Handling Anger

I have dealt with deep anger, even very strong hatred, for a great deal of my life, so I am no stranger to indignation, and my anger has only been strengthened by the sociopathy I have developed over the past two and a half years (as a result of killing off empathy in the process of becoming rationalistic).  Today I made a mistake and released anger in a very sinful way.  Don't misunderstand what I mean--I, like the Bible, do not condemn anger or hatred in themselves.  One of the great errors of the modern American church is not having a proper understanding of anger and hatred, with a proper understanding acknowledging that they are not intrinsically sinful or destructive, just intrinsically powerful.  How should people manage their anger towards other people, especially in the case of people for whom it is very easy to experience anger very intensely?

Do not just contain anger within you and let it snowball in potency.  If you need to, find a way to vent.  Whether that means going on a solo car ride and screaming, ranting to a friend, or praying about your anger, anger needs to be acknowledged and released as it builds up.  Some of the worst advice a person could give about anger is to leave it alone and ignore it.  Such an asinine suggestion can make anger even stronger and far more difficult to control!  On the contrary, anger sometimes must be directly confronted and released in order to actually prevent it from getting to the point where it surfaces at things totally unrelated to the object of that anger, or to the point where very minor provocations unleash a tidal wave of that anger.

Do your best to orient your anger towards something where it has a moral cause to uphold instead of just letting yourself experience pointless anger.  In other words, get angry about people or things that anger is an appropriate moral response to, and don't get angry at people without cause or justification.  Anger towards a person over an accidental inconvenience is not justified, but anger towards an actual moral offense is.  I know Christians who repeatedly object to my intense anger over issues like anti-intellectualism, prison rape, legalism, relativism, victim blaming, sexism, and so on, yet they will freak out over things that aren't sinful or will erupt into anger over trivial things.  This is a mark of irrationality, emotional weakness, or stupidity.  People who condemn legitimate anger and indulge in gratuitous anger over trivialities deserve to be refuted.

My anger can go much deeper than just a strong irritation, though.  There are times in my life when I have wanted to downright kill certain people, but 1) wanting to do something doesn't mean that I will act on the impulse, and 2) since I am a rational Christian who cares about reality I will not actually kill just because I sometimes want to.  I don't hide my sins from other people (and it's entirely stupid how some people view murder or murderous desires as the worst possible moral offenses, when there are far worse things to inflict on someone).  In a world of shallow people, I am genuinely honest and transparent.  I have no problem admitting my faults and struggles--it's frustrating that Christians sometimes call each other to authenticity only to turn away when someone is actually honest!  Controlling my words while anger has been a great struggle for me for so long.  When anger becomes malice, one needs honesty, venting, and self-control.

When counting to ten, walking away from a person, or acting like anger doesn't exist don't actually dispel anger, one sees the intellectual bankruptcy of much advice about handling anger that one can find.  Anger requires release and sometimes redirection towards something that actually deserves anger.  These are the ways that people need to handle frustration and indignance, not the pitifully inadequate advice I've often heard.  Confront anger, embrace it, release it, and channel the remains into something where anger is justified and called for.