorry. Grace enables you to begin producing in your life “the righteousness of God.”