Anger

At the center the most common problem we deal with is the men's anger. When you have been abusing drugs and alcohol for years you lose the respect of everyone and the easiest way to get compliance is with your anger because you have lost the power of love and respect. Certainly all men struggle to some degree with anger issues and I found this piece filled with good information and warning.

"It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation or apology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A man feels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm of passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too.

Sinful anger, when it becomes strong, is called wrath; when it makes outrages, it is fury; when it becomes fixed, it is termed hatred; and when it intends to injure any one, it is called malice. All these wicked passions spring from anger.

The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce an evil habit of the soul, a propensity to be angry, which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and morosity;

When the mind becomes ulcerated, peevish, and fretting, and like a thin, weak plate of iron, receives impressions, and is wounded by the least occurrence.

Anger is such a headstrong and impetuous passion, that the ancients call it a short madness; and indeed there is no difference between an angry man and a madman while the fit continues, because both are void of reason and blind for the moment. It is a disease that, while it prevails, is no less dangerous than deforming to us; it swells the face, it agitates the body, and inflames the blood; and as the evil spirit mentioned in the Gospel threw the possessed into fire or water, so it casts us into all kinds of danger.

“There is not in nature a thing that

Makes man so deformed, so beastly

As does uncontrolled anger.” John Webster

It too often ruins or subverts whole families, towns, cities and kingdoms. It is a vice that very few can conceal; and if it does not betray itself by such external signs as paleness and trembling of the limbs, it is more violent within, and by gnawing in the heart injures the body and the mind very much.

No man is expected to live so free of passion as not so show some resentment; and it is rather stoical stupidity than virtue, to do otherwise. Anger may glance into the breast of a wise man for a moment, but it comes to rest in the bosom of fools.

“Wise anger is like fire from the flint;

There is a great ado to bring it out;

And when it does come,

It is out again immediately.” Matthew Henry

Fight hard against a hasty temper. Anger will come, but resist it strongly. A spark may set a house on fire. A fit of passion may give you cause to mourn all the days of your life. Never revenge an injury. If you are aware of being in a passion, keep your mouth shut, for words increase it. Dr. Fuller used to say that the heat of passion makes our souls crack, and the devil creeps in at the crevices. Anger is a passion the most criminal and destructive of all the passions;

The only passion that not only bears the appearance of insanity, but often produces the wildest form of madness. It is difficult, indeed, sometimes to mark the line that distinguishes the bursts of rage from the bursts of a mad frenzy; so similar are its movements, and too often equally similar are its actions.

What crime has not been committed in the passion and outbursts of anger? Has not the friend murdered his friend? The son massacred his parent? The creature blasphemed his Creator? When, indeed, the nature of this passion is considered, what crime may it not commit? Is it not the storm of the human mind, which wrecks every better affection – wrecks reason and conscience; and, as a ship driven without helm or compass before the rushing gale, it not the mind born away, without guide or government, by the tempest of unbounded rage?

A passionate temper renders a man unfit for advice, deprives him of his reason, robs him of all that is either great or noble in his nature; it makes him unfit for conversation, destroys friendships, changes justice into cruelty, and turns all order into confusion. One angry word sometimes raises a storm that time itself cannot calm. There is many a man whose tongue might govern multitudes, if he could only govern his tongue. He is the man of power who controls the storms and tempests of his mind. But he that will be angry for anything, will be angry for nothing. If we do not subdue our anger it will subdue us. Our passions are like the seas, agitated by the winds; and as God has set bounds to these, so should we to those – so far shalt thou go, and no farther.

Angry and choleric men are as ungrateful and unsociable as thunder and lightning, being in themselves all storm and tempests; but quiet and easy natures are like fair weather, welcome to all, and acceptable to all men; they gather together what the other disperses, and reconcile all whom the other pushes away; as they have good will and the good wishes of all other men, so they have the full possession of themselves, have all their own thoughts at peace, and enjoy quiet and ease in their own fortunes, how little so ever it may be.

But how is it with the angry man, and who thinks well of an ill-natured, churlish man, who has to be approached in the most guarded and cautious way?

Who wants him for a neighbor, or a partner in business?

He keeps all those around him in nearly the same state of mind as if they were living next door to a hornet’s nest or a rabid animal.

And how will the angry man be in business. What if business is perplexing and everything is contrary! Will a fit of passion make the wind calm, the ground productive, the market more favorable? Will bad temper draw customers, pay notes, and make creditors better natured? If men, animals, or senseless matter cause trouble, will getting “mad” help matters? Will it make men more subservient, brutes more docile, wood and stone easier to work with?

Any angry man adds nothing to the welfare of society. He may do some good, but more hurt. Heated passion makes him a firebrand, and it is a wonder that he does not kindle flames of discord on every hand.

The disadvantages arising from anger, no matter what the circumstances, should prove a remedy for the complaint. In moments of cool reflection, the man who indulges it, views with deep regret the desolations produced by a summer storm of angry passion. Friendship, domestic happiness, self-respect, the esteem of others, and sometimes property, are swept away by a whirlwind; perhaps a tornado of anger. I have more than once seen the furniture of a house in a mass of ruin, the work of an angry moment. I have seen anger make wives unhappy and cower in fear, children shake and cry out in fear of the very one they should run to for safety, all harmony lost, and the entire neighbor hood disturbed.

Anger, like too much wine, hides us from ourselves, but exposes us to others.

Some people seem to live in a perpetual storm; calm weather can never be reckoned upon when in their company. Suddenly, when you least expect it, without any adequate reason, and almost without any reason at all, the sky becomes black, and the wind rises, and there is growling thunder and pelting rain. You can hardly tell where the tempest came from. A simple accident by a child, a misunderstanding which a moments calm thought would have terminated, a chance word which meant no evil, a trifling difficulty which good sense might have removed at once, a slight disappointment which a cheerful heart would have borne with a smile, brings on earthquakes and hurricanes.

To be angry about trifles is low and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils.

Man was born to reason, to reflection, and to do all things quietly and in order. Anger takes from him this ability, transforms his manship into childish petulance, his reasoning powers into brute instinct. Consider, then, how much more you often suffer from your anger than from those things for which you are angry.

And where does it all end? More often than not, the angry man ends up alone.

Spouse gone, children lost, home shattered, friends driven off, parents left in grief.

Remember; don’t be angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself what you wish to be."

The Royal Path of Life - Photo by Tony Hnojcik