LANGY PERSON FREE
If you believe you have a problem with anger, if you have confessed that to others, and if you have a ruthless agenda for putting this monster to death, then you are in the advanced course of sanctification and please feel free to teach the rest of us. This should scare us all, unless, of course, we are certain that we have a problem with anger. Now, back to the matter of the how the angry person doesn’t get the message. Don’t let it authorize one blasted scrap of anger. “Be angry and don’t sin” – forget about trying to master that one. If I am angry because of what someone did to me, I am always wrong. If I am angry because of what was done to another person I am on safer ground. By that I mean that since ninety-nine percent of my anger is sinful, I don’t want to give tacit permission to my frustration by calling it righteous indignation. I want to have no wiggle room for righteous indignation. How? By zeroing in on the more subtle expressions of anger, such as a critical attitude toward someone, complaining, not wanting another’s best, jealousy at the level of my imagination, any hint of “I am right and you are wrong,” sarcasm, or “whatever.” I want to keep asking my wife and at least one other person if they have seen me frustrated or angry. I hate anger.īut I also want to hate this evil in myself before I hate it in other people. The problem with anger is that those who don’t have the problem take it to heart those who are angry are confident in their right-ness and over time can become massively, utterly, completely deluded, blind and (this is no exaggeration) can feel quite good about themselves after bludgeoning someone close them, as if they have set the world aright. This “deafness” is common, but with some sins, the consequences are far worse than those of uncommitted graduate students. The students who didn’t have the problem heard me the ones who had the problem were deaf.
The ones who repented were diligent and faithful. They were, of course, THE WRONG STUDENTS. The next day they came and asked my forgiveness. I want you to consider what you are doing here and decide if you want to continue.”Īnd a handful of students went home and repented. I said something like, “Some of you are not prepared for class and are just going through the motions. I stopped for a moment from the fascinating world of t-tests and spoke personally to them. Some of the students were not putting in any effort. Fine students, dead boring material – statistics, research design – though I tried my best to make it interesting. Only once have I rebuked a class of students.
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