Todd Turner (00:00)
One key to getting anger straight is to understand that when you're angry, you are doing something. Anger is not an it. Anger is not just part of you. Anger doesn't happen to you. You do anger. Every time you get angry or every time you don't get angry, you broadcast what matters to you.
Many who have been divorced experience anger, anger at God, anger at circumstances, anger at their former spouses, anger at themselves. Today, we're exploring a topic that everyone deals with. Anger is a little like pregnancy, like whether it's an embryo or you're nine months along, you're still pregnant. So you have some anger in you, all of you do, I do.
Most whether you keep it bottled up inside of you or whether you explode and lash it out and let it fly, we all have levels of it. So let's identify some of the issues here and deal with all of them honestly.
And if your first thought is, man, if everybody would just do what they're supposed to do, I wouldn't be so angry. Pull your chair up, get that ear close to the speaker. This episode is for you.
I have to be honest, I struggled at first writing this episode. I did because I don't think I, or at least I didn't think, I struggled with anger. There's not one soul in my life that I could tell you I really lashed out at. I can only remember a couple of times in my life that I've even raised my voice loudly and I feel like most of those times were righteous anger. Like they were deserving that I just raised my voice and let somebody know that I was upset with.
But as I wrote this episode, I quickly learned that I really resonated with a lot of these things that that some of this anger is bottled up. It's sitting inside of me. Like I'm talking about those of you who don't really think you struggle with this. You do. There's a guy who wrote a book. His name is David Paulson. He wrote a book called The Good and Angry, Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining and Bitterness. And he has a chapter. It's great.
And the chapter title is, Are You Struggling With Anger? And you open it up and literally the first, it says, yes, next chapter. Like the answer is yes. We all deal with anger because we all have it inside of us. If you're listening right now and you had to hit stop, you are struggling with anger. So what is anger? What, where does it even come from?
The short answer is this, it comes from our worldview. That's why we do anger is because the way we see the world. It changes our views on what is unjust, our views on our expectations in life. It shows us our desires in life. Our, yours and mine, our worldview is corrupt.
we place blame in the wrong areas.
may sound a little psychological or, hey, let's deal with some therapy to get rid of our anger. But the truth is, we can tackle this conversation a lot better using theology. All right? So now don't check out on me here. This isn't the theology you may think it is. It's not.
I go to church do good like you're being angry. Don't be angry and then everything's going to be okay. It's not that simple. It's like, you know, somebody who's an addict. You're like, well, just don't do drugs and you'll be fine. Like stop it. Well, it's not that simple. If you think of addicts can stop it, you know, don't think they would right? This is a lot bigger than hey, thanks for coming to Todd's church today. We're talking about anger. Just don't do it and then moving on like it's not that simple. So let's let's think about
of comparing our worldview with God's worldview. Let's see how he sees the world so that we can compare it to how we see the world and we'll understand why this anger thing is happening and how we can suppress it, mute it, tone it down, hopefully get rid of it, right? So let's talk about that. Many of us men, yes, Christian men, we live in a worldview that we don't even notice.
It's like a fish in water. Does he even know he's in water? He's swimming his whole life. He doesn't even know, understand what water is. Well, we swim in a culture that we can't see. And before we look at God's view and his worldview, he created the world, let's dig into our worldview, things that you and I inherit, the water we inherit that we're swimming in. And some of this is like,
It's a false script of what Christian manhood even is. You and I have inherited an image, and images of what a real man should be, and even what a real Christian man should be. And we probably have two different icons that we battle against one another. And my argument is probably neither one of them are healthy. And so we somehow come out with this hybrid between those two.
That one's certainly not going to be healthy because we have two that are even wrong. We have a worldly man, know, the John Wayne, and then we have our pastor who's still a fallen man. And we sort of try to blend or be our best version of both. And it creates a lot of problem.
We in the churches get our view of biblical manhood.
from some unhealthy places, right? From our church itself, from the men in our church, from a fallen pastor. We get it from movies, from our friends, from our dad, our uncles.
we also live in a world where we feel like we have to go to our churches polished with our kids behaving and smiling. We drive something impressive. We were told to be strong, unemotional, stoic, to provide, produce, succeed financially.
Never ask for help, know, that's weakness. Control your family, your career, your image. Keep it all together. And Jesus, yeah, you know, he's cool guy, lived a couple thousand years ago. But what does Jesus know about SEC football? What does he know about the F-250 King Cab truck? What does he know about American women and retirement plans and Roth IRAs? And so...
You and I end up mixing our standards with Christian culture, the Christian culture standards. We call it our faith. Like we weigh success and failure, not against scripture, but against our assumptions, our inherited assumptions. We weigh how we see life and what things we're frustrated with because we're measuring this false reality of what we call success, what we call
what a real man does, what a real man looks like, a real man calls important, what a good Christian man calls important. And we get frustrated.
From a human standpoint, anger usually is a secondary emotion. It's not the root. It's the smoke from a deeper fire.
Frustration comes when our goals or expectations get blocked. It comes from fear or insecurity when we feel powerless or exposed. Wounded pride when our ego gets bruised. Personality wiring, some of us just live closer to the boiling point just because of how we're wired. Unresolved pain, old wounds that have never healed. But from a Christian perspective, the heart
is the real source. Jesus said it, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Anger is a diagnostic tool. It shows us what we value most.
If I get angry when my pride's hurt, that reveals an idol. If I get angry when someone criticizes me, my identity might rest in their approval, not God's acceptance. If I get angry when things don't go my way, well, I might be worshiping control or comfort. If I get angry when someone else's succeeds, envy's taking root. If I get angry when my kids disobey, am I angry because they disobeyed?
God or am I angry because they embarrassed me? If I get angry at delays or interruptions, I might be valuing my schedule more than people. If I get angry at my ex, that anger might expose deeper wounds that I haven't yet surrendered. If I get angry at myself, I might be trapped in perfectionism instead of grace.
If I get angry at God, it might reveal confusion about his character or disappointment over how life should have gone.
Anger is the flashing warning light on the dashboard of our soul. Doesn't always mean sin, but it always means something is going on under that hood. Our real selves come out in different settings. One version with our friends, another version at work, another at church, another when we're alone. And the problem? None of these is a biblical
definition of manhood. The tension between how I feel and how I act, it wears us down. If this duplicity is normal Christianity to you, it causes a Christianity that's as fake as we are. It's not a good tension to have and to live in. know, single men, we feel this tension really deep because we live two lives, a public and a private, and we get used to it.
We don't have anybody in our life who can really call it out at home because you know, that's what our wives sort of did for us. And when they're no longer there, maybe we're an empty nester. We don't have the kids in the house anymore. It's really good. It's easy to get crotchety. It's easy to just say, here's how the life I want. Here's how I'm going to set it up and the heck with everybody. And we become very solitaire in our way of thinking and in our
and the way we structure our lives and our friendships. And we don't have to get old that way. We don't have to become hardened because we don't have anybody there to soften us up.
Anger can create this pretending. Shame is what we get when we know that our anger is out of control, so we just learn to hide it. Pride, it's admitting that truth feels like failure, so we double down on our stubbornness. And then of course, there's fear. Like church culture rewards a godly man image, and so we end up performing in public.
instead of actually healing from our actual behavior, our actual sin, our actual way of seeing the world. That's us. That's you and me. So let's take a few moments now that we've looked at why we do what we do, how we see the world and why we're in this dilemma. Let's pause and look at what God says, his view, what makes him angry. How does God see anger? How does God see the world? Let's weigh that for all the things that we just got through talking about.
Because let's be honest, anger itself is not all bad. God gets angry too. But what makes him angry compared to what makes us? Well, one is the hypocrisy we just mentioned above. That living a duplicity life actually makes God angry. Isn't that ironic? Like us, our anger comes from this behavior of what we expect the world to be versus what it is, and that's putting on a show.
to pretend to the world all's well and then deep in our private life, it's not well. God literally says that makes me angry. He ripped the Pharisees who lived this world. They were angry at everybody else for not behaving the way that they thought they should act. And God told them, you you have whitewashed tombs. You pretend on the outside, but I know what's on the inside. And it really, he got mad at those guys.
And they were the religious ones, right? So my point, I want to back up a little bit. This is the issue. Sometimes it's so easy for us Christians to say, oh, well, we're the good guys. Like, I'm a believer, you're not. And your behavior is bad. I don't like the way you vote. I don't like the way you do whatever, but we're the good guys. And God comes in and says, wait a minute, sinners are supposed to say, I expect those guys to say, you're the one representing me. And I see you over here.
I see your anger issues. I see your true heart. And I'm more upset at that than I am the sinner that you're mad at. That's why he was ripping the Pharisees and why he is not happy with you and I. God doesn't like ungodliness and unrighteousness. He says in Romans, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men.
God hates injustice when people are oppressed, abused, or ignored. Dishonesty, disobedience, idolatry, pride. This is what makes him upset. When truth is suppressed and sin is normalized. But here's the difference between God's anger and ours. God's anger is never impulsive. He's actually slow to anger. He's not capricious.
meaning he doesn't lash out on a whim.
His anger is measured, righteous, purposeful, and it's just.
Psalm 711, says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. Psalms 103, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. What great news is that? Matthew 5,
Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. That's sobering. So biblically anger is justified when it reflects God's values. Defending the innocent, hating evil, rejecting sin. But the moment anger turns itself centered to self-centeredness, vindictive, or out of control, it stops marrying God's righteousness.
In James 1, it says, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
We know now what makes us angry. We know what makes God angry.
So what now? when we're angry because our life or goals are not going our way, that anger reveals our worldview. You can't correct this anger until you replace your worldview with God's.
You must see life and people the way he does. But how? How do we do that? Well, he's already told us. He's told us his worldview. He built a system for growth. Iron sharpening iron. Men, the answer is counter cultural. You ready? No lone wolves, no behind closed doors faith, no hiding in your sin.
We have to throw off the selfish worldview and put on a kingdom worldview. We have to think like God.
Jesus didn't tell us to go make Christians. I know we think he did. He told us to make disciples. Not polished people, not political people, not people who act spiritual on Sundays. Disciples. They follow Christ. They love what he loves. They hate what he hates. And they define themselves by him. You can't crush your anger through therapy alone.
can't be done. Or by counting to 10. Or by exploding and apologizing in the vicious long cycles. You need other disciples who are trying to live like Christ too. You need scripture. You need community. You need prayer.
Anger, unconfessed, turns men into actors in God's house. They may fool people, but they're not going to fool God. Because church then becomes a stage and men miss the healing they actually need by walking in and pretending you've got your act together, which you don't because you know you don't and God knows you don't. So let's talk about the fallout of the way we're doing it now. If you've made it this long, you know there's a problem.
Let's talk about the fallout. Your spouse, whether you're old one or you're new one, your intimacy will be replaced by fears of distrust. If you have kids, they grow up confused or copying your anger. Your friends, they distance themselves. Your work, people obey you out of fear, not respect. And you yourself, you're weary, you're bitter, you're spiritually stuck.
Some of you owe serious apologies to the people in your life. You really do because you've lashed out over and over and over. Some of you, this is the reason you're divorced. They may have reacted to this in a certain way, but this is the thing that drew, put the wedge in that created the big valley between you and your spouse. You don't want this with your next one if there even is a next one.
If anybody can ever get close to you without getting their head bit off. More than that.
We all need repentance because anger is not the root problem. Anger is the fruit. Fruit comes from trees. If the root are in self, your fruit will be in self. If your root is in kingdom, your fruit will be kingdom. Anger is a fruit issue. You can't just fix the fruit. You've got to fix the root. You've got to fix the tree. If the tree is unhealthy,
the fruit will be unhealthy. How do we get this tree healthy? How do we deal with the worldview that is creating the anger fruit? That's the question.
Ephesians 4 says, be angry, yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity. What are we to do? What now? First, repent. Ask God to show you where your heart is off. Go get in a healthy church. Get into the Word. Learn to read scripture through God's lens.
not the world's lens and pray, simple prayer, God, I've been carrying anger because I believe lies about what makes me a man. Forgive me, teach me your way. In the meantime, be slow. Don't get trapped in the explode then apologize cycle. It's damaging your relationships. It's dulling your witness.
You can't repent. Men, hear this. You can't repent from what you don't recognize. The Spirit will open your eyes to see. I've been living, Lord, I've been living under a cultural yoke, not Christ's yoke. I've been angry because I've been chasing something false. That's grace. God lets us see the fake life so we can turn from it. That's why I'm making a whole episode on this.
This is so we can see where this comes from. This is a problem, man. It's a big problem in all of us. Some of you have it way worse because it bowls over. Some of you have it deep down inside. You know you live with the frustration of it all. You know it. You judge yourself versus other people. You're chasing something. You're chasing this respect. You want the world to...
Reward you or see you a certain way for your hard work. You want your blessing you want your cake You want to eat it you want it all and you're frustrated and you're playing the Christian life And you're like, well, I believe I got my ticket in the heaven I'm about to live this life that I want to go live and that's frustrating you You're a lot like the Pharisees. They offered a heavy yoke and Jesus says I offer a light yoke His off his yoke is so much different
The heavy yoke is the cultural manhood. Jesus offers authentic manhood. He offers street through gentleness, leadership through service, identity through being God's son. Not from your performance. That's not where you get your identity. He offers peace instead of rage.
rest is found.
Not in pretending, but in Christ.
We are not commanded to never get angry. We're told to get angry and not sin. What makes us angry versus what makes God angry? That contrast reveals what we love, what we believe. Let's do anger, but do it right. One theologian said, when anger runs amok in the temper, grousing or bitterness, you don't need just techniques to calm down. Your core motives must change.
Oswald Sanders wrote, righteous anger is not selfish and does not center on your pain. To be free of sin, such anger must be zealous for truth and for purity and with the glory of God is chief objective.
Guys, repent, surround yourself with other men who love Jesus. That is where freedom starts. Get yourself into church, get yourself into work, get on your knees, pray, let's beat this anger thing. It literally is hindering your life and the blessings of your life and others around you. Blessings.
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