Anger Is Our Sixth Sense
"Anger is most useful as a diagnostic tool. When anger erupts in us, it is a signal that something went wrong. Something isn't working right. There is evil or incompetence or stupidity lurking about. Anger is our sixth sense for sniffing out wrong in the neighborhood. Diagnostically it is virtually infallible, and we learn to trust it. Anger is infused by a moral/spiritual intensity that carries conviction: when we are on to something that matters, that really counts...What anger fails to do, though is tell us whether the wrong it outside or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wong is outside us--our spouse or our child or out God has done something wrong, and we are angry...But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to wrong within us--wrong information, inadequate understanding, underdeveloped heart. If we admit and face that, we are pulled out of our quarrel with God into something large and vocational in God."
Taken from Eugene H. Peterson's Living the Message (SanFrancisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996: 156-7)
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2 comments:
Thank you Mac. Your posting of anger really help me to deal with it. I should identify the source of my anger and deal with it by God's guidance. No doubt, the first reasoning is outside of me. Then I am wrong at the first place already. Thank you for inspiration.
What I've learned most recently is that our anger often should be directed at Satan, the Father of Lies and the one who wants to turn all the trials God places in our way for good into temptations to do what he'd love to see happen to bring us down!
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