My angry car

I was meeting with a pastor/mentor some years ago (more than 20) and we were talking about conflict resolution.  His assertion in the conversation was that Christians should not be angry.  I am still angry when I remember it.  It is a ridiculous thing to construct any phrase which includes "should not" followed by any emotion.  "You should not be happy", or "you should not be sad" are statements we would be LESS likely to say but which are essentially the same.  They seek to prohibit the experience of emotion.  The only way to accomplish this would be to destroy one's feeling being entirely.  Not a good idea.

Anger we seek to prohibit most particularly.  We are fine with people being happy (or most folks are) and can live with people being sad (but sometimes not, as we rush to comfort them with kleenex in hopes the tears will stop for all our sakes), but we cannot tolerate anger.  We will redefine it as some nicer word.  "Frustration" is a popular choice.

But what do the Scriptures say about anger?  Interestingly enough there is no prohibition of the emotion in the Bible.  God is described as angry and Jesus appears to have been, ahem, "frustrated" when he chased the money changers out of the temple.  Indeed, the wisdom of the Bible suggests a couple of things.  First that "in your anger do not sin." (Ephesians 4:26)  It is not the emotion, but what we do with it that causes the problem.  Second, it is also suggested that we not let the sun go down on our anger. (also Ephesians 4:26)  This is sage advice, because anger stored becomes wrath and bitterness.

I am not saying that anger cannot be dangerous.  Of course it can.  As can unrelenting sadness.  James in his letter tells us we should be slow to become angry as our anger does not bring about God's righteousness. (James 1:20) I'm down with that.  SLOW to anger - not anger-free.  Habits of anger may be rooted in an unholy sense of entitlement or pride and indeed should not be indulged.  (Note here the should is attached to what we do with the anger not the felling itself.)

Anger is one of the emotions with which God has gifted us.  And I am not using the word "gifted" sarcastically.  It is a gift for two reasons (and here I get to the uses of anger).  First, when we feel angry it tells us that some boundary we have has been crossed or that some expectation we had was not met.  Now here is where it is useful.  When I feel angry, I ask myself, "What boundary has been crossed?  What expectation has gone unmet?"  Once I have identified that I am wiser, but then can ask a supplemental question, "Was it a reasonable boundary or expectation?"  If the answer to the second question is "yes" my response to the anger will be different than if my answer is "no."

Second, there is a lot of energy in anger.  I was once very angry with some people in my church - shocking, I know.  I went out into the driveway and washed and waxed my car within an inch of its life.  It looked beautiful!  A good use of the energy.  Sometimes the energy in anger will actually move us to take action on something that has been long overdue.  Feeling overwhelmed (another anger euphemism) at expectations placed on me and my team at work, I was spurred to have a very fruitful conversation with my boss about what could be done.

Felling ticked today?  Ask yourself what boundary has been crossed and whether it is a reasonable one.  In your anger do not sin.  It might be a good day to clean your car.

Carrie lives here

About 25 years ago, when my wife and I were living in Toronto, we went to a church which was within walking distance of our apartment.  All to the good, since we had no car.  On the walking route to the church we passed a particular apartment building in which lived a good friend of my sister-in-law.  While not every Sunday, many Sundays when passing the apartment, my wife would comment, "Carrie lives here."  She said this frequently enough that the phrase itself, "Carrie lives here" has become a shorthand version of saying, "Yes, you have told me that several times."  Our entire family understands the phrase and what it means as well as the story behind it.  If someone seems to be needlessly repeating themselves, we need but say, "Carrie lives here" and all move on.  As an aside, a couple of years ago we were at a party for my sister-in-law at which said Carrie was in attendance.  We introduced her to our kids as "Carrie, of 'Carrie lives here' fame."

There is often similar subtext to many comments.  Some of them, like ours, would be nonsensical if you did not understand the history.  Others may make perfect sense independently yet become even more meaningful if the subtext or context is understood.  Here's one that I came across recently in my reading which is like this latter - more meaningful if the context is understood:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 
1 John 1:5

For us, perhaps, this hardly a startling statement - that God is light without any darkness.  Indeed it is almost an unremarkable theological statement.  But Carrie lives here - there is a story, a subtext.  St. John the Evangelist, disciple of Jesus and Apostle, was Jewish but possessed a philosophical mind which had a keen understanding of Greek thought.  His Gospel is a remarkable articulation of orthodox Hebrew thought expressed in the intellectual language of the Greeks.  In his Gospel, but more particularly in his epistles, St. John is writing to warn the fledgling church against the gnostic thought which was prevalent in the culture and which threatened to infect the church.

Gnosticism is protean in form and thus had many expressions and manifestations.  But at its core it is a belief that salvation is found in gnosis, in knowing the right things and teaching. (There is a modern psychological gnosticism which suggests that if we know or understand the problem we will be cured of it.  Christian thought insists that the cross is necessary for healing and salvation.  But I digress.)  Gnosticism is often characterized by a dualism, valuing the spiritual while despising the material.  Sadly, the church is still not free of it.

One other expression of this dualism is the cosmic battle between good and evil, light and dark, God and the devil.  (Again not a truly Christian perspective.  God is good and beyond or higher than the devil.  The devil's antagonist is St. Michael the Archangel, not God.)  One of the most common places we see this dualistic thought is in the Yin and the Yang - a round circle divided into paisley halves of white and black, with a drop of white in the black and vice-versa.  The symbol is an articulation of the cosmic struggle but with the assertion that in the darkness there is a little light and in the light there is a little darkness.  And this thought is common today and was in St. John's day.

And thus the statement, "God is light and in him is no darkness at all" is a strong theological statement against the dualist Yin and Yang notion.  Carrie lives here.  There is a subtext.  There is no darkness in God, says St. John.  Many around you will talk Yin and Yang.  Do not be confused.  He is goodness untouched by any evil, light unadulterated by any darkness.

And that matters.  Because only the God of unalloyed light, goodness, and holiness, is worthy of our praise and adoration.

Except that I don't

I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, and he will hear me
Psalm 77:1 ESV

"I cry aloud to God."  Except that I don't.

Other than public worship and prayer in small groups, I am in the habit of silent prayer.  Even when there are words to my prayer they have only thought and no voice.  And I had not even thought about it until I read Psalm 77 this week.  Just for the record, this is not my first reading of Psalm 77 but it is the first time "I cry aloud" struck me and made me think.

There are perhaps good reasons for voiceless prayers.  Or at least I think of them as good reasons.  God, of course, is not limited in that he can only hear my prayers if they are actually voiced.  He hears the silent thoughts in my head.  And were I a mute, unable to voice my prayers, he would hear them with perfect clarity.  You don't have to say it out loud for God to hear.

Another good reason for my silent supplication is simply decorum.  First it disturbs others around me less if I am silent.  This is true when using the word "disturb" in the sense of distract or in the sense of "creep out".  I am often saying my prayers in the morning while my family is milling about, readying for the day.  talking to God aloud disturbs and interrupts them: "What's that you said Dad?" - "Nothing.  Wasn't talking to you."

In other situations, perhaps on a crowded bus, praying aloud disturbs others in the latter sense.  But I could always pretend I was talking on my bluetooth cell.  It is difficult, however, to make the collect for peace, which begins "O God, who art the author of peace," sound conversational.  Quiet whispering these prayers does not necessarily make them less disturbing in this latter sense.  Indeed it might make it more so.

Yet even when I am alone, praying out loud feels strange and uncomfortable.

But the psalmist says, I cry aloud.  Why?  The expression here is perhaps merely poetic, if merely is a word one can fairly use with the poetic.  Psalm 77 as a whole is a lament.  The psalmist is in distress.  And in distress, perhaps, I cry out.  Normally I wouldn't but as I seek for consolation and comprehension in distress and confusion, I cry out to God.  Except that I don't.

Suffering and distress easily may deepen my muteness in prayer as I sink into my own thoughts.  And that perhaps is the important bit.  In silence I sink into my own thoughts.  Speaking aloud gets me a little out of my own mind and into a conversation with Someone.  In silence my mind and prayers wander.  Aloud, they wander less.  Speaking prayers aloud brings a focus and makes it seem more like the conversation is it meant to be.

And one other thing occurs to me.  In crying aloud we engage our bodies in prayer, or at least the physical apparatus that makes sound.  Audible prayer embodies or enfleshes it in a way that silent prayer does not. In that sense it is a uniquely human way of praying.  The angels, who technically have no bodies and are spirit alone, pray in their thoughts.  As humans with vocal chords, we alone may cry aloud.

I read Psalm 77 yesterday.  This morning, I went to a place by myself and "cried aloud."  I gave actual voice to my prayers.  I cannot say that it transformed my experience of prayer, but it was a small obedience to what I had read the previous day.   And that alone may have been the point.