In the wake of the past three years, I continue to see a shift in the public narrative around what we all have experienced. There are some reckonings coming to light, and some authentic awakenings happening in the lives of people I pay attention to, both in my private life and in the public space. There was no way any of us were going to emerge from the rubble of the past few years without marked change in some area of your life or thought life. That is just the way God works through things.
Another thing I have seen spike, and had hoped to see wane by now is the outrage and anger regarding the fallout of the pandemic and every other wild agenda that followed it. I myself lingered a little longer than I care to admit in the pit of the belly of anger, but a softening has begun to take root in me over the last 2 years and it has helped me to overcome staying there any longer than I needed to. I am sure all of us have found ourselves pinned to an anger or an outrage at some point, the question is what happens if we remain there? What happens if we cannot surrender this rage that stirs up at all things "unfair"? Surely, you must realize that the great injustices of the Covid-19 pandemic were a tiny little drop of injustice compared to what most of the non-western world has endured for a long, long time. Sometimes our wildly blind and blessed existence here in the west really shows our lack of perspective and ability to endure.
Look if there's one thing that the pandemic of 2020 taught us, it is that humans will absolutely NOT live from "The Golden Rule" when it counts. It really doesn't matter what your stance is on how that was handled, you can absolutely sit on either side of any of those arguments and see that we were not, in fact, all in it together. It was every man or every family or every tribe for themselves, period. That is humanity when it is placed in a space of fear. Whether you were fearful of the virus or fearful of your freedoms and rights: that fear created outrage, anger, resentment and self-centered action. It was a much needed wake up call for me, my soul, and my household.
We humans when left to fear and anxiety, will act out of anger primarily. What studies have found to also be true is that sadness, by contrast, decreases anger in our response. In fact, this fascinating study on the neural basis of fear from 2018 suggests that sadness counteracts the anger response that fear incites in humans.
This supports the teachings found throughout the Bible regarding Fear and what it says about Compassion for Others. It also brings to mind a specific Psalm that directs us to put aside Anger and Wrath, in particular regarding those types of "righteous angers" we might feel qualify as "social justice" for example: We are told to "Love Righteousness" and "Hate Wickedness" (Psalm 45:7) as well as "Hate the deeds" of the wicked (Rev 2:6), and there are countless verses that guide us to turn away or hate sin or wickedness without turning those emotions on the person doing them.
I want to focus on a particular message found in Psalm 37, where the type of emotions being addressed are specifically regarding unjust or unfair gain of the wicked and the call to those who are being oppressed or seeing oppression. This Psalm is thoughtful and poetic but also direct in its warnings. It is a lengthy chapter so I will not add it here, but I encourage you, the reader, to pause and read it in its entirety.
We are instructed:
"Do not get upset because of evildoers, do not be envious of wrongdoers.
Trust in the Lord and do good. Live in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him. Rest in the Lord and wait. Do not get upset by those who succeed in their wicked deeds and schemes.
Cease From Anger. Abandon Wrath. Do Not Get Upset - It only leads to evil.
Those who are humble, and who wait on the Lord will inherit the land. "
True Justice can only be carried out by the truly just. There is only one who can carry out justice and is able to be fairly angered and dispense wrath. God is asking us to Trust Him and let Wrath be His. He promises to reward those who can do this.
One important verse I want to note here is verse 8 : "Cease from Anger and Wrath, do not get upset; it leads only to evildoing." God is telling us to let go of anger, rage, wrath and anxiety. We know that these are all symptomatic emotions born of Fear.
If we simply scroll up to verse 5 you can see where he knows this to be true as He is the one who designed us this way "Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him and He will do it." For if we trust in Him, we have no room for fear - and if we have no fear we will have no anger, wrath or anxiety.
So what do we do about what we are learning now regarding sadness? What can we learn about the way God designed us in a way that sadness actually decreases anger in our bodies and minds and counteracts fear?
I would say the answer is Compassion. We need to seek out earnestly compassion for the wicked. Compassion for the oppressors. Not justification or ordaining of their deeds, not enabling of their actions, but compassion for them as people. These are people who are very much deceived, either by those around them, or by the very powers in the air that are bent on their destruction. If we believe God then we know that these people are destined for destruction if they do not turn from their ways, as are each one of us.
If we can see them as lost people in need of truth, we can find sadness in our hearts for them. This goes for everyone: friends, family, enemies, politicians, predators, abusers.
If we can see them for the broken and ruined hearts that they are, we can access sadness for them, we can access compassion for them. If we can manage to do this, our probability of reaching those types of people put into our path greatly increases.
So I am not saying we should all set out to be the Eeyore in the room, instead, we should work our energy away from fear of those who would do us harm and move it towards compassion. At the very least, our benefit is removing the toxic buildup of anger and resentment in our minds and our bodies. How does this relate to our own health?
The Bible talks a lot about how anger impacts the heart - today we know this to be literal and scientifically proven to be true:
Damaging to the Heart. “In the two hours after an angry outburst, the chance of having a heart attack doubles,” says Chris Aiken, MD, an instructor in clinical psychiatry at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and director of the Mood Treatment Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “Repressed anger — where you express it indirectly or go to great lengths to control it, is associated with heart disease,” says Dr. Aiken. In fact, one study found that people with anger proneness as a personality trait were at twice the risk of coronary disease than their less angry peers.
Anger ups your stroke risk. This study found there was a three times higher risk of having a stroke from a blood clot to the brain or bleeding within the brain during the two hours after an angry outburst.
Anger problems can make your anxiety worse. In a 2012 study published in the journal Cognitive Behavior Therapy, researchers found that anger can exacerbate symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by an excessive and uncontrollable worry that interferes with a person’s daily life. Not only were higher levels of anger found in people with GAD, but hostility — along with internalized, unexpressed anger in particular — contributed greatly to the severity of GAD symptoms.
It weakens your immune system. If you're mad all the time, you just might find yourself feeling sick more often. In one study, Harvard University scientists found that in healthy people, simply recalling an angry experience from their past caused a six-hour dip in levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, the cells’ first line of defense against infection.
Anger is also linked to depression. “In depression, passive anger — where you ruminate about it but never take action — is common,” says Aiken.
Hostility can hurt your lungs. Not a smoker? You still could be hurting your lungs if you're regularly angry. A group of Harvard University scientists studied 670 men over eight years using a hostility scale scoring method to measure anger levels and assessed any changes in the men's lung function. The researchers theorized that an uptick in stress hormones, which are associated with feelings of anger, creates inflammation in the airways.
There is more than enough scientific and medical evidence to convince me that it is more than worth trying to take any residual frustration, outrage or anger at the injustice in this world and turn it into compassion - or at the very least, try to convert it to sadness for the state of things and the state of people who feel they need to treat others this way. Short-term it will help impact your physical and emotional health, and
long-term it could lead to a deeper ability to connect and lead others to really know Love.
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