by Craig Larson
The end of the calendar year typically means more time with extended family. That’s easy to get jazzed about as the time approaches, but when the get-together arrives, excitement can be overtaken by the grinding of diverse personalities imposing diverse expectations. Such diversity is not easy to celebrate along with Christmas dinner.
Family amplifies a problem we each have, namely, adjusting to our own shortcomings while remaining sensitive to the suggestions from others that we have shortcomings. We may confess a flaw openly, but if someone else has the audacity to point out the same flaw, we react defensively. Identifying this inconsistency is an acquired skill, but acquire it we must if we would view ourselves aright and liberate our emotions from the control of others who don’t act like we want them to.
Our contradiction (hypocrisy?) may rear its ugly head at Christmas or Thanksgiving with relatives, or perhaps daily with spouses, children, or co-workers. Indeed, all relationships risk its occurrence in varying degrees. A friend of mine once mentioned that he had poor communication skills. I accepted his insight at face value and made reference to it myself. He became angry. He couldn’t stand to hear the same criticism he had of himself come from another source. Apparently, he wanted me to disagree with his assessment and compliment him. I didn’t. He got offended; I got irritated. Allowing others to “criticize” us can be a litmus test for determining whether the anger we feel is born of self-protective instincts.
The mind is like a software program predictably testing the threat level of relationships. The heart relentlessly forwards responses to the head for review. You can’t eliminate them, so leverage them. Use conflict as an emotional search engine to scan your heart for relational irritants, then examine the results for ulterior motives in your approach to others. In other words, let criticism from others identify, isolate, and refine the selfishness of your heart.
The Anger of Offense
Have you ever asked yourself, “What is really happening when I am offended?” The anger of offense is a byproduct of emotional pain. When our hearts seethe against the offending party we are (perhaps unwittingly) saying, “You have hurt me.” There are at least three reasons this happens, and they are normally interconnected and bound together by the desire for our competence, accomplishments, and expertise to be recognized. They are:
・We’ve been directly criticized or challenged.
・Someone has infringed upon our plans or intentions.
・A sacred cow has been gored.
We expect others to recognize our value, and, because of selfishness, anything we tie our identity to makes us vulnerable to sinfully resenting the words and actions of others.
The anger of offense also involves fear because life outside our tested response patterns is unknown. We might go from partial validation to complete irrelevance in the eyes of others. We might (heaven forbid) have to admit to being wrong. If we are to navigate the uncontrollable responses of others and simultaneously lead a contented life, these response patterns must be deconstructed.
Extreme Character Makeover
Becoming a person who is not easily affected by others means finding satisfaction outside of human response. Each one of us must learn to accept the pain of being misunderstood as a form of suffering to be embraced. For those with eyes to see, these are the growth opportunities, the times where you wince and leave your former weakness as a molted shell in the dust.
Sounds reasonable, you say, but what if someone has said something about me that’s not true? Firstly, are you sure it’s not true? If they are right, muster your highest sensibilities and apply yourself to the necessary painful transformations and admissions. If they are wrong, correct blatant falsehood, if possible. But when it comes down to tit for tat mischaracterization or innuendo, let people criticize you. Let God define and defend whatever part of your life, desires, and accomplishments are defensible. If your accuser is in error, it doesn’t change who you are. (If you must, pretend to believe that their infraction needn’t define you until, through practice, you see that it truly doesn’t.)
What if someone is changing everything that you worked toward, devaluing your plans and efforts? Try to fully empathize with their possible reasoning and circumstance, then let your ideas stand or fall on their own merit. Discipline your mind to allow for the possibility of alternate means and outcomes. Try also to evaluate in hyperbole, ”What if my hard fought designs slip away?” The answer: you had no business trying to build in tangent to the Cornerstone anyway. If you are a believer, you never truly had anything outside of Christ to begin with. Let God define the remains of the day, so there can be some enjoyment of life without looking around the corner for more validation from others.
Ah, but what if someone else has claimed expertise in the very sand on which you built your reputation? This is more than anyone can take, right? Choose between a desire for recognition and a passion for what is real. Sometimes recognition follows expertise, but if you are tracking recognition in parallel to your efforts, you have abandoned a meaningful storyline for your efforts. Content yourself with knowing that the achievements God has wrought through you are reality and not pretense.
The Sober Assessment
Finally, in those times when God reveals that your anger is sin, express your grief to Him that such morally primitive thinking has overtaken your thoughts toward another.
Even when anger has legitimate origins, the power of its emotion must be controlled. This is the Spirit’s point of entry as the master search engine, spotlighting dark corners, helping you discern thoughts and intentions. Righteous anger transforms into grief over the fact that error has occurred, that truth has been distorted. In juxtaposition to our three bullets earlier, sober thinking looks like this:
・We resolve to acknowledge a situation as it is.
・We accept that time is required to achieve change.
・We are willing to be misunderstood.
Our hearts spin truth like the media. This tendency is an inherited, universal human flaw. For believers, our dead man still posthumously echoes delusions of grandeur from the grave. If we let our hearts tantrum whenever challenged, we remain in the shadow of moral strength, glimpsing but never accessing, and finding ever more creative causes to take offense.
On a human level, confronting ourself prior to others results in civility and self-regulation. On the Christian plane of sanctification, it is renewing the mind through overcoming covetousness. Covetousness has its roots in idolatry, which brings us full circle to the principle of letting defensiveness highlight the love of self that threatens our relationships. Understanding why people make us angry is crucial to nailing down unbelief in God’s ability to satisfy and sustain us. It may also remove a few hiccups from Christmas dinner.