Assessing Anger in Our Parenting

            For many of us, parenting is the last remaining frontier in which our anger has not been fully tamed. We’ve beaten anger back off the shores of friendship and even the wide plains of marriage, but it remains entrenched in the wild, untamed hill country of parenting. We don’t like it, don’t want to admit it, and even feel downright ashamed about it, but nevertheless, anger remains in our words and our actions toward our kids.

            Some parents among us grew up facing anger from their parents, and they swore up and down that they would not repeat those sins once their chance to be a parent came along. Yet here they stand with a bewildered look on their face as they have to admit once again, “I sound just like my dad (or mom).” It’s like the struggle that the Apostle Paul described in Romans 7:15—“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

            Why do we find such anger boiling up within us? Biblically, the answer is pretty simple—our hearts tell us that we deserve to be treated like God Himself, but our kids have different ideas. Please note: it is not that our kids make us get angry. They don’t have any such control over our actions. Rather, they simply act in ways we don’t like and we choose to react in anger. Our anger is always our own fault, not theirs. We have to accept responsibility before there will be any hope of change.

            How do we start to defeat this anger in our hearts? The process is not easy, but I believe it begins with this realization: anger cannot and will not produce any good results in our relationships with our children. None. Zero. As long as we entertain any thought that our anger might produce something good, we will lack the determination to put our anger to death. It’ll become like that can of random screws in your garage—you hang on to them because maybe, just maybe, they’ll come in handy someday. If you treat anger that way, you’ll be surprised just how often you pull it down off the shelf.

            Why am I so confident that anger will produce no good thing in your relationship with your kids? Take a look at 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.” That last statement is true both in me and in others. My anger doesn’t lead me toward godliness, and it doesn’t produce godliness in others, either.

            At least not true godliness—the kind that flows from the heart. Anger can be so deceptive in this way because it can produce an imitation of godliness. Our kids tend to shape up after we’ve unleashed a verbal barrage on them. It looks like it accomplished something, so we’re tempted to keep doing it. But “shaping up” shouldn’t be our goal as Christian parents. Cleaned-up behavior on the outside with dirty hearts on the inside isn’t what we’re aiming for. The grand, audacious, mind-blowing goal of this thing we call parenting is to lead our children to love God with everything they’ve got and to love others like they love themselves. Anger will not move us one inch closer toward that goal, though it might knock us backward by several yards.

            Now, we can all thank God that He so often accomplishes great work in our children’s hearts in spite of our anger. That is glory to Him, but it is no credit to us. We don’t want to use His kindness as some excuse to not get serious about putting our anger to death. While this isn’t the whole answer, the process at least starts in us when we look in the mirror and say, “I don’t have this all figured out, and I may not know yet what I’m going to do instead, but whatever it is, I will not speak or act in anger toward my kids again.” Will we still blow it at times? Probably, but praise God that the repentant heart will always find forgiveness through Christ! A humble confession to our kids will also do worlds of good—for them and for us. Time to stop reading and go find that mirror!

Don't Get Mad...Get Leavin'--Sermon on the Mount Series

            There are certain activities in life that can really get my competitive juices flowing—like mini-golf, for example, or bowling, ping-pong, and tennis. I can also get very competitive when I play board games, which has often made me wonder how I’m going to react when Adrianna reaches that age when she will want to change the rules of every game so that she can win.

            That’s actually an attitude that we all struggle with in our lives—we want to define the standards of life so that we come out looking good. That’s exactly what the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had done with God’s commandments in the Old Testament. The Pharisees, you will remember, were basically the pastors of the Jewish people at that time, and in a time when people did not have their own copies of the Old Testament to read, the Pharisees functioned for many people as the official interpreters of God’s commands.

            Ironically, their efforts to interpret God’s commands came from a sincere desire to follow them closely, but what their efforts produced was a set of arbitrary guidelines that did not capture the heart of God’s commands, yet they allowed the Pharisees to tell themselves that they were being perfectly obedient.

            In Matthew 5:17-20, we saw Jesus launch the opening volley of a thorough attack on the Pharisees’ mindset and traditions. Beginning now in v. 21, we will see him discuss some specific examples from the Pharisees’ traditions and reveal how those examples fail to capture the true spirit of God’s commands. He begins with their interpretations of God’s commandments against murder. Let’s read all that He has to say here about this subject, then we’ll break it down a bit more [READ Matthew 5:21-26]. Let’s look at a few points in this text, then we’ll discuss some implications of Jesus’ teaching.

            Notice how Jesus says in v. 21, “You have heard that it was said to those of old.” That’s an important phrase because it reminds us that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament itself—He is critiquing what the Pharisees had said about the Old Testament; their interpretation of it. When Jesus referred to the Old Testament itself, He would say something like “it is written” or “haven’t you read…,” so this little phrase reminds us that Jesus was exposing the Pharisees’ teaching, not any deficiency in the Old Testament itself.

            Notice also that Jesus countered that phrase with the phrase in v. 22, “But I say to you.” That little phrase made two very important points. First, Jesus was clearly setting himself up for the people as an alternative to the Pharisees. It becomes crystal clear in the rest of the sermon that Jesus wants the people to accept his teaching as authoritative rather than the teaching of the Pharisees, and this little phrase effectively puts the people at a fork in the road. What are you going to follow—that which was said to those of old, or that which I say to you?

            Second, with this little phrase, Jesus was claiming to have the authority to accurately express the mind of God. That’s an incredible claim that lays the groundwork for Jesus’ later claims that He is God. This point was not lost on Jesus’ audience, because Matthew reports at the end of this sermon that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes (Matt 7:28-29).”

Now let’s take a look at some implications from Jesus’ teaching.

1. Don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people.

            What the Pharisees taught about murder was okay as far as it went, but as Jesus reveals, it didn’t go far enough. Their teaching was, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” God certainly did condemn murder through His commands, but He went beyond that to the very root of murder, which is anger. In Leviticus 19:17, the Lord said, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” but that point was apparently lost on the Pharisees, which is why Jesus criticizes their teaching here. Their traditions focused only on an external action like murder, and apparently, to them, any attitudes or even actions that stopped short of murder were okay.

            But Jesus declares that the mere attitude of anger is just as serious in God’s eyes as the act of murder itself, and actions like insults that we might think are less serious than murder are actually serious enough to make us deserving of Hell. That is a very penetrating assessment that calls us to consider not just our external actions toward others, but the attitudes that we hold about them in our hearts.

            This lesson holds an important implication for the way that we assess our relationships with each other. Let’s face it—its so easy for us to excuse anger in our hearts by looking only at superficial standards. Perhaps I’ve been angry at someone for a year but I’ve told myself, “What’s the big deal? I’ve never punched him! I’ve never slashed his tires!” Well, what a wonderful person I am! Let me pat myself on the back because I haven’t punched someone!

            But Jesus says we had better stop patting ourselves on the back and we better start examining our hearts, because the attitudes we harbor there are just as serious as if we had murdered someone. And if we have expressed our anger to another person through even something as “small” as an insult, Jesus instructs us to make it our top priority to ask forgiveness from that person.

2. If you have expressed your anger against someone else, make it your top priority to ask for their forgiveness.

            The Lord uses a very vivid example to get this point across. He was speaking at a time when the Jewish people were still offering animal sacrifices in accordance with the Old Testament laws, and He tells His audience that if they were standing at the altar of sacrifice, preparing to hand their sacrifice over to the priest, and they remembered that they had expressed their anger to someone else, they should immediately stop this ritual of worship and leave to go and be reconciled with that person.

            In other words, anger is such a serious matter that if I’ve expressed it against another person, I must make it my top priority to make things right with that person. It should even be a higher priority than performing a ritual of worship to God, and the reason for that is simple—God won’t be pleased by my ritual of worship if I am not at peace with other people. As Samuel explained to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”

            So imagine that you are driving to church one Sunday morning when you remember that you had insulted someone the previous week and had not yet asked for their forgiveness. It would actually be a greater act of worship to go and make things right with that person than to come to church. That is the kind of priority that we should give to confessing our anger to the people whom we’ve hurt and asking their forgiveness.

Jesus gives us a further illustration of the urgency of making things right at the end of this section.

3. It is much easier to be reconciled to someone sooner rather than later.

            This lesson is the point of Jesus’ words about the judge and the guard and the prison. Some people have wanted to conclude that Jesus was telling a parable here with the judge standing for God and the prison standing for Hell, but there doesn’t seem to be any need to make that connection. Jesus is simply pointing to real-life circumstances to encourage us to make peace with other people quickly after an offense has taken place.

            Its never easy to swallow your pride, confess your sin, and ask someone else to forgive you, but it is almost always easier to do so soon after an offense rather than later. Its just like a physical illness in many ways—if you deal with it in its earliest stages, your odds of beating it are much greater.

            Proverbs 18:19 describes how difficult it can be to reconcile with someone you’ve sin against: “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” That observation only becomes more and more applicable with each passing day after an offense has taken place.

With each day that passes, you better believe that Satan is hard at work to multiply the offenses and misunderstandings between you and that other person. He’s going to tempt that person every day to become more bitter, to build more bars around their heart so that you can no longer get in.

            So my friends, we must realize what a serious matter anger truly is. In the eyes of God, it is every bit as serious as murder, and when we have succumbed to it and expressed it against others, we must make it our top priority to heal that breach in our relationship quickly before Satan has time to exploit it. Obeying God in this matter is actually a greater act of worship than any ritual that we might perform, such as attending church, praying, or singing hymns. And if we know we’ve expressed anger toward someone else and we’ve not yet made our peace with them, God won’t be pleased with our rituals of worship, anyway!

            Now, let me answer a question that may have popped into your mind at this point—do I need to confess my anger to another person if its only been in my heart and I haven’t expressed it to them? That’s a good question, and I think the answer is a cautious “no,” and I say “cautious” because we need to remember that there are many ways in which we can express our anger beyond just the obvious ones like assaulting someone.

            Let me describe a scenario to help us think about this question. Suppose that I get a text message from Carmen one afternoon that says, “I made plans for us to go over to Billy Bob’s house tonight. Hope you don’t mind!” Now suppose that I start to think, “Oh man! There’s a big KU basketball game on tonight, and Billy Bob is a K-State fan so I know he won’t want to watch the game. How could Carmen be so inconsiderate? She’s just always thinking about herself and what she wants to do! You know, I remember a time six years ago when she did the same thing! This is twice now in six years! This is becoming a bad pattern in her life! She’s ALWAYS doing this kind of thing!”

            Now imagine that I allow myself to go on like this for a few minutes, just stewing in my anger. Then the Holy Spirit convicts me, and I repent of my anger and put it away. Would I need to confess that anger to Carmen? I think the answer is no, because I haven’t expressed it to her in any way. I still need to confess it to God and ask for His forgiveness, but I don’t think I would need to ask for Carmen’s forgiveness in that situation.

            Now suppose, however, that I held on to my anger until I got home. Perhaps I don’t say anything about it, but instead I just don’t say much of anything at all. I don’t give Carmen my normal greeting, and instead I just get ready to go over to Billy Bob’s house. Then I joke around with Billy Bob for a couple of hours, and we leave to go home and I’m silent again. We arrive at home and I just get ready for bed and go to sleep.

            Now would I need to confess my anger to Carmen in that situation? You bet I would, but why? How did I express it to her? First of all, Carmen knows that its out of character for me to be quiet like that and say nothing at all. She’s would know that something is wrong, and I’ve probably caused her some worry by leaving her in the dark about what it could be. Second, even though I didn’t say any harsh words to her, I didn’t speak any kind words to her either. I know I should speak kind words to her, and James 4:17 says “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

            Third, I am commanded to love my wife, but just think about the definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient—have I been patient? No! Love is kind—have I been kind? No! Love is not rude—have I been rude? Yes! Love is not irritable—have I been irritable? Yes!

            You see, we have to remember all of the subtle ways in which we can express anger. Remember the first implication from today’s sermon—don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people! In that light, we probably need to confess our anger to others more often that we might initially realize. Are there times when it may not be necessary? I think there are, but they probably occur less often than we want to admit.

            Its never very hard for us to find ways to excuse our behavior, is it? We’re just like children playing a board game—we can always find a way to adjust the rules so that we come out on top. But my friends, we must not play that game. That is precisely the mindset that Jesus is going to dismantle here in The Sermon on the Mount, and He has begun with the ways in which we might justify our sinful anger against other people. We must take a sober look at ourselves in the penetrating light of God’s Word and allow it to reveal our hearts as they really are.

            If know that you need to make peace with someone because you’ve expressed anger against them, don’t delay. Don’t wait another day; don’t leave yourself or your neighbor vulnerable to Satan’s temptations. Do what you can to repair that breach, and pray for God to help your neighbor to be willing to do the same.

Let's Get Ready to Reconcile--Proverbs series

There’s a little poem I’ve heard that describes life in the church, and it emphasizes the difference between life in heaven and life on earth. It goes like this—“Living above with saints we love, oh that will be glory; Living below with saints we know, well, that’s a different story.” That is a sad but true commentary on living life together as Christians, isn’t it? We’re kind of like a bunch of porcupines walking around with our quills stuck out, and every so often we bump into each other and cause some hurt and pain.

But this reality isn’t just limited to life in the church, is it? This is true of every part of our lives. Conflicts, disagreements, fights, feuds—these things are all just part of relationships in our fallen world, whether you’re talking about friends, family members, church members, book club members, sports teams, booster clubs, co-workers, the ladies in the quilting society or the good ol’ boys over at the Elks Lodge! Wherever you have two people interacting with each other, you have the potential for conflict.

I’m sure we’ve all lived through some conflicts that were handled well, and some that we’re not handled so well, and perhaps you’re still living through the fall-out from a conflict that blew up on you. So how can we end up in that first category? How can we do our part to handle our conflicts in a godly way? Conflicts are going to come, and they’re not necessarily bad things in our lives if we handle them in the right way.

Today we’ll look at what Proverbs has to say about this, and we’ll answer this question together:

How should we respond to conflict with others?

I. Resolve the Conflict as Soon as Possible (17:14)

The best time to resolve a conflict is immediately—before it puts down roots, before it blows up and takes on a life of its own. Look at Prov. 17:14 [READ 17:14]. The picture in this verse is of some kind of container that springs a leak. That kind of problem will never get better on its own—it will only get worse until its solved. In our day and age, we can think of dam that starts to fail. The whole thing might be destroyed if the problem isn’t addressed immediately. Allowing a conflict to remain unresolved is like allowing a wound to remain exposed to the elements—there is a great risk that it will become infected and get even worse. Conflicts have a way of getting worse even if we’re not trying to make them worse! For example, many times we deal with conflict by simply ending our relationship with the other person. Sometimes we announce this to them and everyone, but more often we don’t. We simply stop talking to the other person, and thus we think we have kept the conflict from getting worse. Sometimes we even pat ourselves on the back at this point and say, “Well, its sad that the relationship had to end, but at least we’re not fighting anymore!”

But sooner or later, the people around that relationship start to notice, and they may start to talk, and that talk may turn to gossip, and that gossip may lead to people taking sides, and before long a whole family or a whole church is destroyed by the weeds of a conflict that we thought we had buried. So we must deal with conflict through confession, repentance, and forgiveness, and we must do it right away before it gets any worse.

II. Realize the Folly of Having a Quick Temper (12:16, 14:29, 15:18, 16:32, 19:11, 29:11, 25:28)

Many conflicts get worse in a hurry because one person or both people lose their temper. Some kind of conflict comes up and its like a match fell into a powder keg because someone loses their cool and blows up. According to Proverbs, this is an extremely foolish way to respond to conflict. You might be surprised at how often Proverbs talks about this. Look at some verses with me [READ 12:16, 14:29, 15:18, 16:32, 19:11, 29:11, 25:28].

I want to talk about that last verse for a moment. In those days, every moderately-sized city had a wall around it to protect it from attacks. If its wall was broken down, it would be vulnerable and defenseless. So the picture from this verse is that if you can’t control yourself, you are vulnerable to attacks from temptation. You are easy prey for Satan because you don’t have the proper defenses in place.

Sometimes we try to play down our responsibility for our tempers or shift the blame to others. We might say that we just can’t control ourselves or that other people “shouldn’t be so sensitive.” A lady once came to evangelist Billy Sunday and tried to rationalize her angry outbursts. “There’s nothing wrong with losing my temper,” She said. “I blow up, and then it’s all over.”
“So does a shotgun,” Sunday replied, “and look at the damage it leaves behind!”1 We can try to downplay angry outbursts all we want, but the reality is that they do tremendous damage.

So what should you do if your temper is out of control? First, you need to ask for forgiveness from people that you’ve blown up on in the past. Whether that’s your wife, your kids, or your co-workers, they need to know that you acknowledge that what you did to them was wrong. Second, you need to realize that controlling your temper will only happen as you grow spiritually. That is a process that must start today, before you face any other conflicts. There really aren’t any tricks or techniques that are going to save you in the heat of the moment. You’ve got to build up the walls around your soul, so you’re no longer vulnerable to that temptation. Galatians 5:23 says that the Holy Spirit will produce self-control in our lives, but we must walk by the Spirit. We must live in dependence on the Holy Spirit to help us make our choices and to help us learn how to think about life and how to respond in godly ways. Then we can avoid making conflicts worse by blowing up when we face them.

III. Respond with Love, not Hatred (10:12, 25:21–22)

Proverbs 10:12 says, [READ 10:12]. If we allow hatred to enter our hearts and fester there during a conflict, it will only make things worse. Our focus will be on destroying the other person rather than reconciling with them. Instead, we must respond with love, because love seeks to put the matter to rest rather than stir it up and make it worse. Love makes us willing to confess our sins if we have done wrong, and it makes us willing to offer forgiveness if someone else has wronged us.

In his great description of love in 1 Cor. 13, the apostle Paul says that love is kind, and Proverbs offers a great illustration of this kindness in Prov. 25 [READ 25:21–22]. Love does not respond by attacking an enemy or by taking advantage of his weaknesses; rather, it responds with displays of kindness. The picture of heaping burning coals on your enemy’s head speaks of the shame and conviction in a person’s conscience which could be stirred up by such acts of kindness.

So love asks the question, “How can I put this matter to rest?” Instead of adding fuel to the fires of conflict, love seeks to starve the flames so that they will be extinguished.

IV. Watch Your Words (15:1, 17:27)

It’s so easy to let your mouth run wild during a conflict, but that will only make matters worse. Here’s what we should do instead [READ 15:1, 17:27]. Notice that that last verse ties our words together with something else we just talked about—keeping your temper under control. Those careless things that we say when we lose our temper can be the most painful part of a conflict. Sometimes they can take on a life of their own and overshadow the original problem! We can forget what we were even fighting about in the first place. Our words are like the winds that turn a campfire into a forest fire.

There are all kinds of ways that we can make a conflict worse with the things we say. We can attack a person’s character, their intelligence, their motives, even their upbringing (“You’re just like your mother!). We can exaggerate their faults and minimize our own; we can even generalize their faults with statements like “You always act this way!” or “You’re never going to change.”

This can be another area where we think to ourselves, “People just need to stop being so sensitive. They just need to realize that I don’t mean these things that I say. I’m just letting off some steam.” Friends, we can’t put the blame on other people for taking offense at the things we say. The problem is ours, not theirs. And we need to remember that everything we say comes from the heart, so every word that we speak is an expression of our true feelings. So when we say these cruel things, its because deep down inside we really do mean them! We might embellish them or exaggerate in the heat of the moment, but all of these hurtful things we say contain at least a kernel of our true feelings. That’s why they are so hurtful; they’re not just empty words! They are the fruit of a root that reaches into the heart.

V. Don’t Launch a “Cold War” Against the Other Person (10:18)

Do you know what I mean by this? I’m talking about those situations where you refuse to talk to someone else, or you may talk to them but you refuse to admit that anything is wrong. Look with me at Prov. 10:18 [READ 10:18]. These verse talks about two activities. The first is when you conceal your hatred for someone by the things you say to them. Maybe you flatter them or you just act like nothing is wrong. That’s what I mean by a “cold war”—you’re not openly expressing your hatred to the other person, but you’re still hostile toward them even if you won’t talk to them about it.

The second activity in this verse is uttering slander. Basically we’re talking about gossip here. Sometimes we’re not willing to talk to the person we actually have a problem with, but we’re more than willing to talk to everyone else about it! Gossip is another way of indirectly attacking someone. We may not be calling the person names to their face, but we’re trying to get everyone else to share our feelings toward them.

I hope its obvious that neither of these activities constitute a healthy way of dealing with conflict. We can so easily fool ourselves into thinking that this is a better way to handle conflict, but the simple fact that you’re not openly fighting with someone else doesn’t mean anything. The United States and Russia never technically fought a battle during the Cold War, but no one would say we were on friendly terms. We cannot openly or secretly harbor hatred for someone else if we want to have any hope of reconciling with them.

VI. Remember How Hard it Can Be to Undo the Effects of a Fight (18:19)

A poorly handled conflict can stay with you for the rest of your life. Prov. 18:19 says, [READ 18:19]. This proverb is so honest. God does not want us to harbor grudges against each other, but sometimes, that’s exactly what happens, and those grudges can be very hard to overcome. How many times have we seen families permanently divided over a poorly-handled conflict? Or church members separate forever over a petty issue that exploded?

The devotional book Our Daily Bread once recorded the last will and testament of a man who carried a grudge against his daughters to the grave. It read, “Unto my two daughters…by reason of their rebellious attitude toward a loving father, …I leave the sum of $1 to each and a father’s curse. May their lives be fraught with misery, unhappiness, and poignant sorrow. May their deaths be soon and of a lingering, malignant and torturous nature. May their souls rest in hell and suffer the torments of the condemned for eternity.”2

How terrible it is to read those words, but that kind of soul-polluting hatred can be the end result of a poorly-handled conflict. Conflicts don’t have to end up that way; they don’t have to blow up or result in hatred and estrangement. But if we’re going to bring a positive outcome out of a conflict, we have to follow God’s principles. We have to do things God’s way, and as you can see with some of these principles, we have to work on these things now, before conflicts come up. So let’s ask the Lord to carve these principles into our hearts so that we will be ready the next time a conflict comes up.


1. From http://bible.org/illustration/anger-shotgun Accessed 3/23/11

2. Our Daily Bread, February 18, 1994, as recorded at http://bible.org/illustration/father%E2%80%99s-will Accessed 3/23/11