Week 32 Sunday
Week 32 Sunday
The Conquest of Anger
Psalm 37:8; Proverbs 16:32; 22:24-25; Matthew 5:22; Ephesians 4:31
Ernest M. Ligon says: “If the psychologist were asked to name the two major sins, from his point of view, he would probably name fear and anger. They form the basis of most of our unhappiness. They are impossible to integrate into a healthy personality.”* We have looked at fear; now we must look at anger and its conquest. First of all, we must note that there is a form of anger that is biologically helpful. Anger is often a protection against evil. The soul rises up and resists evil with deep indignation. Friedrich Nietzsche was probably right when he said, “Your virtue is of no use unless it can be lashed into a rage.” If we were incapable of anger, we should become contented moral cows in our plump comfortableness.
Jesus was angry: “He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5). But note that in his anger was grief, he was “grieved.” That determines the legitimate from the illegitimate type of anger. Where there is a sense of moral hurt, of moral grief, and not mere personal resentment in the anger, then it is right and worthy and helpful.
But note again that it was anger at something done against another. He was indignant that they had no sympathy for the stricken man. That too is a test of whether it is legitimate anger. We must be suspicious of all angers that come from hurts to ourselves. They probably have in them less moral indignation than personal resentment.
Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be angry but do not sin.” But if we are to be angry and not sin, then we must be angry only at sin, and that sin not against ourselves but others. Even this kind of anger Ephesians suggests should not be kept overnight, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.” If kept overnight, it might fester.
O Christ of the whip and the flashing eye, give us an inward hurt at the wrong done to others, but save us from personal resentments, for they destroy us. Amen.
* Psychology of the Christian Personality, 16.
Week 32 Monday
The Root of Anger
Colossians 3:8; Hebrews 12:14-17; James 4:1-3
Yesterday we saw that anger could be Christian when it had moral grief in it, and only when it was anger because of hurts to others. But we usually dress up our personal resentments in the clothes of moral indignation and try to make them respectable and Christian. This process of rationalization allows many Christians to tolerate unchristian anger. A clergyman thought he was fighting for principle, but when he honestly looked at himself, he saw that the fight had in it more personal pique than principle. He acknowledged it and got rid of it.
Those words personal pique point us to the root of anger. It is in the self. The self has its pride, and when that pride is wounded, it boils with anger.
It is therefore of no use to say, “I’ll try not to be angry.” You will almost certainly fail by this sort of trying. You cannot kill anger in your life, but you can consent for Christ to do it. And how will he do it? By striking at the root, the self. You remember when Jesus withered the fig tree, the disciples saw it “withered away to its roots” (Mark 11:20). That is the way he withers things, from the roots.
And how will he wither anger from the roots? By asking us to consent to the crucifixion of the self, in other words, its surrender. The self undergoes by that surrender its supreme mortification. It anticipates all the wounds that people can inflict upon it by deliberately wounding itself to death. Having undergone that central death wound, what can marginal wounds now do? Having been torpedoed in mid-ocean, and survived, are we now afraid of being drowned in a duck pond? After that central death, we still survive. There is a resurrection, a new creation arises. And the new creature is too great and too glad to be angered by petty annoyances.
O Christ, make me too glad and too great to be angered by petty things this day. Amen.
Week 32 Tuesday
The Anger Remains
Ephesians 4:31, 32; James 1:19-21; 3:6
Often, anger remains to plague us after the surrender. Why? Either the surrender has been partial or the cultivation of the life after the surrender has been neglected. Ninety percent of the germs that fall upon a healthy skin die in ten minutes. Health kills them. The way to kill many of these sin germs is to strengthen the organism upon which they feed. To neglect cultivation is to let our spirits get below par; when that happens, our resistance is weakened, and the disease germs get a footing, and cause havoc. After cure there must be cultivation or collapse.
But sometimes the surrender is only partial, what an Indian youth called “a feeble surrender.” That partial surrender sets up a dualism in the nature, and the dualism turns into a duel. There is a struggle for the mastery of the spirit. Anger results. We are still touchy.
The Jains of India do not take the life of another creature if they can help it. But dogs fill the streets in such numbers that they become an overwhelming nuisance, and then something must be done. So they are caught and taken out about ten miles from the city and loosed. They make their way back to the city, fighting through the intervening villages—for the dogs there will not allow them to stay—and they arrive back more lean and hungry, and therefore more bad-tempered, than ever.
Thus our tempers come back to us again, sometimes worse than ever, because we make a compromised effort to get rid of them. We try to please God and the self. We put self out a little distance, but we do not deal with it decisively. And the temper based in the self, like hungry dogs, comes back.
O Christ, we pray you to help us to consent that this self may “lay in dust life’s glory dead,” so that “from the ground there blossom red, life that shall endless be”*—and angerless. Amen.
* George Matheson, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go,” 1882.
Week 32 Wednesday
Meeting Criticism
Isaiah 29:21; Matthew 7:1-5; 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Perhaps I am drawn to write this morning on the meeting of criticism, not only because it comes in line with our thought of overcoming anger, but because yesterday I received three letters of severe criticism, and I analyzed my reactions. One of the letters was a very fair criticism and the other two were not. One of the two unjust criticisms was based on partial knowledge and the other apparently based on spleen. All three of these criticisms were about different things, and yet all were in regard to what I considered my finest efforts.
What is one to do when criticism comes? First of all, I have accustomed myself to ask if it is true. And I had to acknowledge to myself and to this friend that the criticism was a fair one. I would profit by it and use it. I would right the thing that I had overlooked. In this way my critics become my helpers. They become the unpaid watchmen of my soul. They keep me straight. I need them. One of the greatest helps to the spiritual life is healthy criticism. If you have no friend or friends to do this for you, then you are the poorer for it.
And that saving criticism may come from those whom we consider more undeveloped than we. A convert of a few weeks, a Sikh staying at our ashram, said this to me before the group: “Whenever we put difficult questions to you, you make us forget the question by going off the point and talking about something else that is very interesting. You thus dodge our questions. It isn’t honest.” We all laughed, but in opening my mouth to laugh, I swallowed the lesson! He was right. I can never forget it. And now when I don’t know the answer I say so, instead of trying, perhaps unconsciously, to save face by going off to something else. Our critics can become the very hammers of God to beat us into shape. And all of us need to be beaten into shape, for we are only Christians in the making.
O God, help me not to resent criticism, but to take it as from your shaping hand—your efforts to save me and make me. Amen.
Week 32 Thursday
Meeting Unjust Criticism
Matthew 5:44-46; 6:14-15; Romans 14:4, 13
Some of our criticisms are unjust and unfair. They may come out of partial knowledge, or out of willful misrepresentation. What is one, then, to do?
First of all, quickly breathe a prayer for your critics and for yourself. It is harder to hate people after you have prayed for them. After you have asked God to bless them, it is harder for you to curse them. Prayer pulls the sting of resentment. Your attitude becomes redemptive instead of resentful. You want to cure ignorance and help the critic get rid of the spleen. Keep your thought bathed in prayer as you think of your critic. A prayerless thought will become a resentful thought.
Second, keep saying to yourself with Luther, “My soul is too glad and too great to be the enemy of any man.” Keep an inner spiritual dignity that will keep you from descending to the level of your critic.
Third, begin to contrive ways to do good. Approach him or her. The critic will have armor up awaiting your return blow. Strike where we all are unguarded, at the heart. Overcome evil with good. The Buddha says: “If a wicked man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love. The more evil comes from him, the more good shall come from me. The poison of the slanderer’s word always returning to him, the perfume of my good deed returning to us.”
In loving one’s enemy, in turning the other cheek, as Jesus commanded and illustrated, we rise above our enemies, become superior to them, and we may win them. But if not, we have won our own souls. In either case we win.
O Christ of the smitten cheek and of the still loving heart, help us to follow you at this point. These criticisms make us writhe in pain. But may that pain drive us to you. If we are smitten by the rod of criticism, may we take it as a schoolmaster that shall lead to you. For we would come to you even if it be by the road of pain. Amen.
Week 32 Friday
Answering Critics
Matthew 27:12-14; Romans 12:14, 17, 19-21
Sometimes we shall have to answer those who wrong us. We owe it to ourselves and to them to clear up things by an explanation. If you write, then write that letter upon your knees, as it were. Don’t give them a piece of your mind—you will lose your own peace of mind if you do! And don’t think that Satan can cast out Satan, that you by acting like the devil can get the devil out of people. Write the kind of a letter that you would like to receive. And after you have written, don’t send it off that day. Sleep over it. Your subconscious mind may give you light. It will, if the Spirit of Christ is in that subconscious mind.
Perhaps you shouldn’t answer at all. Let Jesus answer for you. Luke 5:30-31 says, “And the Pharisees and their scribes murmured against his disciples, saying, ‘Why do ye eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.’ ” They murmured against the disciples, and Jesus answered for them. He often answers for me! It is safer to have him answer. His answer was deathless and redemptive; the disciples’ answer would probably have been evasive and unreal. Let Jesus answer for you!
I once wrote a devastating letter to a man, for he had attacked me. He deserved it. I submitted it to the ashram group before sending it. Their verdict was, “Not sufficiently redemptive.” They were right. Instead of writing an answer, I decided to let Christ reply for me. He did! Some months later I got a letter from the man asking forgiveness for what he had written. My reply would never have produced that apology. Christ’s did. Then let him do it for you.
O Jesus, I do not know the way to people’s hearts. I bungle. But you come in as softly as light, and oh, how redemptively! Help me to win where I cannot win. Amen.
Week 32 Saturday
Don’t Worry about Your Reputation
Matthew 5:11; Luke 6:22; 1 Corinthians 4:13; Philippians 2:5-11
“Oh,” but you say, “if I don’t answer, then what will become of my reputation? I will have to look after that.” No, you don’t. One who is living victoriously has gained victory over nervous concern about reputation. You don’t have to look after it. Look after your character, and your reputation can look after itself. Be the kind of person about whom people won’t believe things.
Besides, Jesus says, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household? So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered that will not be revealed” (Matt. 10:25-26). In other words, don’t be afraid of your reputation, if they call you Beelzebub, for the truth will out in the end. It is a moral universe, and in the end it will be just. You can wait.
The most loved man that America has produced is Abraham Lincoln. Most loved and most slandered. Nothing was too vile to print about him. And yet no one believes it now. “There is nothing covered. . . .” His slanderers slandered themselves.
When John Wesley’s wife accused him of a certain sin, he exclaimed: “There! The record is complete now, I’ve been accused of every sin in the catalogue.” But his wife succeeded only in burying herself beneath her own slanders. “There is nothing covered. . . .”
“People do talk about me so,” bitterly complained a particularly loose-tongued slanderer.
“Yes,” I replied, “but honestly, haven’t you sown most of those slanders, and aren’t you now reaping them?”
She acknowledged she had.
“There is nothing covered. . . .” When a fellow Christian, who did not agree with my theology, printed a pamphlet saying that I was “the most dangerous devil in China,” I felt rather assured that I belonged to the household of him who was called Beelzebub. At least he seemed very, very near to me at that time. I was in wonderful company! Besides, “there is nothing covered. . . .”
O Jesus Christ, purest of souls and yet called Beelzebub, the lord of filth. Help me not to be nervous about my reputation. Help me to have faith at this point too. Amen.