Paul tells us that in our anger we must not sin. This means that the emotion of anger is not sinful on its own. It is all about the direct object. What is your anger directed at? In our sin we are very good at directing our anger at the wrong things, and oftentimes, at the wrong time.
Let me use an example. Think of those hand-warming packets you’ve perhaps used during skiing or winter outings. You snap them, and then they provide warmth for a good while. But imagine that, while riding the ski lift to the top of the slope, you go to snap the one packet you brought along, and what’ll you know it has already been used up. This is what it is like when you direct your anger at the wrong time. But directing your anger in the wrong direction is like, on a 98º day, using one of those packets to make the refreshing water of a cool lake into a hot tub. Clearly, you are using the warmth in the wrong way, which means that the warmth is entirely wasted.
This is what it is like when we grow angry with others at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. Being miffed at your spouse for forgetting some chore, lashing out at your kids for some behavior you find annoying, pounding your keyboard to win some frivolous online debate, yelling obscenities from the stands at the ref, are all examples of how anger is often misused and misspent. If you are known for misspent anger, you’ll come to find that no one takes you seriously.
God gives us a few things to be angry about: false worship, our own sin, the exploitation of the innocent, and so on. Your toddler banging that annoying drum the grandparents gifted them is not an occasion for anger. And, since we should desire to be like our Lord, we must strive by the spirit to be long-suffering. The word translated as long-suffering or patient could actually more literally be translated as slow to indignation/wrath. Having a short fuse, then, is to be unlike our God. The cure for a short fuse, is, to state the obvious, to have a long fuse.
But how? First, consider the kindness of God towards you. Every one of your sins, every one of your faults, every one of your complaints God has borne patiently. Thinking about that, thanking God for that, meditating on that is the primary way to see your fuse get longer. But secondly, it is putting the energy of your anger in the direction God intended it to go. Fight against false worship in your own life and in our culture. Fight against your own sin. Fight to protect those being exploited by evildoers. And, once more, in your anger do not sin.
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