We’ll find ourselves getting annoyed at the simplest, most harmless things - the things that really shouldn’t make us mad. And when our loves get disordered, our anger goes haywire. It’s that insidious shift that turns blessings into idols. It’s the slippery terrain that goes from really loving our children to finding our identity in them, to thinking that our lives are pointless without the prosperity of our posterity. Those Inordinate Affectionsĭisordered loves, or “inordinate affections,” as Augustine called them, are part of the age-old problem of taking good things and making them ultimate.
As much as we love our children and care about innocent victims, our anger typically points to other loves - disordered loves, as Keller calls them. It is unbelievably horrible.īut if we’re honest, as much as there are right instances for our anger, most of our anger isn’t connected to the incidental dangers surrounding our children or the wicked injustices happening across the world.
It also would be right that we get angry about Boko Haram’s hideous evil in Nigeria. The delivery guy puts our children in danger. It is right that we get angry with the delivery guy who speeds down our street when our kids are playing in the front yard. “The question isn’t who gets angry, but why we all get angry.”
Anger is love in motion to deal with a threat to someone or something we truly care about. “In its uncorrupted origin,” says Tim Keller, “anger is actually a form of love” (“ The Healing of Anger”). In one degree or another, anger is our response to whatever endangers something we love. The Love Behind AngerĪnger doesn’t come out of nowhere. In her article “Why Anger Is Bad For You,” neurophysiologist Nerina Ramlakham says, “Now we separate people differently into those who hold rage in and those who express it out.” The question, then, isn’t who gets angry, but why we all get angry.Īnd why we get angry has to do with love. But the truth is, everyone gets angry - it’s just expressed in different ways. Some personalities tend toward red-faced eruptions others are unflappably relaxed and easygoing. Traditionally, the anger issue has been divided up between those who get angry and those who don’t. Anger is more than a problem for “you angry people.” It is actually a problem for all of us - that includes you and me. Which means all you angry folks better watch out it’s a dangerous foible.īut wait.
New studies argue that regular feelings of anger increase the likelihood for heart disease, and that within two hours of an outburst, the chances of a heart attack or stroke skyrocket. Anger is not good for you, at least not in its typical form.
0 kommentar(er)
