David
Powlison comments, “In Western culture, many theories of anger treat
it as an emotional fluid that builds up pressure and must be
released. This ‘hydraulic’ theory of anger contributes to the pop
wisdom that anger, ‘just is, and is neither good or bad.’ Why does
this theory seem plausible? Because images such as the following
capture what anger can feel like: A person’s anger can be ‘pent up’;
‘his pump is primed.’ People can be ‘boiling mad,’ ‘filled’ with anger,
waiting to ‘explode’. They ‘blow off steam.’ Old, unresolved anger
can be ‘stored up inside,’ ‘harbored’ for decades. If you ‘get it off
your chest’ so that your anger is ‘spent,’ you feel better.

“All these metaphors depict anger as a pressurized substance inside us. No doubt, these colorful depictions do
capture how anger feels. But a metaphor is not meant to overpower the
thing it intends to illustrate. Anger feels fiery, but it’s not a
fire. The solution to sinful anger is not to surgically remove the
furnace or to drink enough water to quench the flames! The solution is
a moral one: to ‘turn’ from sin to God’s grace in repentant faith.”

David Powlison, Anger: Escaping the Maze
(Phillipsburg, NJ.: P&R Publishing, 2000) p. 3. To obtain a copy
of this very helpful booklet, call Resources for Changing Lives,
1.800.318.2186.

_________________
Brian Hedges is Senior Pastor of Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, MI.


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On March 28th
of 2004, “Shannon Kramer’s plans to fire a rocket toward his
girlfriend went awry when the firework ricocheted inside his car and
dived between his legs, bursting in a display that burned hair and
skin from his feet to his groin, police said.

Kramer, 35, told The Florida Times-Union
he lit a fuse on the 6-inch-rocket, but wasn’t able to get it out the
window of his Ford Mustang before it went off. Seconds later, after
the rocket blasted around inside the car, Kramer was burned and
temporarily blinded.

’I thought I was dead,’
he said. ‘I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. I went to stand up and I
couldn’t walk.’ Kramer said he suffered second-degree burns and a cut
on one leg. His eyelashes and a lot of body hair are gone and an
outline of his sandals is burned onto his feet.

Jacksonville
police were called to the explosion about 9:30 p.m. Sunday and were
told a man who had been threatening his girlfriend with a bomb had a
mishap. Kramer said he was only playing a prank and was intending to
fire the rocket out the window as he passed . . . . Kramer said the
rocket, which resembled a bottle rocket, was the diameter of a golf
ball. ‘I had a couple but this was the biggest,’ he said. ‘No more of
those.’”

Kramer, very foolishly, was playing
with an explosive that was highly dangerous. He lost control, it
exploded, and he was blinded, deafened, and badly burned. Anger is a
lot like that bottle-rocket. When a person has a short fuse, he very
often loses control. In a moment of provocation, his temper explodes,
and in the moment of rage, he is blind and deaf to all reason. But
when all is said in done, he, and often many others are severely
burned.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/national/main609872.shtml

_________________
Brian Hedges is Senior Pastor of Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, MI.


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An
Omaha man recently discovered a creative, but not redemptive, way to express
his anger.  According to news reports, he had been ticketed by the city for
not mowing his grass, so he mowed it.  The problem is that he mowed an obscene
expression in the grass.  The obscene phrase covered an area of about 30 feet
across the lawn.  Local officials had a debate concerning what to do.  The big
argument was whether or not he had broken a law and whether or not his expression
was protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

 

_______________

J.
Michael Shannon is professor of preaching at Cincinnati Bible College in Cincinnati,
OH.


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According to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, cut off
a great part of her hair after a quarrel with her husband. She then asked an
artist to paint her with her new hairstyle with her holding the clump of cut
hair. She thus immortalized the quarrel. Sometimes we have to let things go.
How many of us are clutching the remnant of some argument that needs to be
forgotten?

___________________________

Illustration by J. Michael Shannon, Professor of Preaching, Cincinnati Bible
College & Seminary, Cincinnati, OH.


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