Tag Archive - anger

Anger: Catharsis versus Resurrection

August 17, 2010 in Culture with 2 Comments

A nice article on You Are Not So Smart challenges the idea that what we need when we are angry is an outlet. “Catharsis,” simply put, does not work.

Here is a summary of the studies cited:

If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting.

It’s drug-like, because there are brain chemicals and other behavioral reinforcements at work. If you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it.

The more effective approach is to just stop. Take your anger off of the stove. Let it go from a boil to a simmer to a lukewarm state where you no longer want to sink your teeth into the side of buffalo.

That goes for any number of desires besides anger as well. A couple of important points are worth noting. One of these is that we our bodies and our emotions are intimately connected. There are physiological consequences to how we deal with emotion.

The other thing to ponder is that such psychosomatic unity makes strong emotional responses to situations a very difficult pattern to change. From what I understand about recent research, the “brain chemical” issue isn’t just about how long you stay mad in one cycle of anger and response (for example) but also about on-going patterns of chemical production. Catharsis not only sustains a given period of anger, but such explosions make us more apt to act similarly in the future.

Once upon a time I was looking at 2 Timothy and was struck by the idea that self-discipline was the outworking of the Spirit’s presence. Which is it? The self disciplining or the Spirit? Similarly, the fruit of the Spirit list in Galatians 5 lists self-control as part of the Spirit’s effect.

Perhaps I should wonder at this less. It is the Spirit whose power raised Jesus from the dead; the Spirit who gives substance to and typifies the resurrection body itself. Maybe a rereading of these passages in light of modern psychology and neuroscience consists in recognizing that we ourselves need a physical transformation in order to realize the holiness that God has for us.

The new body that we begin now to participate in in Christ must make itself known as our minds and brains are transformed, the chemical compositions changed, through the Spiritual self-control that makes our actions new.

That Violence Thing Isn’t Important Now, Is It? Er….

February 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 20 Comments

Thanks to my good friends on Twitter, I was alerted to an article in today’s New York Times about churches putting on their own mixed martial arts as an outreach tool. Sketchy, but I get it.

Then comes the problem. The big problem. These aren’t being treated as gateway events to get people to hear a fundamentally different message, they’re being used to connect people to a “Jesus” whose “gospel” is embodied in the fighting of the mixed marshal arts.

The article quotes a pastor as saying: “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”

Yes, that’s what led the disciples to follow him too–all the way to Jerusalem. And what they, at the end, had to discover was not what Jesus came for. The battle and warfare imagery is transmogrified as violence and fighting are shunned (Peter, put away that sword!) and salvation is brought not by beating the crap out of the oppressors, but by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Why is narrative theology so important? Because the story tells us that the way of our salvation (self-giving love so that others might live) is the story we’re called not only to assent to but also to embody. “Take up your cross and follow me,” says Jesus. “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” says Paul. Oh, and we might elaborate that these desires include the rage, factionalism and the rest that go into being an ultimate fighter.

The story of the cross suggests to me that the collision of “Feet, Fist, and Faith” is no gospel at all. These ultimate fighting feet are not the feet that don’t kick, but find themselves washed. These fighting  fists are not Messianic, but Roman: the fists in Jesus’ story strike the Messiah without retaliation. This faith is not the faith of Jesus Christ that is obedience in death so that others might live.

Yeah, the Story is that important. And yeah, they’re getting the gospel that wrong.

Authenticity Part 3b: Forgiveness and Anger

January 25, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

A second issue about authenticity swirls around the nexus of anger and forgiveness.

(As an aside, and in the interest of transparency and authenticity, these first two issues are close to home for me. I tend to use more than my fair share of colorful (*ahem*) language and have been known to rage from time to time. The are neither the observations of a neutral observer nor a call to be just like me nor theological justifications for me to be just who I am. Now back to our story…)

I take these two together because… well… Jesus does. I’m such a fundamentalist. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about murder. He slides into a discussion about anger by telling us that when someone is angry it is as though the have killed the other person: they are liable to the judgment.

Here we have another indication that being “true to ourselves” isn’t always an indication that we’re living into the righteous life that God desires. In fact, the point of so much of this portion of the sermon is that who we really are can show us how bad our problem really is.

But this isn’t just about showing us we suck, Jesus wants to form us into a community that lives into the narrative of a Father who has brought forth children by the self-giving life of Jesus. And this, I think, is the turn that Jesus’ instruction takes.

After warning people not to be angry or call names, Jesus talks about life in the family of God. The family language is not accidental: “If you’re offer your gift on the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave it before the altar and go–first be reconciled to your sister or brother.”

Two things here: First, did you notice that our worship of God is given back-seat to our relationships with God’s children? Against our individualistic tendencies that see worship as a matter between me and God, or my heart alone before God, this passage says no, the quality of your community as a place that is living into the reconciled relationships that God himself establishes with us is our first priority.

But surely this attending to the other needs to be done because otherwise our hearts won’t be right in our own worship?

Nope. Here’s the second point. We don’t go and be reconciled because we remember that we’ve got to forgive someone else. We go and reconcile because we realize that they have to forgive us. Our identity as a people of forgiveness is so vital to our life before God that God demands we leave aside all pretense of piety until that issue is worked out.

Sometimes, the importance of authenticity has one redemptive function: to show us and the people around us where we need to live into the narrative that we are otherwise denying in our hearts and lives. To not forgive, or to not pursue forgiveness, is to live in denial of the story that makes us who we are. About anger in particular, James later warns us that this does not bring about (much less evince!) the righteous life that God desires.

Authenticity is not enough.

Indeed, continuing to live into the foundational moment of our story, not merely receiving forgiveness but extending it to others, is the sine qua non of continuing to participate in the story of God’s family: “If you forgive people their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but it you do not forgive people, neither will your father forgive your transgressions.”

Our call is not merely to be authentic, but to become authentically Christian, authentically children of our forgiving and loving heavenly Father.