The Deadliest Emotion

My name is René, another one of the pastors here at TLC. I want to welcome everybody in the auditorium, everybody joining us in the venue service, everybody joining us online, Facebook Live, everybody joining us with the simultaneous language, Spanish translation. Wherever you are joining us, we are just super, super glad that you are here.

Let's talk about road rage for just a minute. The other day, CNN reported road rage is on the rise again. Show of hands, has anybody here ever been a victim of road rage? Anybody here ever been a perpetrator of road rage? Can I see that? So according to brand new stats from AAA, 80% of us admit to having road rage at some point. And another study says people who customize their cars with stickers and other adornments are more prone to road rage.

Now, you might be thinking that means here in Santa Cruz, we are in big trouble, and that's probably true. Now, before you judge this guy and his stickers, however, the study goes on to say only the number of bumper stickers, not their content predicted road rage. So all those stick family decals, all those half marathon decals, the K love bumper stickers, they all add up, people. Beware out there.

And it's not just road rage. If you Google it, you will find articles on parking rage, air rage, boat rage, surf rage, fishing rage, jogger rage, biker rage, trucker rage, shopping rage, grocery cart rage, checkout line rage. It's basically life rage, people. We're all walking around angry all the time. Atlantic Magazine had a cover story a few months ago: Why are we so angry? Seems like everybody's walking around with kind of a low background hum of anger in their heart all the time. So let's talk about it.

Grab your message notes. "Abbots of the Heart" is our New Year's series that we launched here in January. This is all about how there are heart habits that you can practice that will improve your life on every single level. Our key verses for this series, which is based on the book "Enemies of the Heart" by Andy Stanley, are these two. You see them at the top of your notes, and they're also going to be on the screen.

Matthew 5:19, where Jesus says this. Let's read this verse out loud together. Let's put it on the screen. And then I want you to read this out loud with me. Here we go. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander." And then Solomon said this in Proverbs 4:23. Let's read this out loud together too. "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

Around this time of year, as we've been saying in this series, we typically try to change our habits at the surface. But the Bible says, go deep. Go into your heart. What are your inmost thoughts and feelings and values? Because they can help, or they can completely sabotage all your efforts at sobriety, or self-discipline, or satisfaction, or whatever you're going for.

Last weekend, we talked about guilt. This morning, I want to talk about what I call the deadliest emotion, chronic anger. Now, when we think of anger and our angry society, we usually think of extroverted anger, you could call it, where you yell around, and you stomp around the house, and you punch the wall, and you get irritable, right, extroverted anger. But there is also what you could call introverted anger, where you don't lose your temper, but you're still scary.

Because your moodiness is intimidating. Your silence is off-putting. Your surliness is frightening. Maybe you pride yourself because you rarely extrovert your anger. But it's funny, everybody around you still walks on eggshells all the time. Whether you shove it out or shove it down, anger is still a problem. So why are we all so angry? Well, what does the Bible say? This is so important.

In James 4:1–2, James, the brother of Jesus, is writing to good, church-going Christians. He says this: What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from—watch this—your desires that battle within you? You desire, but you do not have. So you kill; you covet, but you cannot get what you want. And so you quarrel, and you fight. He's saying that the root of so much personal anger is simple. It's basically, I am not getting what I want, what I desire, what I feel I deserve.

Andy Stanley puts it this way. He says, often, at the root of anger is this core conviction: I am owed something by someone. And many times, it's totally reasonable, like I am owed respect by my boss. I am owed money by this person who borrowed from me. I am owed love. I am owed some recognition. And there's resentment because you did not get what you feel that you were due.

Maybe somebody at work stole your idea. They owe you recognition. Maybe a parent left the family or mistreated you when you were a kid. There is a sense in which they owe you because they stole part of your childhood. Or if a spouse left you, you might feel like there's a sense in which they owe you all those years when it was going south. That can turn into a very, very deep-rooted anger that ends up affecting everything else in our lives.

So how do you deal with that in a healthy way? You know, there is so much to say about the issue of anger. It's an issue that at times in my life, I have struggled with, both introverted and extroverted anger. I have personally benefited from so many great resources and books out there on anger. We've got a couple of them at the resource center out in our lobby today.

But in the next few minutes, I want to have a tight focus on about four verses in a book of the Bible called Ephesians. If you have your Bibles with you, turn to Ephesians 4, where a man named Paul writes words about anger. It's important to note he is not writing this theoretically as kind of a privileged person sitting on the beach in Maui. He is writing this from prison, where he has been brutally mistreated, beaten by the authorities.

He was a man who knew what it felt like to be a victim of injustice. He had every right to get angry and stay angry at the people who were treating him this way. And yet look at what he writes. He starts, "In your anger, do not sin," in Ephesians 4:28. Now let me quickly stop and address something. People read that and say, aha! He says, "In your anger, do not sin." So that means there must be righteous anger. There must be a way to be angry and yet not sin. That is true. In fact, anger can be good. Anger can fuel change like against injustice.

Jesus Christ himself got angry at the abuse of religious authorities. However, here's the problem. When I am in the heat of anger, I always think my anger is righteous, right? I mean, just watch football fans this weekend. Niner fans are going to be absolutely convinced that our receiver made the catch in bounds, and Packer fans are going to be equally convinced he was not in bounds. It's going to be the same play, same exact video evidence. Half will be convinced the refs are out to get them, and the other half will be always convinced the refs are brilliant.

My point, of course, is that the Niner fans will be correct in every instance. No, wait. That's not my point. My point is be careful about justifying what you perceive as righteous anger. Paul here is not endorsing anger of any kind. What he's saying is, yes, you will get angry. That happens. We're all human. It's just an emotion that pops up. So you've got to learn how to deal with it in a healthy way. How?

He makes three simple points. Simple, but not easy. Number one, refuse to bear grudges. This is huge. Refuse to bear grudges. Paul says, in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Now, the way that I've heard this verse applied, like, for example, at couples' retreats, is never go to bed angry. Instead, stay up and fight until it's resolved. That's the way I used to apply this. I'm not kidding. I don't think that's what this means anymore.

Because there are going to be disputes that you cannot resolve in like the hour and a half between when it comes up at dinner and when the sun goes down. The force of this saying is, don't let yesterday's anger leak into today. You know? Don't carry your anger into the future. Now, listen to the reason that Paul thinks this is so important: and do not give the devil a foothold.

I don't know if you believe in a devil. I do, because Jesus did. But you don't have to believe in a devil to understand this principle. When you do not get angry—again, everybody gets angry from time to time—but when you carry anger from one season of life into the next season, you open a door to evil in your life. How? Well, a person who carries anger in their hearts is going to find that they're never really happy. They have all kinds of health problems, all kinds of relationship problems. They explode all over the people in their lives.

Experts say that almost everyone who is homicidal has a sense of being slighted somehow. Like, the world owes me, or that person owes me, and I'm going to make them pay. Paul is saying the worst thing you can do is let the sun set on one season of your life and carry that grudge from that season, the sense of you owe me, into the next season of your life. And here's why. Watch this. It becomes very easy to lose sight of the original source of your hurt.

You find yourself getting irritable and thin-skinned, and people are walking on eggshells around you because you brought old anger into new relationships. You're blaming the new people in your life for your old grudges. And that means that these new people in your life, there's nothing they can do to calm your anger down because your anger is not with them. It's with an unpaid debt from your past that you still have not closed the books on. That is giving the devil a foothold in your life. It leads to evil. So refuse to bear grudges.

Well, how do I do that? We're going to get there. But first, while you're doing the work to root out your grudges, even if they're still there in your heart, you need to practice point two, which is restrain your temper. Restrain your temper, your outbursts. Verse 31, Paul says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling, and slander along with every form of malice." I mentioned this to some of you before. In our family, we have a saying, "Stop when flooded." This idea comes from a man named Dr. John Gottman.

He's a researcher at the University of Washington, and he coined the word "flooded" to describe the physical state that we get into when we get angry. We are flushed with hormones that actually override the parts of our brains associated with analytical thinking. Your brain is just buzzing with emotion. When you are flooded with those fight or flight hormones, you literally cannot be rational. That part of your brain, the analytical part of your brain, shuts down. And so he says, you must stop when flooded.

Do not text when flooded. Do not make a speech to the kids when flooded. Do not confront your spouse when flooded. You will regret it. Wait for the hormones, those fight or flight hormones that subvert your thinking. Wait for those to get flushed out. It might take a half an hour. It might take hours. But let those hormone levels get back to normal and then return to the conversation.

So Lori and I learned this concept at a marriage retreat. We loved it, and we came home and taught it to our three kids. I am telling you, the results just from having this shared vocabulary flooded have been amazing. We all learned to self-diagnose. Oh, oh, wow. I'm feeling totally flooded. Time to go into my room and wait for these hormones to get flushed out. OK, see you. My own children have said that to me many times. And then later, the conversations were much more reasonable.

Rage, brawling, slander. These are the things that happen when you're flooded. So restrain your temper. Know yourself. And then number three, and it really all comes down to this. If I want to deal with that rude anger in my heart, I need to release those who owe me. This is the big core concept. I need to release those who owe me from the debt that I perceive they owe me. Next verse, Paul says, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other." Healthy, happy people have this heart habit of daily forgiveness, keeping short accounts, not keeping a record of wrongs.

Forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you. How do you find the strength to forgive? You gaze at Jesus. What Jesus Christ did for you, the Bible says, we all owed a debt to God. To speak in Santa Cruz-y terms, you could call it kind of a karmic debt from all our sin. But in Christ, God paid our debt for us by giving himself through his sacrifice on the cross. He paid that huge price for us, a price that we actually owed that we could never have paid.

When we gaze at what Jesus did for us, that's where we find the motivation to forgive the debts of others. Page two of your notes, forgiveness in the Bible is often framed as canceling a debt. In fact, Jesus told a story about this. One day a disciple of Jesus says, Peter, he had heard Jesus talk about all this forgiveness stuff, and he wasn't sure how far to take it, so he pulls Jesus aside. He goes, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Thinking, that's like crazily generous, right? Jesus answered, I tell you not seven times, but 77 times. You just keep forgiving.

Then Jesus tells one of his most fascinating and yet disturbing parables. Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began this settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, his master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this, the servant fell on his knees before him, be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything.

Now, that was a lie because this was absurd. 10,000 bags of gold was more money than this man could have made in 100 lifetimes. He owed a debt he could not pay. But the servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go free. That's what forgiveness is: canceling a debt. But here's the first twist. When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 silver coins, which is not much. He grabbed him and began to choke him. "Pay back what you owe me," he demanded.

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, "Be patient with me, and I will pay him back," the exact thing he said to the king. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged, and they went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in, "You wicked servant," he said. "I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?"

In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed. All right, I kind of get it so far, but then the next line really gives me pause. Jesus says, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart." Man, that really bugs me, that line. As Andy Stanley writes, "I gotta be honest with you, when Jesus says, 'This is how my heavenly Father will treat you,' I'm not exactly sure what he meant, but clearly it's not good." I think one of the things Jesus is pointing out is that unforgiveness is literally torture. It tortures you.

In case the parable's not clear, that first servant, that's you and me. We have a lifetime of debt cleared up like this when God forgives us, the kick of the universe. The second servant, that's anyone we feel owes us. The point of the parable, remember the context, Peter's saying, "Should I forgive up to seven times?" Jesus is saying, "I don't care how many times, just cancel the debt." Forgiveness is canceling a debt.

Now, let me clarify, forgiveness is not trust. Forgiveness is only given; trust must be earned. You should not trust somebody who conned you or abused you. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. You can release your bitterness against somebody without thinking it's a great idea to move back in with them or do business with them. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. If something illegal happened, it's not unforgiving for there to be legal consequences. And forgiveness is not a substitute for healing. Forgiveness is one step in the process of healing.

Forgiveness is releasing that sense of, "These people owe me." Because, watch this, the truth is, in most cases, they can't pay you back anyway. They can't go back into time and give you your childhood back. They can't go back into time and change anything that they did. They owe a debt that in many cases actually is literally impossible to repay. So, what are you going to do with it?

This past Friday night, I was astonished when the PBS NewsHour closed with the amazing story of a woman named Kim Phuc Phong Thi. It's a Vietnamese name, and the iconic photo of her as a little nine-year-old girl surviving a napalm bombing became a defining image of the Vietnam War. I want to show you just two minutes of the story that was on Friday night on PBS. Warning, you may find some images disturbing, but I hope you hear what she is saying.

I remember June 8th, 1972. I saw the airplane, and it's so loud, so close to me. Suddenly, the fire everywhere around me. The fire burned off my clothes, and I saw my arm got burned with a fire. I thought, oh my goodness, I get burned. People will see me different way. Nine years old, I became a victim of war. I went through 17 operations. I had to deal with the pain every single day. It built me up with hatred, bitterness, and anger. I just lived with the question, why me? I wanted to take my life because I thought, after I die, no more suffering, no more pain.

Eventually, I found the New Testament in the library in Saigon in Christmas, 1982, and I became a Christian. That faith, it helped me a lot. Since I have faith, my enemy's list became my prayer list. I realized myself, wow, Kim, you pray for your enemies. It means you love. Forgiveness set my heart free. I forgive everyone who caused my suffering, even the pilot, commander, people controlling me. My work with the children who have trauma, like me, I know how they have pain. I'm working, not because of my duty, not because of my mission, but because of my love.

What an amazing story. She said, forgiveness set her heart free. And if she can forgive, I know it is possible for you too. The same way it was possible for her through the power of Christ working in you. So let's make this very practical. How do I release those who owe me? Well, there's four parts to this process from the book, "Enemies of the Heart," and this is a process. It takes time, usually with the help of wise friends or counselors.

But number one is this: identify who you're angry with. Now here's the challenge. We tend to look around at the people right around us and go, okay, I'm angry with him and her and her and him. But you're usually not really angry with them. You're angry with someone in your past. This can be hard because it's obscured by time, but who do you really still hold a grudge against? And then number two, determine what they owe you. Again, not a quick process. What do you feel they owe you?

See, if you haven't figured out exactly what you feel they owed you, you can't cancel the debt. What specifically do you feel they owe you? More years of work at your old job, a better childhood, respect, what do you feel they owe you? I'd suggest even writing it down, making a list, and then cancel the debt. You say, that debt, they no longer owe me. Now, this is something you may need to process. You may feel initially like you don't want to set them free, but of course, you're really setting yourself free, like Kim said.

So here's a prayer suggested in the book. I also put it in your notes. Heavenly Father, this person, and you name them, has taken this, be specific, from me. I have held onto this debt long enough. I choose to cancel this debt. This person doesn't owe me anymore just as you forgave me, I forgive this person. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Now, I think for some of us, it may be a specific person, or it may be just a sense that life owes me. I worked hard, and life kind of owes me, or God owes me. There's power in naming that too, saying for years, I felt you owed me a better life. You no longer owe me. And then when you've gotten to this point in the process, number four, dismiss the case. The bigger ritual you can make of this, the better. I've heard some people invite friends over and take the list and burn it like they're burning a mortgage. One woman buried her list in the backyard and put a little cross over it.

Seal it with some kind of a ceremony, and then get in that daily heart habit of not holding people's debts against them. Every day, like driving home from work, you think I forgive them, and them, and them. They do not owe me. That is a closed account. So let me ask you, how's your heart? Got a short fuse and you don't know why? Are people asking you from time to time, why are you so angry? There may be something you're carrying with you from your past. Would you like to let it go?

If not, how long do you plan on carrying that grudge? For the rest of your life? Till the day you die? You have the opportunity to decide to cancel that debt and not carry it into yet another season of life. Imagine, the day will come when you see that person, and you'll feel differently about them. You may not even notice it at the time, but maybe a day later you'll realize, you know, when I saw them, I didn't feel all angry, or when their name came up in conversation, I didn't feel like I had to add bad stuff to the discussion.

They went from my enemy list to my prayer list, as Kim said, that can really happen, and I'll prove it. I'll close with this. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and this topic was one he preached on a lot. In fact, except for civil rights, he probably preached on anger and forgiveness more than any other topic. Why? Because he had a lot to be angry about.

In his autobiography, he talks about mistreatment at the hands of white people when he was young, going through years of anger built up inside of him. Later, he was jailed unjustly. Then one night, in 1956, his home in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by white extremists. In his autobiography, he writes about what he was thinking then. While I lay in that quiet front bedroom, I began to think of the viciousness of people who would bomb my home, and I could feel the anger rising when I realized my wife and baby could have been killed.

I was once more on the verge of corroding hatred, and once more, I caught myself, and I said, "You must not allow yourself to become bitter." And he didn't just quiet his own anger. He also went outside and calmed the crowd gathering outside his house. Listen to what he told them. This is a man whose house has just been bombed, and he goes outside to this angry crowd, and he said, "Listen, we are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them, and let them know that you love them."

Now again, where in the world did he find the strength to say that and to do that? I want to quote the conclusion to a sermon that he preached around that same time in the late '50s. He said this: "Returning hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe." It just goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Stay angry and you'll begin to do irrational things. You can't see straight. You can't walk straight. You can't stand upright. Your vision is distorted.

But if you love your enemies, you will discover that love has within it a redemptive power for your enemies. And I'm foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. And then we will be in God's kingdom together. Where did he find the inspiration? Where do you find the inspiration for that kind of love? You fix your thoughts on Jesus Christ.

King then wrapped up that message like this. He said, "Yes, I can see Jesus walking around the hills and valleys of Palestine. And I can see him looking out at the Roman Empire with all of her military machinery. And I can hear him saying, 'I will not use this method, but neither will I hate the Roman Empire. And Caesar is gone today. And so are Alexander and Charlemagne and Napoleon, where their empires built on power. But Jesus started an empire that depended on love. And it grew up from a group of 11 or 12 men to more than 700 million today. And I'm proud to stand here in church this morning and say that that army is still marching.'

And all around the world this morning we can hear the glad echo of heaven ring, 'All hail the power of Jesus' name.' And we can hear another chorus singing, 'Hallelujah, hallelujah, he's the king of kings and the Lord of lords.' And we can hear another choir singing, 'In Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide world. This is the only way.' Amen?

Man, I want to be part of that army. I want to be part of that kingdom. I want to be part of that culture, not the current culture that is trying to make you and keep you angry. Which kingdom do you want to follow? Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

Heavenly Father, you see our hearts and our hurts and our pains. And you also see our excuses. You see who we like to blame. God, please give us the courage to do something with what we've heard today. For many of us, I pray this would be the beginning of the habit of short accounts, the habit of writing off debt generously. I pray that today would be the beginning of freedom for many people here today. Give us the wisdom to know what to do with what we've just heard, Father.

And God, I pray that if there's anybody who's new here or who's been checking the church out and they see now that we get to choose between the world's culture, a culture of anger and power, and the culture of Jesus, a culture of love and forgiveness. It starts with God's forgiveness of our debt. God, I pray that they would make the choice even in this moment to say, I want to make Jesus my king, my savior. We thank you for this. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.