Listening Back

First off, I cannot believe that so much time passed in the writing of this two part article.  Part one was started almost nine months ago, and I was not initially satisfied with it. The roots of the article started in an Adult Bible Fellowship study, and I promised a quick posting of the list to people in my class at that time.  I got bored then distracted with the article and kept putting it off.  I stopped writing. Recently I’ve had several nudges from people to write more for the Blog.  Now it’s Fall, the perfect time of year for doing academic type things, like writing.  So I revisited the article, edited it a bit, and decided it was worth posting.

But there are supposed to be 10 things, and I only posted five. So before I can get to the next Big Thing on my mind (an article about dominion) I need to finish the seconds set of five things.  So, here goes . . .

Most of the first five things on the list are health related:  Sleep, Hydration, Exercise, Weight Loss.  Most of the rest of the list, are Soulish and Spiritual in nature. The order of the list is not intended to imply an order of importance.  Rather is meant to be somewhat developmental. That is, sometimes we need to take care of our bodies before we can care for our souls; a phenomenon first observed by Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs.  In contrast to most developmental processes, however, you need not wait to finish the first five before you begin the second five.  The list is, after all, intended to be Simple.

Simple is not necessarily easy however.  And these next five “Things” are decidedly process oriented things. That is, you make the choice to do them in your life (simple), but they will necessarily lead to other changes in your life.  In the end they might not be so simple.  It’s a lot like learning to read.  If you are reading this now, it feels pretty simple.  Just open the text and read it.  But your ability to read was initially complex. It took a few years to learn to read, first learning the alphabet, then learning how syllables or phonemes correspond to sounds, learning about grammar, and expanding your vocabulary, deepening your knowledge of metaphor and writing convention etc.  Now you can read without thinking about the mechanics of reading; it’s simple.  That is somewhat how the last few items on this list are.  Choosing to implement them is simple, carrying them out is initially complex, but then once they are a part of you, they are simple again.  Ok, enough theorizing, let’s get to it!

6.  Eliminate Addictive Habits:

This is clearly one of those simple but complex “Things.”  Here is my definition of addiction:  Anything you use to meet a need, when the thing can’t really meet the need.  Under this definition, anything can be an addictive medium. Certainly the common ones:  tobacco, alcohol, street drugs, gambling, and pornography.  These things have almost no “nutritional value”, that is, they add nothing good to our lives.  But things that are essentially good can also be addictive when we use them to  meet needs they cannot meet. Examples include work, exercise, sex, prescription medication, hobbies, entertainment, the internet, and even bible reading.  For example, exercise is good to keep us in shape and to improve health.  But when we use it to make us feel better than others, or when it becomes a substitute for relational or spiritual expression, it slips into the realm of addiction.  Similarly, I think Bible reading is one of the better things we can do, but I’ve known people that read their Bibles obsessively and never learn how to live, relate, and love.  Scripture itself says it this way:

But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.   James 1:22

It is easy to develop an addiction (and difficult to rid yourself of it).  God made us to be efficient with our learning and behavior so we don’t have to learn things over and over again.  When you were a child, you most likely struggled a bit to learn to brush your teeth.  You didn’t like it, it took time, it hurt a bit, the toothpaste didn’t taste very good, and you could not understand the immediate benefits of it.  You didn’t want to do it, and you most likely resisted your parents instructions to do it.  Once you got it down, however, it really wasn’t a big deal. You just stand there in the bathroom and scrub.  You don’t have to think about it, and now if you go more than a day without brushing your teeth, you don’t like how your mouth feels, tastes or smells.  The learning is efficient; you don’t have to think or work at it, you just do it.  That same process of habitual behavior is at work in acquiring an addiction, but with two important difference; good habits meet the need they are intended for, and good habits emphasize long-term benefit over immediate gratification.

All addictions give the illusion of meeting needs (for love, comfort, fulfillment, spiritual connection) but really just give you an empty experience that very briefly feels good. Because the need felt met for a time when you feel the need arise again, your mind is wired to repeat the behavior.  “do that again” it says.  You do it again, and again, and again, and soon you are addicted. You feel compelled to do it again because the need is not met; you’re still “hungry.”  Now you have to do that thing over and over again. Not only has it not met the real need it’s slowly causing destruction to you in some form. All addictions work relatively fast, particularly in comparison to the thing that really will meet the need.  These two things: immediate gratification, and easy / quick access to the medium form the basis of addictions.

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to eliminate addictive things in your life.  The biggest, most destructive things to you are smoking, drinking too much, gambling, drugs, and the misuse of sex or pornography. These things are universally and deeply destructive.  If you are doing any of these things, take the simple step now, and decide your going to eliminate the addiction from your life.  You may well need help because our attachment and return to addictive things can run very deep in-deed and changing addictive habits often requires complex changes to our lifestyle.  But the decision to eliminate an addictive thing is simple.

7.  Be Intentional About Your Relationships.

Alright, this one is perhaps not so simple.  But it’s born out of hearing hundreds of life stories, where people make repeated and consistent choices to avoid or sabotage relationships. They don’t resolve conflicts, they don’t learn how to love, they don’t make time for other people.  They are driven inwardly to places of self-centeredness.  They do this with their friends, they do this with their spouses and children, and they do this with their parents and siblings from whom they learned the practice.  People who are happy have rich, meaningful relationships.  People not good at relationships look at such people from the outside, and assume others are merely lucky.  But in reality, all relationships take work, and having good relationships start with a choice, an intention to have good relationships and enjoy them.  Luck has nothing to do with it.  Skill does and so does choice.

There are, of course, some people who are very limited in their capacity for relationship, and some of those people are your family members, and some may be people in your circle of friends.  My wife is fond of the quote, “the best friends are friends in spots.”  This is on the whole, true. Make peace with that fact.  But don’t allow other’s limited capacity to keep you from developing your capacity to love.  My disability clients, through a series of life events, often have very few people in their lives.  When they exhaust their own resources, as all of us eventually will do, they are left alone; family-less and friendless.  It’s much, much harder to get back on your feet in life when you are alone.  Scriptures says it this way:

“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.”  – Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 New American Standard Bible

Being intentional about relationships means that you make time for them.  It means that you decide to improve your skills at listening, being with, and enjoying other people. It means that when you have a conflict with a friend or family member, that you work to resolve it, so as not to ruin relationship.  It means that when someone you love communicates that you are hurting them, you believe them, and try to figure out what you’ve done so you can stop it.  Being intentional about relationships requires that you reject the belief that isolationism and compartmentalization is a virtue (there are many people that believe this).  Jesus spoke often and deeply about relationships; perhaps no place better than in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, and 7).  Life is always better with good relationships.  Remember the words of Clarence the Angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

8.   Feed Your Soul.

People who are happy routinely do things that they enjoy. This may seem obvious, but it is amazing to  me how many people forget to have fun, or do things they like to do.  The excuses are myriad:

I don’t have the money.

I’m too old, sick, (fill in the blank)

I don’t have the time.

My husband/wife doesn’t like what I like.

One of the more common excuses is to view such caring for ourselves as selfish.  Whatever, the excuse there are many people who don’t take time to feed their souls. I used to work at a Children’s Home and in counseling with teens would often ask the question “What do you like to do for fun” or “What do you want to do when you leave here.”  Many, most even, answered these question with “nothing” or “I don’t know.”  At first I thought they were just putting me off, but I came to learn that they really didn’t know.  They never had anyone model having fun or celebration.  They were never encouraged  to want something enough to work hard to pursue it. They took what came their way, which was usually not very soul satisfying.

Do you know what feeds your soul?  Do you make sure you get to do those things routinely?  Have you discovered the warning signs that your soul is hungry?  Do you settle for cheap substitutions that fill your life with busy-ness but don’t really satisfy your soul’s longings?

Here’s what I’ve learned about me:  I need regular doses of beauty.  I need to see beautiful natural places.  I need to do things that are creative (such as writing a blog).  I need to listen to and make music.  If I’m not engaged in something that makes music, I’m not truly happy.  I need to satisfy my curiosity, and I need to learn new things. I need to travel and explore. I need to minimize noise of all kinds in my life.  I need time to read.  The enemies of feeding my soul?:  too much work, settling for TV, fatigue, volunteering for too much at church, too many errands, and poor planning (particularly to take advantage of time for travel or the Arts).

If your life has changed in some major way, such as an illness or injury, or death of a loved one, a sure sign that your are adjusting well or over-coming, is when you reinvest yourself in something that feeds your soul.

One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord. And to meditate in His temple.

For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle; In the secret place of His tent He will hide me; He will lift me up on a rock.

And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.  (Psalm 27:4-6  New American Standard Bible

9.  Read Your Bible Every Day.

This one truly is simple.  Just read your Bible.  I have found that when I go through a dry spell of neglecting my Bible, my heart starts to get crusty, dry and hard and I’m not happy and there is little joy in life.  When I feel this way, the Lord will bug me to read, and I’ll put Him off.  It just doesn’t sound interesting at those times to read The Word.  Eventually I’ll relent, and for the first 10 minutes, reading my Bible is shear drudgery.  My mind wanders, I think things like, “how many times have I read this?” But then it happens.  The Living Word cleanses my heart and mind, and the root fibers of my being begin to soak up the water that is the Word of God and my soul comes alive again.  When this happens, I realize how starved I am for the Word, and I just want to sit in my office, cancel all appointments and just read and read and read.  Reading my Bible regularly keeps my mind balanced, my heart softened, and my spirit rejuvenated and alive.  Reading my bible is key to “keeping my mind set on the things of the Spirit so that I don’t carry out the desires of my flesh.”

Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  He also said to his disciples, “you have been cleansed by the Word.”  We really are meant to spend regular time reading or listening to the Bible. That’s why God took so much care to write, preserve and transmit His word through the millennia.  There’s no substitute for it.

If you struggle with reading your Bible here are a few pointers:  Use different translations or a readable paraphrase like Eugene Peterson’s The Message.  Listen to the Bible on CD or MP3 format; a free version of which is available here.  Use your commute time and turn off the radio. You can “read” the entire Bible in a year with just 15 minutes per day.  Put the Bible on your Smartphone and read at lunch.  Download a free version of the Net Bible and read it on your computer. What are you waiting for?

10.  Prayer and Worship

Ok these are two things, but I ran out of space on my list!  Prayer really does  make your life go better.  You can pray for anything and everything and there isn’t anything that is too trivial to tell God.  My favorite book on Prayer is by Richard Foster, “Prayer, Finding the Hearts True Home.”  Foster gives us permission to start our life of prayer exactly where we are, and not get too concerned with how whiney or selfish we sound when we start to pray.  He teaches us the different forms of prayer, and teaches us that talking to God is not like asking Santa Claus for a toy at Christmas.  Mother Theresa once said that when she prays, she Listen’s to God.  When asked what God does, she said He listens back!

Really, prayer is such a simple thing, but most people don’t start doing it until they are in a crisis or in trouble. Being out of practice, they then feel foolish, and may not know how best to pray, or how to avail themselves of the help and comfort God offers through prayer; even when he doesn’t give us what we want.  God always answers prayer by the way, and He is always talking to us, but our radio station is not usually tuned to His station.

The twin brother of prayer is Worship.  While you finish this blog, listen to this song, “Madness Dancing” on Youtube! We were created to worship God and when we don’t do it regularly our soul dries up.  It feels so good to simply say or sing to God that you love Him and that you’re thankful to Him and for Him.  The next time you see a pretty sunset, cloud, cute child, or beautiful flower, before you Tweet or Facebook it, simply say “Wow God that’s awesome.”  If you practice paying attention to His Presence, you can feel him laughing and enjoying it with you.  Worship is the best cure for anxiety, depression, sadness and aloneness. To be sure, it takes faith and a little effort to worship when we’re feeling these things, but with a few minutes your efforts will be rewarded with a gentle and sustaining uplift in your mood.  Worship is God’s anti-depressant.

OK.  This piece has gone on long enough.  Pick a few things out of this list and start doing them. They really are simple, and life will go better if you do.

For years now, I’ve been doing assessments for people that are applying for Social Security Disability.  Every week I see people who are hurting, injured, sick and beaten down by life.  While not all of the people I see could have prevented their problems, most probably could have and many, many of them could greatly improve their heath and quality of life with a few simple changes.

Most of us are a product of our environment, culture, and habits.  We simply don’t take time to consider how what we are doing is impacting our health.  We live for the short-term and are surprised when  our health runs out at 45.  Through the years, I’ve come up with a list of simple things people could do to make great improvements in how they feel and their quality of life.  I’m not suggesting here, that these things will work universally. Simple is not always easy and sometimes simple ideas have complex consequences.  But if we do the simple things, we will be better off.  These are general principles for living well, and most of them are usually neglected.  For the most part, these things are not new or novel ideas.  Finally, these things are interconnected:  each one effecting the others.

1.  Take responsibility:  Your life is yours.  Your problems, weaknesses mistakes, situation, everything is yours.  People who are healthy (physically, emotionally and spiritually) have all learned to take responsibility for their own lives. They have stopped making excuses, have stopped blaming, and have stopped projecting, and have stopped shirking responsibility.  People who are successful take responsibility and ownership, even if they themselves are not the cause of their own problems.

To get you started on this path of responsibility say these things to yourself:  It’s my anger.  It’s my job.  It’s my health or illness.  It’s my marriage.  It’s my sadness.  It’s my habit.  It’s my debt.  It’s my child.  No one is responsible for my life except me.

In the area of physical health, I see many, many people who view themselves as the passive victim of doctors and insurance companies.  They disregard their own health habits and behaviors and want others to fix it and make it better.  You will get much, much better health care if you collaborate with your doctor than if you simply wait for him or her to  make you better.  If you are motivated to improve your health, your doctor will be too.  They can prescribe you medicine, but can’t make you take it. They can advise behavior changes, but can’t make you implement them.  I have seen countless people with serious lung and breathing problems, that are on a dozen or so inhalers and medications, but still insist on smoking a pack of cigarettes or more each day.  They have not mastered the art of taking responsibility.

God has given each one of us dominion and choice.  People who flounder or are unsuccessful in life pass that dominion off on others, and refuse to recognize their own choices and how those choices have produced their current circumstances.  Those who exercise dominion and responsibility work at making the things they don’t like better; even if it takes a long time.  Taking responsibility is not the same thing as taking blame.  You may be a victim of circumstance, abuse, a bad boss, a bad economy, a genetic illness etc.  But healthy people still take responsibility for these things and work to change or improve them, and they don’t do it alone.  The number one problem in most marriages is passivity:  simply not working on things.  Spontaneous change (“someday this will work out”) doesn’t happen; it’s a fantasy.  We don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone else to change before we begin changing ourselves.  So:  Take responsibility; it’s the beginning of living well.

2.  Get 8 good hours of sleep every night. Sleep plays a crucial role in your body and your mind’s regeneration.  When we sleep well, our bodies become relaxed, our muscle heal, our brain produces serotonin (the thing the keeps us from being depressed), our mind solves problems, our memory is solidified, and occasionally, God communicates to us. When we don’t sleep:  our short term memory suffers, our judgment is impaired, our reaction times slow, we become irritable and offensive, our concentration is impaired, it takes us five times longer to do things, we are clumsy, we have increased body pain and achiness (fibromyalgia is at least in part a sleep disorder), we gain weight, we are more vulnerable to colds and flu, we fight with our spouses, we are less creative at solving problems, and we are far less perceptive.  We need sleep, and 8 hours seems to be the right amount.

Sleep deprivation is cumulative:  the longer our lack of sleep goes on, the more impaired we become, and the longer it will take to correct the deprivation.  Sleep deprivation causes depression, and in turn depression causes sleep disruption making for a vicious cycle.  Most of us have adopted life-styles that make a good 8 hours of sleep impossible.  We try to cram too much into each day.  We are unsatisfied at the end of the day and stay up, flipping channels on TV looking for that satisfaction.  Our sleep deprivation makes the pattern worse, eating away at the quality our our relationships and the quality of our perceptiveness so that each day brings less and less enjoyment and more and more frenzy.

There are many, many enemies to a good nights sleep.  You will need to identify which enemies are working in your life, and work to eliminate or correct them.  Here are a few:  uncomfortable bedding (if you will spend 1/3 of your life asleep, then allocate some of your financial resources to making good sleep possible), noisy environments (try a white noise machine or ear plugs), difficulty breathing at night (lose weight, drink water, sleep in a semi-reclined poster), working too late, doing stimulating things too late in the day, having a bedroom that has too much light, worrying.  Here is a website on good sleep hygiene (here’s another). Read up to get some help with your particular sleep problems. If you are chronically sleep deprived, make sleep improvement a high priority.

3.  Drink Water. This is such a simple but extremely important principle, that I almost always get universal resistance to it when I mention it.  The vast majority of people in our culture are chronically dehydrated.  We simple do not take in the amounts of water that our bodies need to be healthy and do all the metabolic and mechanical functions our bodies do.  This is one of those simple principles with extremely complex implications.  Your body is made of 75 water.  Your brain and nervous system is 85 percent water. Many of your bodies metabolic processes are created to regulate and maintain a healthy balance of water in all of your organs. When you don’t get enough water, your body chemistry changes in an attempt to compensate, and that causes illness of all kinds.  Chronic dehydration is linked to:  type II diabetes, obesity, arthritis, allergies, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, degenerative disc disease, asthma, depression, panic disorder, sinus pain and infection, urinary tract infection, chronic back and neck pain, headaches, migraines, digestion problems, acid reflux, and all other sorts of bad things. Drinking water may not cure all of these conditions, but it will help all of them, and many more.  And many of them will be cured by simply drinking enough water to keep your body hydrated.  I solved a chronic allergy problem and eliminated the use of daily (sedating) antihistamine simply by drinking enough water.

We have been conditioned to substitute drinking soda, coffee, sports drinks, tea, and other flavored drinks for simple water.  We have been told that fluid is fluid, and as long as your fluid intake is adequate, your body will be well hydrated. This is simply not true.  Most of the drinks we consume are high in sugar and caffeine, sodium or artificial sweeteners.  These things require our bodies to do much more processing of the liquids we consume.  Sugar in our beverages can lead to obesity and type II diabetes.  Caffeine is a mild diuretic and appetite stimulant, and actually causes more water loss than gain.   It is such a simple thing to switch to drinking water, and there is such a HUGE benefit in it.  And people are SO resistant to making the switch.  It is a life style change that we have to sustain, daily hydrating our bodies.

The general guideline, is to drink half your body weight in ounces of water.  If you way 200 pounds, you need to be drinking 100 oz, or 12 to 13 glasses of water per day.  Experts recommend taking a bit of sea salt occasionally to aid your body in absorbing the water (sea salt also has trace minerals your body needs).  By comparison, if you weigh 135 pounds you need to drink 68 oz. of water or about 8 to 9 glasses per day.  This does not count any soda, alcohol, or coffee you may drink.  If you do this, you will have to urinate about once per hour, and that may deter you from drinking enough water. But urinating regularly rids your body of used up metabolites and waste, and cleanses the body from the build up of toxic urea and used proteins.  Once you get hydrated, your urination stabilizes.  You will find you have less craving for food and sweets when you are hydrated properly.  If you work out or exercise, you need to drink even more water to compensate for perspiration.  Before you go on to the next tip, read the following two websites about water.  This one tip has the potential to greatly improve your quality of life.

1. The Water Cure.
2. The Water Cure 2

4.  Get Exercise. God made our bodies to move.  But our modern lives have become dangerously close to the physical passivity depicted in Wall-E.  This is one of those simple things I’ve struggled with most of my life and as a consequence I’ve struggled with weight problems all of  my life.  My job is very sedentary:  I sit and listen all day long.  A year ago, I stopped by a new gym that was opening near home, and the salesman sold me on a membership.  He said if you go home to think it over we know statistically you aren’t likely to come back – and he was right so I signed up. Because this gym required no long-term commitment, I was more willing to sign up.  After about a month of mild weight lifting and aerobic exercise I was stunned by how much better I felt. I would get a “runners high” after 30 minutes of elliptical trainer exercise that would last for about 48 hours.  My mood improved, my motivation improved and I was enjoying that great principle in life that good health begets good health.

Exercise lowers physical and emotional stress.  It works against depression.  It improves our heart health.  It increases our metabolism giving us more energy.  It improves our libido and sex life.  It improves our sleep and helps us to breath better. With aerobic exercise we oxygenate our bodies better which improves mental alertness, and increases metabolism helping us to lose weight. Exercise is a good thing.  But it’s boring. So . . .

Feed your soul while you exercise your body.  I like listening to podcasts, audio books, and sermons, and of course music.  Often the music makes the time go faster than talking content does, certainly more than TV, and the music is very energizing. I DON’T like the stuff they play at the gym so I always take my Zune with me, loaded with energetic worship music (I love Chris Tomlin).

Here are some simple goals and tips. If you are sedentary with very little exercise, start slow and simple.  Walking for 15 to 30 minutes a day, four days a week will start you out right.  You don’t need a gym membership, an expensive workout DVD, stylish gym clothes, etc. you just need to move. A good pair of shoes is a good idea though.  The best exercise is the one you enjoy because it’s the one you will most likely do.  Aim for doing something that will raise your heart rate a bit.  If you are overweight, be careful of jogging or running because this will make your joints sore.  Swimming is excellent exercise when you’re overweight because the water supports your weight while you move.  If you have a heart condition, you’d be wise to check with your doctor before starting strenuous exercise.  Get up and move!

5.  Lose Weight. Full disclosure; I’m speaking to myself here.  I’ve struggled with my weight all my life.  I am technically in the obese range (but really, I think those weight scales were normed in India where everyone is skinny as a rail). I have gone on major diets a half-dozen times in my life, generally with good results, but the weight almost always comes back on.  I have learned that I’m fighting my genetics, my height (I’m on the short side at 5’ 6”), my habits and my personality (i like to eat).  So what I’m writing here is based on personal experience.  I’ve decided that I’ll be working at my weight the rest of my life, and oddly, this leaves me feeling less discouraged than thinking I’ve got to get to some magical number within some arbitrary time period.

There is no doubt that America is overweight.  The reasons for this are complex including the cheap availability of high calorie, low nutrition foods, relative economic prosperity (when compared to the rest of the world), the industrialization of our food supply (including genetically manipulating our produce and animal sources of food – go rent Food Inc. and check their website), our social habits which always include food, and our stressed-out, fast-paced and sedentary life-style.  Being overweight makes us at risk for:  joint disease, heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and a host of other problems.  Even modest reductions of weight (and related change in diet) can make us feel better.  I can personally testify to this. When I drop even five pounds I feel better.  Like other items on this list, when you lose weight, it tends to help other aspects of your life improve as well.  When I’m eating correctly I’m more disciplined in almost every other aspect of my life.

I see many, many people every week who suffer from weight related health problems.  The idea of weight loss is simple (burn more calories than you consume) but the execution can be complex because of how food, eating, and weight intertwine with almost every other area in our lives, including our self-perceptions and self-esteem and social interactions.  Most of us eat mindlessly and aren’t really conscious of how much or what we put in our bodies.  I tend to eat too fast and therefore too much because my brain hasn’t caught up with my stomach.  When we choose to lose weight, there is this magic ingredient – motivation- that is the main determiner of success or failure.  When i really want to lose weight I do.  When I’m only playing at it or do not have that magic motivation ingredient I gain or stay the same.  Finding that motivation is not easy and it’s different for everyone.  I really hate, for example, going to motivational meetings at weight watchers.  But I am motivated by achieving weight loss goals, and by the improvement in how I feel when I lose.  I tend to gain weight when I work too much, when the weather gets cold, during holiday times (It seems every month from October to April is a candy month – Halloween, thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines day, Easter), and when I’m bored.

So, if you’re overweight, working at losing weight is really good for you.  Consider it a life-long goal rather than something you’ve got to accomplish over-night.  Dropping even a modest amount of weight will improve your quality of life.

 

A great deal of our daily mental activity is given over to causes.  Not the charitable kind (“Give money to this walk-a-thon; it’s for a good cause!”), but the kind where we assume specific causes to all the events, actions, interactions, behaviors, and circumstances in our lives.  Imagine you are in a meeting, and you see the person next to you lose their temper.  Your mind will spring to action, to attribute a cause to their anger.  The nature of the attributed cause often says a good deal more about ourselves (personality, history, psychology etc.) than it does about the event itself.  So when this person gets angry you may attribute her behavior to:

• She’s been treated unjustly.
• She is over-worked.
• She’s having marital problems.
• I must have said something that made her angry.
• It’s her time of the month.
• She’s an angry person.
• She has a short fuse.
• She’s a fiery red-head.
• She’s on / off her medication.
• She was out late.

Of course this list can go on and on.  This is an example of a causal attribution. 

The theory of Causal Attribution first appeared in the work of Fritz Heider in a book entitled The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958).  Other’s have developed this theory far more than I am going to do here, and it does get very complex (as well it should!).  But for now, I want you to notice a few things about yourself.

First, you make causal inferences all the time.  You have been taught or have come to believe in a series of cause and effect relationships and your mind makes these inferences constantly and usually instantly. 

Second:  Our assumption of causes gives us a sense of control over our environment.  Things are less scary when we think we know why they happened. This control is largely I think, an illusion.  But we all need to live with a sense of basic orderliness, and most of the time, this illusion works pretty well.  When it doesn’t we have problems and we can be thrown into a psychological crisis:  A topic for some future blog post.  You will notice this control factor when you feel smug or superior or oddly comfortable when you think you know why something has happened and those around you do not. 

Third:  There are two basic types of causal inferences:  Internal and External.  Internal inferences are when we attribute the cause of an event to internal characteristics of the actor in an event.  Using our example above, the statement “She has a short fuse” is an internal attribution. External inferences attribute causes to the environment or circumstances outside of the individual. So in our example above, “She is over-worked” is an external attribution.  The curious thing here, is that when we are observing someone else, we tend to attribute the cause to something internal to the person, and when we are the actor, we tend to attribute the cause to something outside of ourselves. This is particularly true when it is a negative event.  We are generally more benevolent to ourselves than we are to others.

Fourth:  We almost never take into account enough factors in making our attributions. This is where this article ties into the simple and complex article.  Interpersonal relationships are by nature complex. But we make simple attributions, and we make them quickly.  It’s easier and more comfortable to us to do it this way.  In marital conflicts, parenting conflicts, work conflicts, we rarely include ourselves as a contributing factor.  As in the Simple and Complex article, the more variables, the more factors we can keep in mind at once, the more accurate our attributions will be.

Fifth:  Because of number four above, our attributions are prone to error.  They can, of course, be completely wrong, but more often, they are wrong by degrees, or inaccurate by degrees.  Hopefully, the longer we live and the wiser we become the more accurate, or perhaps tentative, our attributions will be. When the bulk of our attributions, particularly interpersonal ones are inaccurate we are neurotic (distortion of reality).  When the bulk of our attributions are just simple wrong, we are psychotic (out of touch with reality).

There are more points to be made here, but I’ll leave that to you to pursue through the above article links (isn’t the web Grand!?).  But now that you have a general concept of Causal Attribution theory consider the following.

The Media spend a great deal of time speculating on causal attributions. We are fascinated with this stuff. It happens every day and in every genre of talk show: Sports, Politics, Celebrity Press, “Reality” shows, Environmental awareness, Science, Business etc.  There are vast amounts of money being exchanged in our media saturated economy making causal attributions, and most of them are way too simplistic to be of much use. But they make for great entertainment, and the more outrageous the attributions are, the more attention they’ll garner (and the larger the audience share).  We are addicted to this stuff and wear it like a badge  (“I listen only to Fox”, “I watch CNN”, “I’m a Ditto head”, “I saw on Oprah . . .”, “Did you hear what they said on Sports Center?”).  The danger here, is when we consume this stuff without discrimination.  This stuff is primarily entertainment and is driven by advertising revenue and building market share (yes, that is a causal attribution). But it has a Huge impact on the American psyche by helping us to form causal attributions, that are never really examined for accuracy.  By the way, almost all American media make one fundamental causal attribution error: They leave out God as a causal agent.

The trend in science (a huge source of American causal attributions) is towards biological or naturalistic reductionism.  The science press (which is largely how we consume scientific investigations) love to make pronouncements about how what we once believed to be true is now all wrong, and that some new discovery has really set us straight.  Just peruse the science headlines and you’ll see what I  mean.  In health (medicine) and behavior science (psychology) the trend for the last 20 years has been towards biological reductionism: To reduce all causes of human behavior to biological causes such as genetics or brain chemistry.  Depression, is no longer viewed as the complex condition that it truly is, but simply a factor of low serotonin levels, so all you need to do is take a pill.  ADHD is viewed as an inherited genetic trait, and we have a pill for that too (I’m being intentionally sarcastic here).  There is a huge monetary incentive to push biological reductionism and our psyche’s are ripe for it:  We love simple explanations that relieve us of the burden of responsibility.

Much of therapy involves helping people examine and hopefully modify their causal attributions. There is also much resistance to it.  Couples want to see “the other” as the cause of the difficulties and don’t want to examine their own contributions.  Parents want their children “fixed” but don’t want to make the life-style changes necessary, because they are invested in locating the sole cause of the child’s behavior in the child.  Individual’s will over or under value their own contributions to their life choices.  People with medical problems don’t want to own their own contributions to being sick.  People want symptoms to go away but want to attribute those symptoms to someone else, and don’t want to make the link to their own life-styles or choices.  But as I like to teach my counseling students, dealing with this resistance is the work of psychotherapy. 

Jesus said it this way: 

“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”   (NAS Mathew 7:3-5).

One final observation.  Do you include God in your own personal causal attribution theory?  Many people do, and in fact most do if the survey’s are right.  Are your causal attributions about God complex or simplistic?  We can make errors in our attribution of causes by sweeping them all under the God rug:  “I guess this was God’s will for me.” “Why did God make me lose my job?”  “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.”  “He must have done something wrong and God is punishing him for it.”  Be very, very careful with evoking God in your causal attributions.  God has done a pretty good job in explaining Himself in His Word, and we have done a pretty good job of misunderstanding or misusing it.  Theology is complex which is why there are so many with Ph.D’s in the subject.  In the secular world, the most common error is to leave God out as a causal factor.  In the Christian World, the most common error, is to over-attribute things to Him (particularly problems and suffering) that He has no part in.  The best solution for this, like with any relationship, is to get to know Him well.  Then it’s much easier to say things like, “That doesn’t sound like God at all” or “That really is a God-Thing.”

So, I challenge you, to observe your own process of how you assume causes for things. Take this background process, and bring it to the front, where you can watch and examine it. Be brave in throwing out attributions that are in error, or are too simple to be accurate.  Be willing to tolerate the anxiety of “I don’t know why” in pursuit of greater accuracy (and sanity).  Begin to think in terms of “contributing factors” rather than simple one to one, cause and effect equations.

This isn’t meant to be a dissertation topic, but the beginning of a string of ideas that need background for full development. So if you have the fortitude, read on . . .

Back in the 1950’s it was discovered by a psychologist named George Miller at Bell Labs that the average maximum amount of discrete pieces of information that people could retain in short term memory was about 7; plus or  minus two.  It was because of this research that the phone company chose the 7 digit number for your local phone number.

Because 7 is the average, many people can only remember 5 or 6 bits of information, and of course a rare few can remember up to 9.  There is some speculation that this number is a bit high, or has declined since the original studies.  As a side note; every day I give mental status exams in which I ask people to repeat random strings of numbers to see how many they can remember without error.  Because many of the people I assess are impaired or ill, few ever make it to 7 digits.  Occasionally I have someone who is able to give 9 digits accurately and that’s usually a fun day (psychologists are often nerdy).

There is a correlation between IQ and short term memory ability. In general, the smarter a person is the more individual bits of information he or she is able to keep in their thoughts at the same time.   That means that smarter people are capable of more complex ideas.  The more pieces of information you can keep in your conscious memory at once, the more complex an idea or situation you’ll be able to comprehend.  Smart people seem to understand complex situations easier than less smart people, because less smart people can’t keep all those individual bits of information in their head at once.

When someone is unable to hold more than say three pieces at once, they can become skeptical of the person capable of holding, say 5 things, at once.  The simple person really prefers things to be kept, well, simple.   It is too much work for them to try to keep more than 3 bits in their head at once.  In short, they distrust complex explanations.

The Media tend to aim for just below the Everyman average in communicating news stories.  They aim for the lowest common denominator and that means they over-simplify stories, or just ignore stories that are too complex. If there are more than two or three key components to a story, the complexity will either be ignored or the story won’t be reported.  Many headlines will grab your attention and skew your perception on that story.  If you actually read the story, it’s often not so sensational because of mitigating factors.  But how many actually bother to read the whole story in this information over-loaded age?

The result of this is that complex things are seldom presented, or are over-simplified by the Media, and we are trained out of being able to think or grasp complex ideas.  Some stories simply cannot be told with only two variables. The over-simplification results in gross inaccuracy.  Imagine only having two colors to paint with, two letters to type with, two words to talk with etc, and you will quickly grasp how much error is introduced with over-simplification.

Politicians exploit this over-simplification.  Two current issues that are extremely complex;  global warming, and health care reform, serve as examples.  The earth is getting hotter (it is assumed, but again the data are very complex) and so we need to restrict human behavior so as to cool it down.  A complex problem is given an over-simplified solution that may do more harm than good (increasing poverty for example).  The health care system, we are told, is failing or is in crisis (an over-simplified statement).  So It needs fixing and the government is the one that needs to fix it (over-simplified solution).  The reality is that our health care system is extremely complex, only parts of it are failing, and that not every “failure”is because of the system itself. Some parts work very well, and most parts work well for most people. Individual’s need to bear responsibility for their own health and self-care and that is not factored into the “crisis” equation.  There are problems: greed, unethical companies, injustices, rising costs, large law suits.  But these things are complex, and complex problems are not generally solved by simple solutions.  But because the average person can now only hold two ideas in mind at once it is easy for the politicians leverage this simplicity for their own agendas. Both sides do this by the way.

Comedians exploit over-simplification in a big way.  People are complex, but if comedian’s can be successful at dehumanizing celebrities to one or two key foibles, they can keep a run of jokes going for years, and in the process skew public perceptions.  Consider:  Clinton is always unfaithful (or over-eating).  Bush two (W.) is stupid, Nixon lies, Chaney shoots people.  Ford is clumsy, Carter grows peanuts.  Hillary Clinton is shrewish, McCain is old and over-the-hill, etc.

The American Psyche typically only sees two possible choices or outcomes in any given situation, precisely because we have been trained to over-simply things so as to not stretch our brains too much.  This comes up in the counseling room when people are trying to solve interpersonal problems and they can only see two possible ways of behaving:  The way they’ve always behaved, which is not generally working, and an alternate extreme that is so distasteful or anxiety provoking that it is never tried.  Because we have been trained to over simplify, to only think of two or three variables instead of seven, we have very limited options in solving our problems.

The more we habitually think in twos, the less able we are to recognize our own limitations or errors.  A person who is used to holding five to seven things in their head at a time, that only sees two possible choices, will immediately begin to cast about for more options.  A person who is used to holding only two things at a time will stop looking for options once two ideas occur to him.  Creative problem solving never occurs to the lazy thinker; neither does self-correction, error checking, or paradigm shifts.  A lazy thinker will not bother to look for errors when they see only two choices and one is obviously better than the other.  A complex thinker will check for errors, because the possibility of error is one of the seven things they are holding constant in their heads, and even if one option seems better, they will wonder if there is an option that has not yet occurred to them.

This phenomenon of over-simplification is called black and white thinking.  It happens in people’s approach to understanding the Bible all the time. People confuse the concept of moral absolutes, with simplistic understanding of reading the Bible text.  So, for example, holding two ideas constant:  The Bible is always right (belief in absolutes), and the verse that says “Women should pray with their heads covered” a Black and White thinker will assert that every woman must wear a hat or shawl to church or risk sinning.  There is no room for complex reasoning that takes into account five or six variables (context) when reading a passage in order to arrive at the accurate and trustworthy meaning of the scripture.  When a complex thinker tries to reason with the simple thinker, the later distrusts the former as not believing in the literal interpretation of scripture, and the simple thinker is unable to distinguish errant interpretation from moral relativism. There’s no room for the idea, “maybe my understanding is what is in error.”

So:  work at being able to identify complexity.  Don’t be lazy, but practice holding several thoughts in your head at once.  Work at being able to identify when something truly is simple (there are simple things out there) and when it’s complex.  Conversely don’t over-complicate the truly simple.   Simple problems generally require simple solutions, and complex problems generally require complex solutions.  Resist simplistic reductionism:  complex things being explained by one or two causes.  Reductionistic thinking (over-simplification) almost always leads to errors, and sometimes those errors cause real harm in people’s lives.

Ravi Zacharias’ part two podcast on Anger stirred up more thoughts and I want to put them “out there” for others to play with.  Ravi always makes you think and I’m guessing I could use his podcasts as stimulus for many a blog post.

I think conservative Christians as a rule are very uncomfortable with the subject of anger.  Don’t get me wrong; we all get angry sometimes. We simply are not very good at understanding, thinking, or talking about it.  For that matter, anger is not written about a whole lot in the psychopathology literature.  I think most psychological theorists think anger is normal and inevitable and most clinicians believe in anger control or management, and not anger reduction.  Anger, which perhaps causes more behavioral, relational, work, and legal problems than any other emotion, is not categorized in any pathological way, except for a very obscure diagnosis:  Intermittent Explosive Disorder, which frankly has more to do with a type of seizure, than the kinds of character or selfish anger that gets us all in trouble.

In Christian culture anger is treated as something to stay away from. This cultural attitude is not very helpful because people who are angry are simply told to “stop being angry” and generally to stop being angry pretty quickly.  But we are rarely taught how not to be angry, or when our anger is appropriate or acceptable, or how to apply self-control to our anger.  Christian culture tends to encourage repression of anger, which is generally self-destructive.  Because anger is culturally rejected, Christians are often dishonest with themselves and others when they’re feeling angry.

There is a great deal of misquoting of the Bible that contributes to this denial and repression.  The first and biggest error is what we’re taught about Jesus and His expression of anger.  Ask any well-heeled group of Christians where the Bible talks about Jesus’ anger and they will, without hesitation, en masse, tell you it is when Jesus cleansed the temple.  Every time the cleansing of the temple is portrayed in movie or audio dramatization, Jesus is depicted as blowing His top over the money changers in the temple, and in an angry fit, over-turning tables and driving out the animals that were brought in for sale.

At this point most of you are thinking . . . “Yeah, well, He was angry, wasn’t He?”  The short answer is We Don’t Know.  The text never tells us He was angry, and there is a good bit of exegetical evidence that His cleansing of the temple (which he did more than once) was purposeful and calculated.  Actually, everything Jesus did was intentional.  His cleansing of the temple was certainly not impulsive, and it was not done out of a fit of anger.  The only clue we have to His emotion and motivation was the attribution by His disciples that Jesus was fulfilling prophecy from Psalm 69:9 which said, “Zeal for My Father’s house will consume Me.”  Zeal is not the same as anger.  Jesus may have been angry, but He may also have been very calm and business like.  When he cleansed the temple, the Pharisees questioned him on his authority for what He was doing.  They didn’t call out the temple guards on someone who was losing His temper. Jesus was challenging the religious status quo when he tipped over those tables and He knew exactly what he was doing.  This contrasts greatly with our anger most of the time, which kind of blinds us and impairs our judgment.

So . . . Let’s put this one to rest:  The cleansing of the temple is not a textual example of Jesus’ being angry.  There are some examples but it isn’t here.  The thing is, this temple episode is exactly the kind of thing that would make most Christians angry and so we project our own feelings and motives onto Jesus and onto the text.  We also use this episode as a rationalization or justification for our own anger when we think we’re being treated unfairly or someone is bending the rules or something.  We rationalize, “Well Jesus was pretty honked off when he cleansed the temple, so certainly I’m on good ground here for being angry at (fill in the blank).”    At the cleansing of the temple Jesus was intentional and calculated.  He was not out of control and He may not even have been loud.

Want to know when Jesus was angry?  There are two incidents in the Gospel of Mark (there may be more, but I’m focusing on these).  The first was when Jesus was angry at the hard-hearted Pharisees that were more interested in their religious traditions than seeing a person healed of a deformity (Mark 3:5).  The second was when Jesus’ disciples tried to keep mothers and their babies away from Him.  The text (Mark 10:13) says he was indignant (NIV and NAS) and the Greek word is actually a little stronger than that (much aggrieved comes close).  And he was indignant here with his own apostles, not with the Pharisees or “sinners” or with a political system.  Curious, isn’t it?  No one remembers this one.  It’s not the kind of thing that would make most of us angry or aggrieved.

Another commonly misunderstood passage on anger is from Ephesians chapter 4.  In this oft quoted text we find the phrase, “Be angry and do not sin.”  This tells us, of course, that anger is not inherently sinful.  Anger is I think a generally morally neutral emotion.  Our anger is neither here nor there, it just kind of is.  It can cloud our judgment certainly and it can make us unpleasant to be around, and if not checked, can unduly affect our behavior.  But the actual feeling itself is just, well, a feeling.  Our anger can be set off by things, and this text tells us that we need not do sinful things simply because we’re feeling angry.

This verse then goes on to say, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give the devil an opportunity.”   Now you will hear 99.9% of sermons tell you that this means you shouldn’t stay angry and that by the end of the day you should be over it.  To continue to be angry, this teaching asserts, is a sin (even though the text does not clearly say this).  The problem with this interpretation is twofold I think.  First, I don’t think we can will away our anger and we can’t always resolve things quickly and neatly within a day.  Some things may make us feel angry for a long, long time.  I’m not advocating this, mind you, but it can happen, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a sinful state.  It is a state in which we need to be very careful because most of us have impaired judgment when we’re angry.

The second reason I think this is a bad interpretation is that this phrase “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” is a Jewish or Hebrew phrase, not an American Western phrase.  To the Jew the day began at sundown.  I don’t think Paul is giving us a metaphor for time in the passage.  I think he’s giving us a metaphor for truth and truth’s character expression:  honesty.  Paul is saying, “You can be angry and not sin.  But be mindful of your anger, be honest about it. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.  Don’t hide it, or pretend, or delude yourself into thinking you’re not angry when you really are.  If you are dishonest (repressed or in denial) with yourself and others about your anger then you’ve got real problem because then you’ve given the devil a great opportunity to manipulate you and to motivate you to sin.”  You see, the devil has power over us only when we allow him to deceive us, and when we are self-deceived he has a major opportunity.

So why do I think Paul is talking about truth and not time?  Well, the context of the passage for one.  There are two great themes in the fourth chapter of Ephesians:  Christian Unity and Truth/Honesty.  The truth theme is juxtaposed with dishonesty and deceitfulness throughout the chapter.  Christian unity is juxtaposed with contentiousness.  In fact, when Paul says “be angry” he says it right after he says “Lay aside falsehood” and “Speak truth each one of you with your neighbor.”  The metaphor about the sun going down is all about being honest with yourself and others regarding anger.  When you’re told not to be angry any more by the end of the day, you may in fact be led into doing the very thing that Paul says not to do.  It motivates us to pretend we’re no longer angry when the sun goes down, when we may actually still be seething.

By the way, that phrase “Be angry and do not sin” is a quotation from an Old Testament Psalm.  The whole point of that psalm is to lie on your bed at night and contemplate or examine yourself, to be deeply honest with yourself and with God (Psalm 4:4).

Okay.  So I’ve asserted here that we’re uncomfortable with the topic of anger as Christians.  We tend to censure the feeling in ourselves and others.  Anger is morally neutral.  It’s just a feeling, and it’s what we do with it that determines anger’s morality.  And, we’re to be honest with ourselves and others about it.  So what do we do with it? Here are some general Biblical principles about overcoming anger problems in your life.

First:  Be honest with yourself.  It’s the first step to overcoming any problem, but I think our Ephesians 4 passage speaks to this directly.  Keep your anger in the light where it will not do you any harm.  Keep it in the light of God’s truth and in your prayer life with him.  Don’t pretend not to be angry when in fact you are.  Learn to identify your own anger signs:  tight chest perhaps, flushed face, brooding thoughts, fantasies of retribution or revenge, imagined lecturing of others, and being easily provoked (going off a lot when the situation doesn’t call for it).  There are more of course.

Second:  Your anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.  This bit of wisdom comes from the James 1:19 and 20.  James also advises us to be slow to anger, and to be quick to listen and slow to speak.  Good advice.  It is so, so helpful for me to remember this verse when I’m angry.  I’ve learned to a) not write email when I’m angry; b) to talk to my Lord when I’m angry; c) to talk or debrief with a trusted friend when angry.  My anger does not accomplish God’s work and so it’s not particularly helpful.  My judgment is often impaired when I’m angry.  Yours probably is too.

Third:  A corollary to that is that the Bible never advocates using anger as a motivation.  God never tells us to work up a good head of steam about something so that we can go out and accomplish great things.  Coaches, teachers, counselors, politicians and others will advocate this but scripture does not.  Quite simply, anger is not a very good motivator for doing things in life.  It’s very often a waste of energy.  A mature person (believer or not) will not rely on anger in order to accomplish things, or take responsibility or action, or to resolve disagreements.  Anger is not a good motivation.  People who say it is are misled and are generally compensating for weak self-confidence.

Fourth:  I think it is a general goal in the Christian walk not to be an angry person.  Angry people are cynical, sarcastic, impatient, and often rude.   In Galatians 5, “outbursts of anger” is a sign of a sinful lifestyle or a sinful season of life.  By contrast when we are living godly, spiritual lives we are self-controlled.  Christians are angry a lot, by the way.  We get angry over subcultures that don’t live the way we think they should.  We get angry when church isn’t run the way we think it should be.  We get angry when things around us are changed without our blessing or consultation.  We get angry when politicians pass laws that don’t support our Christian morality.  We get angry when the wrong songs are sung at church or when the carpet color is changed and on and on.  We won’t generally admit that we’re angry about these things, but we are.  In general, this kind of anger wastes a great deal of energy, causes a great deal of needless conflict, and is quite frankly an expression of our self-centeredness. And here lies a clue to number five.

Fifth: If a goal of the Christian life is to reduce our anger, truly not to be angry people, it requires that we pursue humility.  Humility is the counter-balance to being easily or chronically angry.  It is the anti-anger state of mind.  Once we are angry we rid ourselves of anger not by denial, repression, or minimizing it, but by submission to Jesus. We have to lay down our anger at His feet, saying, “I’m really not entitled to this.  It’s not helping me; it’s not accomplishing your righteousness.” Psychology advocates control or management of anger (count to ten, take a deep breath, use visualization) but not really diminishing personal anger.  I think Christ would have us give up our anger, certainly not foster or harbor it.  In doing so, we become less self-centered and more Christ like.  So when your least favorite politician proposes legislation advocating anti-Christian life-styles, don’t get angry.  Get down on your knees and pray, “Forgive them, Lord, they don’t know what they’re doing!  Choose to “love your enemies” and not hate them.

I’m an avid podcast listener.  One of my favorites is Ravi Zacharias and his “Let My People Think” messages.  His current message series is about people who are angry at God. He has a guest psychologist on this message, and it got me thinking . . .

One of my favorite ideas about being Angry at God is from Jack Hayford, (another of my favorite podcasts) is that you can be Angry at God without much fear of reprisal, but that it’s not particularly beneficial.  It doesn’t accomplish much.  Our Anger, I think, does not particularly move God and it’s not particularly beneficial to ourselves. He’ll put up with it, but our Anger at Him acts as a barrier. It keeps us distant from him.  We cut ourselves off from a source of solace, comfort and growth when we’re angry at him.  Of course, we do this with each other too.

Anger at God is almost always a projection.  God does not deserve our anger, and we misplace a lot of anger onto him. Our anger at God is ego-centric.  It presumes that we have a better perspective on how things should be than He does.  We get angry at God when we see suffering; either in our own lives or in people around us, and we think “Why don’t you do something about that God?”  We have no real idea what He’s doing, but in our anger, think we’ve got a clearer picture of how things should be.  When we’re angry at God we’re like a petulant child; impatient, hurt, feeling misunderstood or ignored, wanting our way regardless of the consequences.  God is patient with us in such times, but the longer we hold on to our anger, the harder and harder it is to see God accurately.

In the Ravi Zacharias message, Ravi was speaking to the issue of anger in atheist. He was wondering aloud if anger at God is at the heart of atheism, because he as encountered it so often.  I think the answer is a qualified “yes.”  Almost every atheist I’ve encountered is an antheist for psychological reasons more than logical or philosophical reasons.  The atheist generally assumes they are being logical, but they often do not know their own heart.  The quintessential quote for this is from C.S. Lewis who said (not an exact quote here), “I didn’t believe God existed and I was angry at Him for not existing.”  I think much of atheistic anger is misplaced anger against one’s own father or mother, or perhaps because it is simply difficult to live well.

Here are some general principles about anger from the Bible.  It is not a sin.  We need to be honest with our anger.  Anger is never encouraged in our characters as a motivation.  It never produces good things in our lives, but it can sure get in the way of emotional well being and productivity.  Outburst (uncontrolled) anger is a sign of deep self-centeredness.

I think the only real solution when we’re feeling angry with God is to talk to Him about it.  We won’t feel like talking to him, because anger is the emotion of separation.  But that’s what we need to do. We need to yield our anger to Him, so we can allow Him to help us.  And He will help us when we ask.  When we do this, (tell Him we’re angry, ask for his help, adopt a humble or yielded position with him), then our hearts are in the right place for change.  We have the possibility of growing our point of view, so that perceived injustices or inaction on God’s part, are clarified.  We can see where and how God is working rather than just being angrily accusing Him that He is not, or that the suffering and circumstance is His fault or responsibility.

God is Good.  All the time.  He never wills suffering (in spite of what some of my Calvinist friends might say).  He will use our suffering to teach us if we allow Him to.  It is always His desire for us to be blessed and to grow and prosper.  He is perfectly willing to use us to accomplish His will, and that may in fact involve suffering when we are warring with the enemy (or our own nature).  But the suffering itself is incidental; not the main objective.  When He uses us and we yield to Him it feels good; like the coach sending us in for the next play.  If we persevere through the suffering there is a huge payoff; emotionally, psychologically, relationally, materially.

So; If you’re feeling angry with God, lay it down. Talk to Him. Ask Him his perspective. Ask Him to show you what your anger is all about.  And learn from Him.  His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.