A professor at the University of Texas once gave students an unusual assignment: if you have ever thought about killing someone, write an essay about it. 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women handed in detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies. Shootings are now so common that they receive little press unless multiple people are injured or killed. What’s going on in America?

Surely, people don’t want to be angry. Or do they? Is there something that people get, something they value, from being angry?

Certainly, there is. Anger brings a burst of adrenaline; it is energizing. It provides a counterbalance to the harm people have suffered, offering a peculiar kind of equilibrium. Anger serves as a shield to protect people from further hurt. In some cases, people’s identity is indivisible from their anger. They need their anger; without it, they would not know who they are.

Anyone who has been around the church for a while knows that anger is not just a problem “out there.” It’s in here too. It is in the church, disrupting relationships and injuring families. Parental anger has caused many young people to doubt, and eventually abandon, the faith mom and dad confess. Angry splits have brought the church into disrepute.

Doctors now prescribe medication to treat menopausal hot flashes, but is there any remedy for this other kind of hot flash, the kind that injures and disrupts? There is, and it has been around for a long time, but few people know about it and fewer still are willing to take the prescribed treatment.

Anger disorder was right at the top of issues that Jesus addressed. In his deservedly famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke about the beautiful kind of life that makes living worthwhile, then went on to address the most pernicious threats to that life. First on his list was anger. Anger is a headwaters from which flows a virtual cataract of evils that can destroy families and friendships, communities and even nations.

A newspaper column does not provide sufficient space to tease out Jesus’s brilliant teaching about anger, which can be found in Matthew 5:21-26, though readers would do well to pan out and read Matthew 5-7 in its entirety. I intend simply to point out a few conclusions I have formed from studying Jesus’s and the apostles’ teaching on the subject.

For someone who desires to be free of destructive anger, the first step is to decide to stop being an angry person. Perhaps that sounds ridiculous. If it were that easy, everyone would do it. But no one said it would be easy. And even if it were, some – and perhaps even most – people would still hesitate to give up their anger.

The biblical writers repeatedly say things like, “Put away anger. Lay it aside. Get rid of it.” It is natural to think (perhaps with a flare of anger), “I would if I knew how.” But how is not the first concern. Knowing how to put aside anger no more guarantees that a person will do so than knowing how to diet guarantees a person will lose weight. The first step is to firmly decide to stop being an angry person.

It is important to understand that anger is a natural response to a blocked desire. It is even more important to understand that we are more than our desires. That is confusing in a culture where people so identify with their desires that they have no identity apart from them. It is possible to acknowledge desires without always acting on them. It is more than possible. It is necessary for even a tolerable life.

It is not enough to try to stop anger; it must be replaced. This is an intentional process that requires serious thought. A person needs a replacement for their anger. If they don’t have one, they will fall right back into it. Scripture offers plenty of help in finding a replacement.

Fear is an obstacle to overcoming anger. People will only lay down their shield of anger when they have a replacement for it: a shield of faith. For that they need God.