Whom does anger hurt?

Clifford Hurst
November 4, 2018 at 8:56 AM

WHOM DOES ANGER HURT?
Americans are angry. With next week’s mid-term elections looming before us the atmosphere is charged with anger. Almost everyone to whom you talk is seething with it. America is ½ a degree from boiling over. Oh, I know, many would deny that what they are feeling is anger; and, those that admit it would be quick to offer a perfectly logical justification. I admit that I feel anger, and the most anger I feel is for those who instigate and create anger with contrived grievances and fabricated issues.

Recently, I have felt a shift in how I feel about anger. Previously, I had viewed anger as an evil because of the hurt done to the ones on the receiving end of another’s anger. I continue to feel grieved about, sympathetic of, and indignant because of the pain and damage done to the victim of another’s anger. I still see that as evil. What has changed is that I also see the pain, damage, and hurt done by anger to the one who is angry. I’m not trying to make the victimizer a victim. Definitely not!

I counseled a man this week who was angry. In the very contortions of his face, to the growl in his voice, to the fire in his eyes, I could see rage. But, I saw something else: Hurt. Pain. Suffering. Anger was destroying him. Physiologically, anger can damage one’s heart and increase his cholesterol, among other things. Spiritually and psychologically, anger damages the man himself, his person, his soul.

On the most rudimentary level, anger is a legitimate, necessary emotion. It is the person’s neurons, hormones, and systems going into action to enable that person to protect and preserve himself. It is survivalist instinct. Anger, then, is what is experienced when something is coming against a person. We not only have an impulse to live; we have our own opinions, plans, preferences, personal space, and volition. We do not take kindly to anything that would impede us and what we desire, think, or will to happen. When something comes against us, goes against us, hampers us, we get angry.

Much of our anger is merely experiencing the frustration of not getting our own way. I don’t mean that just in the petulant sense but in the most basic sense. Life does not cooperate with our dreams, desires, pursuits, and plans. Something is resisting our way, will, thoughts, opinion, intent, perception, etc. Sometimes a person has been resisted, abused, trampled, demeaned, ridiculed, bullied, etc., to the point that his anger sparks, flares, and consumes him. Whether he then hurts someone else or not, the anger is hurting him.

Not all angry people are reprobate narcissists. Some are good people. Not all are sociopaths. They’re just people. Not all are unconverted. Now, again, I do not absolve any angry person of the hurt he does to another. That is not the point. The point is anger hurts those on both ends of it. This explains my anger at those who instigate anger. There are enough “natural” causes (some of them just) of anger in our lives--real issues, genuine conflicts--without causes being intentionally fabricated.

Media, politicians, pundits, commentaries, bloggers, trollers, and water-cooler authorities are purposefully generating anger. They stoke and stir, fuel, and fan the fire of anger with false offenses, perceived slights, manufactured prejudices, and feigned righteous outrage. They delight in the angry wrecking-mayhem mob, the screaming arguments, the name-calling slug fests, and the ad hominid vitriol. Each is responsible for controlling his anger and is culpable if he does not. True. But, that does not change the fact that one’s anger can be needlessly inflamed and hurts not only his victims but him too.

It is no platitude for me to suggest that the only answer is the peace of Christ. As much as there is the peace of Christ that will keep our hearts and minds, there is the anger of Satan to destroy us, body, soul, and spirit. So, forgive me for noting what an awful thing anger is to the one that is experiencing it. Anger is hurting him. Likewise, America’s anger is hurting America. Anger is not just hurting America. It is hurting Americans. It is hurting Americans who are the victims of anger. It is hurting Americans who are the angry. It is not just the body of America that is being destroyed. It is the very soul of America. Only the peace of Christ can heal those who have been hurt—and those who have done the hurting who hurt too.

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