Handling Anger: The Beachhead

(This is part 2 in a short series of posts on handling anger responsibly.)

Anger has a wide blast radius. All of us are affected by it and some of us are controlled by it. It causes us to do and say things we would never do and say if anger weren’t present. That makes us anger’s slaves. Others of us have been controlled by someone else’s anger. We refrain from doing what we should because anger is present. That’s another form of slavery.

Some of us have gone beyond being controlled by anger and have become addicted to it. We need it. It enables us to feel. It motivates us to act. Anger is our drug of choice. We want it to course through us. It makes us feel righteous and powerful. It assures us that we are not witless sheep or frightened slaves … even as we bleat in unison with anger and jump to obey its commands.

Being dependent on anger is like living on a houseboat just upstream of Niagara Falls … without an anchor. Unless you do something quickly, you’re going over. Making excuses is not doing something, nor is blaming others for our anger. We need to stop making excuses and start taking steps.

Step one: Understand what expressing anger wrongly does: it rolls out the red carpet and invites the devil to take up residence in your life and home. This is Ephesians 4:26-27: “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

The word the NIV translates as “foothold” has a military feel in this context. The idea is that the devil is looking to establish a beachhead from which he can launch attacks against us and our families.

Anger provides that beachhead. And when anger continues over time, it gives the devil a veritable base of operations in our lives. To yield to anger, to sin in anger, gives the devil place.

But there is another side to this that we need to understand. When we refrain from sinful expressions of anger, we give God place. Listen to Romans 12:19, where Paul uses the same Greek word that is translated “foothold” here: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room (give place) for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” When we are angry but don’t sin, we give God a place from which to launch his campaign on our behalf. The place of anger and temptation can becomes the site of God’s operations in our lives. Turning to God when we are angry can be one of life’s most important turning points.

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Handling Anger: The Begotten Consumes the Begetter

(This is the first of several posts regarding anger and what to do with it.)

I believe we were living through a pandemic before any of us had heard of COVID-19. Like COVID, this malady is communicated from person to person. It devastates families, harms economies, impacts businesses, and creates mental health problems. It has taken untold lives and has torn the social fabric at every level, from families to nations.

This calamity has affected everyone; it is truly pandemic. It has been estimated that COVID-19 will cost the world economy 21 trillion dollars. I suspect that is pocket change compared to what this other pandemic has cost the world.

What is it? It is anger.

Anger is not a nameless, faceless woe. For millions of people, anger has a name: dad. For millions of people, anger has a face: mom’s. Anger can even be embodied – God help us – in our own bodies.

What would you think of a person with COVID-19 who knowingly went into a setting where vulnerable people lived, say a nursing home, and began transmitting the virus? You would be horrified. But when it comes to anger, that happens every day as people knowingly spread it to their families and friends.

Perhaps you don’t think that anger is that bad. After all, the Bible doesn’t say that anger is a sin. So what if I get angry? Everyone gets angry from time to time. It is the human condition.

I couldn’t agree more. Everyone gets angry. It is no more a sin to get angry than it is to get COVID. But to knowingly spread that anger to your family and friends, to infect them – that is another matter.

COVID-19 is airborne; it spreads through talking, coughing, and singing while in close proximity to others. Anger spreads in a different way: through words (both spoken and printed), gestures, profanity, condemnation, and contempt. Anger is so contagious that it doesn’t even require personal contact. Ground Zero for an anger event can be thousands of miles away. It spreads over bandwidth, through text, email, Facebook, and the (so called) news media.

We’ve all heard of people and corporations making money from COVID. Guess what? People peddle anger for the same reason. Many talk radio folks, media stars, writers, and news personalities are experts at making money from anger. They spread it intentionally to fund their extravagant lifestyles. May God have mercy on their souls.

Jesus warned about anger and made it clear that, if we ignore his warning, we will face serious consequences. Because he knew anger is transmitted through contempt, he prohibited it categorically. Calling someone names – idiot, fool, stupid – is comparable to going into the nursing home with the coronavirus and coughing on all the residents.

Maybe you think I am exaggerating. Anger isn’t as bad as all that. Years of being positioned to see into families and seeing the fallout from harmful (sinful) expressions of anger – the brokenness, anxiety, depression, division, hatred, mental illness, and more – has taught me otherwise.

Anger has a wide blast radius. The one person who is always injured in the blast is the angry person himself, who suffers physically, emotionally, and spiritually – anger gets in the way of knowing God. Anger is frequently devastating to the person who is its object. It can even affect bystanders who witness it. Anger leads to two familiar ends: the reproduction of anger and the generation of fear.

Anger is self-perpetuating. Over the years, people have admitted to me that they have an anger problem (usually after serious damage has already been done). Nearly always, the person whose anger has damaged relationships and ruined lives had an angry parent. Anger begets anger – and it’s reproduction rate is out of sight.

And when it comes to anger, the begotten sometimes consumes the begetter. I have known parents whose anger bred anger in their children, and now the children’s anger is eating the parents alive. And of course those children have children – and the cycle goes on.

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You Can’t Argue with That

In years past, I would occasionally tune into The McLaughlin Group on PBS. The show featured John McLaughlin and four fellow-journalists, two of whom were politically liberal and two who were politically conservative. McLaughlin sat in the center, tossing questions to the panel like a skipper throwing chum to bait sharks.

Then the battle would begin, panelists interrupting each other, voices growing louder and more belligerent. McLaughlin himself would frequently bark, “You’re wrong,” at a panelist with whom he disagreed, assuming that his own reasoning was incontrovertible and his conclusions self-evident.

More than once, my wife asked me, “Why do you watch this? All they do is yell at each other.” Channeling John McLaughlin, I bluntly disagreed. But she had a point.

In my own experience, nothing has ever been settled and no one convinced because I raised my voice. Facts are good. Arguments are not. Arguments spawn arguers, not answers.

If that is so, our nation is in a bad place because nearly everyone is raising their voice. We are the most argumentative people in generations. We now have technological pillboxes from which we, unseen, can send a volley of argumentation at our opponents while remaining shielded from their counterarguments. At the same time, there are fewer listening posts than ever before—and most of those we do have are abandoned. We simply never have to hear what our opponents are saying.

Contrast that with the Emperor Antonius, adoptive father to the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius. He was said not only to tolerate frank opposition, but to be “pleased if somebody could point to a better course of action.” Such openness to reason has always been uncommon. In today’s climate, it is astonishing.

My wise attorney friend John Lewis recently shared with me a warning a theology professor once gave his class: It is rare for someone to change their minds about any theological position for which they have argued. What is true in theology is true in any discipline, whether economics, politics, or nutritional studies.

Something happens to us psychologically whenever we argue for a position. A switch is thrown, as it were, which closes the door on new information. It is not merely that we can no longer cross over to the other side; we can’t even adjust our position on our own side. The switch that closed the door has locked us into place.

This is why we should be careful not to argue. Should we find that we cannot do otherwise, we must at least put ourselves in a place where we are forced to listen to our opponents’ arguments and understand their positions. The proverb is right: “The one who gives an answer before he listens—that is his folly and his shame.” It is also a sign of intellectual cowardice.

This is not to say we should not have convictions – far from it. And we can, and sometimes should, make those convictions known. But we don’t need to argue to do so. We need to clearly articulate our positions and explain our reasons for holding them. Society needs more than reasoned arguments. It needs reasonable people.

I write this as a recovering – and sometimes lapsing – debater. What vodka is to an alcoholic, a good debate is to me, though debates are a stimulant, not a depressant. They wake me up, get me going, give me energy. They don’t dull my senses; they sharpen them. Unfortunately, they also sharpen my tongue. Arguments, like alcohol, can destroy relationships.

I’ve come to think that people are not talked into the truth. Occasionally, though, they can be listened into it. That never happens when we argue.

Because I am a recovering debater, I taped a quote from the 19th century Scottish churchman Alexander Whyte on my pulpit desk: “Eschew controversy, my brethren, as you would eschew the entrance to hell itself! Let them have it their own way. Let them talk, let them write, let them correct you, let them traduce you. Let them judge and condemn you, let them slay you … You have not enough of the Divine nature in you to be a controversialist.”

I can’t argue with that.

(First published by Gannett.)

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My Sheep Follow My Voice

In John 10:6, Jesus uses a “figure of speech” (Greek, ) one that requires insight to understand the point. We may miss that point, perhaps not from lack of insight, but from lack of cultural familiarity. Jesus’ teaching here is clothed in a figure of speech, but it was very familiar clothing to Jewish people of the first century. It is not to us.

For one thing, it is about sheep, and everyone there and then – unlike here and now – knew something about sheep. For another, Jesus talks about shepherds, and not only did everyone know about shepherds, the Old Testament often used the word shepherd to refer to teachers and national and religious leaders. In this figure of speech, the sheep represent people like us, the robbers represent the religious leaders of the day, and the Good Shepherd represents Jesus.

I would rather be classified among the sheep than the robbers. It is not, however, a compliment to be compared to a sheep. I remember an old truck driver telling me that sheep are about the most stupid animals he had ever hauled. If allowed, he said, the sheep will congregate so tightly in a corner of the truck trailer that some of them will be suffocated.

The old Scot preacher, Andrew Bonar, once told how sheep in the Scottish Highlands wander off into the rocks and get into places from which they cannot escape. The grass on those mountains was sweet and the sheep would sometimes jump down ten or twelve feet to reach it, and then be unable to get back out. They would stay there until they had eaten all the grass. Then the shepherd would hear them bleating in distress. But he would have to wait until they were so faint that they could not stand, and then he would put a rope around himself, and go down and pull the sheep up out of the jaws of death.

Someone asked, “Why don’t they go down when the sheep first gets stuck?” And Bonar answered, “The sheep are so foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed!”[1]

Being compared to a sheep is not a compliment, and yet, are we not like them? How often people won’t go to God until they have lost everything and have no friends left. Before he can bring us back to himself, the Good Shepherd must wait until we have given up trying to save ourselves and are finally willing to let Him save us in His own way.

Jesus says that his sheep know and follow his voice. And note that word follow in verses four and five. The shepherd does not merely speak to us; he leads us.  e is going somewhere, and he wants us to go with him. We may think that the Good Shepherd only speaks to us while we are sitting stationary in church. Certainly he may speak to us then, but his intent is that we follow him into the world, into action, into service and noble sacrifice. He does not call us to vegetate in comfort but to follow in obedience.


[1] D. L. Moody shared this story

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The Biggest of the Big Three: Love

Here is the sermon, The Love of Your Life, from 1 John 4:7-12.

Approximate viewing time: 23:00.
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How to Pray High-Impact Prayers

If someone universally acknowledged as a modern-day saint prayed regularly for you, what would he or she pray? We know what we would want them to pray: that our children would fare well, that we would have enough money to live comfortably, that our health would not fail. But is that really what a saint would pray?

We have a good idea of how a saint would pray because we know how one did pray. That saint was the Apostle Paul. We know what he prayed for because, in his letters, he made a point of telling people what requests he made to God on their behalf.

He did not tell people that he was praying for their children to fare well, or for them to be financially secure, or healthy. That doesn’t mean that he never prayed for these things but, if he did, he did not feel it necessary to mention the fact. His prayers seem to be less about people’s comfort and more about their effectiveness.

For Paul, effectiveness was not merely a matter of efficiency. Effectiveness was the result of a particular kind of life and it was for this that the great saint routinely prayed. We tend to focus our prayers on what’s going on around people. Paul focused his prayers on what was going on within them. He knew a person’s wellbeing may decline even as their circumstances improve. Indeed, it may decline because their circumstances improve.

What were the great saint’s prayer requests? They vary, depending on the people for whom he prayed and on what they needed at the time. The examples we have come from letters to Paul’s friend Philemon and to the church families in Philippi, Colossae, and Ephesus. These letters provide a model for high-impact praying.

The apostle tended to make few requests, sometimes only one, based on the particular situation of the individual or church family for which he prayed. Yet his few requests, when answered, would bring enormous benefit to the people themselves and to those around them. In the case of the Colossian church (Colossians 1:9-12), he made just one request: that its people be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.

Why this request in particular? Paul knew it was a high impact request. Knowledge of God’s will is not an end in itself but a prerequisite for living – these are his words – “a life worthy of the Lord” that will “please him in every way.” Such a life brings good into the world and leads to fulfillment and joy for those who live it.

A life that pleases God is productive – “bearing fruit” is how the apostle put it – a life that does good work in the world. Since, as Paul writes elsewhere, God has prepared good works in advance for his people to do, the knowledge of his will is crucially important.

God is also pleased when his children’s understanding of him grows. When I was a teen and young adult, I didn’t get my dad at all. He was a mystery to me. After I had children, I began to better understand him and eventually came to hold him in high regard. God wants this for his children too. Their understanding of their heavenly Father grows as they begin to grasp what he is up to. That is, when they are “filled with the knowledge of his will.”

Paul also knew that God is pleased by seeing his children grow strong. God is a father – is The Father – and no father ever wanted his children to grow up to be weaklings. The strength God wants to see is demonstrated in three ways: endurance during difficult times; patience with difficult people; and joyful gratitude no matter what.

This is not how we normally measure strength. Our usual gauges measure: what we can lift, not what we can bear; how many people we exercise power over, not how many we exercise patience with; getting what we want, not being thankful for what we have. St. Paul understood what real strength is, and his prayer reflects that understanding.

Anyone who desires to offer high-impact prayers would do well to study and imitate the prayers of St. Paul.

(First published by Gannett.)

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How to Know If God Loves You

Christians love because of who God is, but also (this is the second of the three reasons St. John gives in 1 John 4:7-12) because of what God has done. Verses 9 and 10 state: “By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Do you want to know if God loves you? Look at the cross of Christ. It is the definitive revelation of love. If you look at your circumstances and everything is going well, you will believe that God loves you—today. But tomorrow, when your circumstances have changed and everything is not well, you will have doubts. Instead of focusing on your circumstances, look to the only begotten Son, hanging on a cross, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. “In this is love.”

Brennan Manning was sitting in a foxhole in Korea with this best friend and fellow Marine Ray Brennan. These guys had grown up in Brooklyn together, double-dated together, entered the Marines together, and got deployed together. And here they were in a foxhole together, Brennan reminiscing about the good old days in Brooklyn and Ray eating a candy bar.

And then it happened. A grenade landed in the hole next to them. Ray smiled at his friend, dropped his candy bar, and threw himself on the grenade. It exploded but Brennan was saved.

When Brennan, who at that time went by Richard, later took holy orders, he was instructed to take a saint’s name. He took Ray’s last name; that’s how he became Brennan. Years later, he went to visit Ray’s mom. They sat up late one night talking and at some point, Brennan asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?”

She shot up off the couch and stood in front of him, shaking her finger in his face and shouting, “What more could he had done for you?”[1]

When we doubt God’s love, the cross shouts at us, “What more could he have done for you?” In this is love, not in our circumstances but in God sending “his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Your circumstances will try to drown out the cry of the cross. They will shout at you, “You are not loved. You don’t matter. You are nothing.” You don’t want to listen to that ugly, croaking voice, but you can’t help hearing it.

It’s only when you look at the cross of Jesus that you begin to hear a different voice. Have you ever been in a room with lots of noise, and someone is talking to you, but you can’t quite make out what she is saying over the din? Then you look at her and, like magic, you can hear what she is saying. That is what happens when we look at the cross of Christ. The din is still going on, but suddenly you can hear what God is saying. He is saying, “Yes, I love you.”


[1] Adapted from James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God (IVP, 2009), p. 142

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The Love of Your Life: Light, Fire, and Love

In 1 John 4:7-12, the Apostle of Love gives three reasons why Christians love each other. First, they love because of who God is (vv. 7-8). Second, they love because of what God has done (vv. 9-11). And third, we love because of what God is doing (vv. 12).

First, Christians love because of who God is. Who is he? He is the source of love. “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God…” The Greek here is lyrical. The King James and at least one modern version try to capture it by translating, “Beloved, let us love…” Greek is Ἀγαπητοί, ἀγαπῶμεν. “Beloved, love…” Why? Because love is from God. When Christians love one another, the source of their love is God himself. And as his love is transmitted through their emotions, minds, and wills, they experience God and are changed.

All genuine love comes from God. This means that a parent’s love for a child comes from God, even if that parent doesn’t realize or acknowledge it. The love that causes a soldier to sacrifice himself to save his brothers and sisters comes from God, though he may not know it. In some cases, the people who love do not know where that love originated, but in our case it is different. We can knowingly enter into the love God has for others, make ourselves its conduit, and so experience God’s life flowing through us.

But John goes beyond saying that love come from God. He makes the daring statement that God is love. There are some things to keep in mind. First, saying that “God is love” is a very different thing from saying that love is God. What people call love is often not the self-giving love expressed in Christ but the hungry, grasping, desire expressed by needy people. Hollywood elevates that desire to divine status and makes a fortune. But if we do the same, we will only make a mess.

God is love. This is one of four explicit statements about the nature of God in the Bible. Jesus says that God is Spirit (John 4), John says that God is light (1 John 1), and the author of Hebrews (12), quoting Deuteronomy 4, says that God is a consuming fire. Don’t get the idea that because God is love, he is a softy. That, because he is love, we can sin without consequence. For the Divine Spirit who is love is also light and fire.

Because God is light, he exposes our sins. Because he is fire, he consumes our sins. But because he is love, he has found a way to expose and consume them without destroying us.[1] That way – and it is a costly way – is the cross of Christ. It is in the cross that the God who is light shines most brilliantly. In the cross, the God who is fire burns most intensely. And in the cross, the God who is love gives most passionately.  


[1] See John Stott, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Epistles of John. pp. 160-161

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The Love of Your Life: The Three Tests

In St. John’s first letter, readers are given three self-tests that can make clear whether or not a person belongs to Christ and shares the life of the age to come. This, he says is why he wrote the letter: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

I’ve heard this verse presented as a stand-alone proof of the assurance of eternal life, but this verse clearly does not stand alone. John says, “I write these things to you … so that you may know you have eternal life.” The obvious question is: what things did he write? And the answer is, the three tests.

Each of the three tests is stated three times in the letter and with each repetition comes further elaboration. We could label one test the doctrinal test: Does a person believe that Jesus is God’s Son the Messiah who became truly human?

A second test is the life test. The person who has eternal life obeys God’s commands and pursues a Jesus-like life. This is not to say that person never sins. John knows that, apart from Jesus, anyone who claims to be without sin is self-deceived (1 John 1:8). People who pass the life-test aren’t perfect but they confess their sins and deal with them. They desire to be like Jesus and they take steps to make it so (3:1-4).

The third test could be called the social test. The first test is over what we believe. The second test is over how we live. The third test is over who we love. The person who has the eternal kind of life loves God and loves Jesus’s people.

One more thing about the three tests: they overlap a great deal. A person who is growing in faith will be growing in obedience as well. A person who grows in obedience will be getting better at loving other people. This overlap, which is mentioned numerous times in 1 John, is crystalized in a single verse in 3:23: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ [doctrinal test], and to love one another [social test] as he commanded us [life-obedience test].”

That Jesus’s people love each other is a critical component – along with the calling of a people, the giving of the law, the incarnation of God, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the impartation of the Spirit – in God’s plan for the world.

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Why I Took the COVID-19 Vaccine

(Please read this first: A good friend expressed deep concern to me that this article seemed to mock people who refuse to take the vaccine. I have reread the article because I hate the idea that it came across this way. It’s already in the newspapers, so it is too late to add this note there, but I want to clarify here. Some of the things mentioned below – for example, evidence that the vaccine causes health risks, concerns over the lack of FDA approval, the unprecedented speed at which the vaccine was released for public use – seem to me to be perfectly legitimate concerns. When I weighed these legitimate concerns against the benefits of the vaccine, it seemed to me that the benefits outweighed the concerns. I realize that people I hold in high regard weigh it differently, and I do not intend to criticize them. I am only explaining my reasons for taking the vaccine.)

COVID-19 is currently surging through our county. According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, new cases have jumped 81 percent over last week and the percentage of positive tests has doubled.

In the church I pastor, many people have decided not to take the vaccine. They have cited evidence that the vaccine causes health risks, expressed concerns over the lack of testing and of FDA approval, and protested that the vaccine is the latest example of government overreach. They have complained that other promising therapies have been unwisely ignored. They have also heard prophecies that declare the vaccine to be “the mark of the beast” mentioned in Revelation 13.

I understand and respect their choice. In the cascade of conflicting information, doubt is to be expected and certainty is unfeasible. When I first heard about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, I also had doubts. Less than seven months after President Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, the FDA had already granted Emergency Use Approval to the drugs. There is no precedent for the speed at which these drugs were developed, mass produced, and distributed. Nor, I think, for the amount of money that has changed hands in the process.

So I did some research. I read what I could find from respected scientists and from fellow Christians in the medical field. I learned that the science behind RNA vaccines like the Moderna and Pfizer drugs has been developing for the past 30 years, which explains the speed at which the COVID-19 vaccine was released.

I attended to the claims made by those who oppose the use of RNA vaccines. Some of these claims would make great story lines in a futuristic adventure movie. Indeed, some follow the plot line of “I Am Legend”: normal people are turned into something sub-human by the introduction of a vaccine into their system. I found the stories fascinating, even compelling. What I could not find was a shred of evidence to support such claims.

I dislike taking any medications. I nevertheless choose to do so in the case of the meds my cardiologist prescribed because it seems that the cost of not taking them is likely higher than the cost of taking them. After researching the RNA vaccines, I concluded the same to be true.

I also chose to take the vaccine because I refuse to be ruled by fear. When the COVID-19 virus first began to spread in the U.S., we heard daily reports of new infections and of increasing death tolls. The state shut down businesses, issued mask-orders, and social distancing guidelines.

Our church responded by taking steps to mitigate the spread of the virus. After a brief shut-down, we restarted worship services with a reduced seating capacity. We recommended mask-wearing, began a mask-required service, and stopped serving coffee and snacks. We went online and streamed services for many members of our church family who chose not to attend in-person services. We phoned our entire church family to check on their health and to offer help in getting groceries or driving to doctors.

What we did not do was panic. We tried to be wise and loving, to provide our church family with opportunities to worship together while mitigating the risk involved in doing so. In retrospect, there were decisions made over the past year that I would now make differently. But they were not made from fear.

I’ve noticed that many people who fear the virus do not fear the vaccine and many who fear the vaccine do not fear the virus. I refuse to fear either. I wear a mask when necessary because our governing authorities have required it, because I want to protect others, and because doing so does not require me to disobey God. But I do not wear a mask because I fear contracting the virus.

Likewise, I took the vaccine because I want once again to visit the church family I love in their homes and in the care facilities where some of them reside, and because taking it did not require me to disobey God. But I did not take it because of fear. I refuse to allow fear to govern my choices.

(First published by Gannett)

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