Tag Archive | emotion

Author Confessions: Smiling Depression

Oct6
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Author Confessions: Smiling Depression

I haven’t written about depression for some time and for those who don’t deal with it, it can be hard to explain how it can hit for no particular reason.

When a doctor first suggested I had depression, I told her I didn’t. I decided to make a chart with a line in the center and for a month marked my moods for the day above the line (happy) or  below (sad) or maybe even right on the line – neither. When I finished I returned to my doctor and agreed to try medication. Medication helped a lot.

When I told my pastor who was also my boss at the time, he said, “Nah, you don’t have depression.” And many people who would know me would be surprised because I don’t go moping around.

A depressed person may not appear depressed. We’ve learned over time that many people don’t care if you’re down and we  can’t always explain why. Instead we smile.

Circumstances can lead to depression. When your car dies, and you lose your job and the rent is due, that helplessness can become depression. When the situations resolve themselves the depression eases.

Getting stuck in grief is a complicated thing because depression, and all kind of emotions swirl around with memories, regrets, and helplessness. We can’t bring that person back. The loss can be deep and hard to move past. However, that sadness doesn’t need to stay all-consuming although it can sure mess us up for a while.

Depression is not caused by a lack of faith, however, willful, sinful choices can result in depression as inside we know these things are a violation of God’s plan for us. Confessing our sin to God (and others when appropriate) and changing our ways can help. We have a gracious and forgiving God.

Smiling depression is more covert. A smile covers the interior. That is hard to fix if one doesn’t have a compassionate, understanding person willing to listen and validate the pain. To encourage–not fix. Medication and therapy can help. Even with a degree in counseling and life going generally well, I still see my therapist on a regular basis. I’m not fond of the copays but it is an investment in myself and helps in all areas of my life. Depression, anxiety, stress can contribute to other health issues so talking with someone who knows me and can encourage or help me see things differently, helps.

When I’m depressed I write in my journal. I pray. I try to sing. I hug my dog a little tighter (he’s not a fan of that but he puts up with me!). I acknowledge the depression (even if only to myself and God) and try to not let myself simmer and stew in it. I give myself permission to cry. Making plans to be with others even if I’d rather curl up and sleep, helps too. Helping someone, listening to them, can also help. I’ve learned that when depression hits, I am not without tools to help me get through the darkness.

Of course, that depends on how dark it is.

I stay in God’s word daily to help me keep focused on the One who loves me. I love the Psalms because David went through periods of depression too and poured out his heart and helplessness to the One who created and called him. He often turned to praising that very same God who walks through the darkeness with us.

Depression can hit from any angle and sadness doesn’t need to stay forever. I remind myself of this truth: This too shall pass.

When I was free from an destructive marriage, many people came up to me and told me that I looked happier. Stress, helplessness, depression, all dimmed that smile but it wasn’t noticeable until those things had passed. Only those who know me really well can tell when the smile doesn’t reach my eyes.

Some people struggle much worse than I do, but the reality is, we all struggle with things at times and those burdens are not always shared online. Sometimes the most devestating ones are, or the high points. The reality is, most of us live somewhere in between. Be kind to everyone as often as you can, because you simply don’t know what they’re going through behind the smile.

 

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Hate

Mar3
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Hate

I believe hate is an emotion strongly corrolated with anger. Typically we hate something that angers us. Although sometimes it might be a strong distaste for something, like anchovies, which tends to be a pretty harmless expression of the emotion.

The reality is, we all hate something, and maybe at some points, someone. It’s what we do with that emotion that counts. I have heard the expression, “Hate the sin, not the sinner.” This is a wise thing to do because every individual is created in the image of God and therefore has worth and value.

Hate is a communicable trait of God. The difference is, He is justified in acting on His hatred of sin because He is pure and holy. We, however, are not. When we feel hate, we need to work to resolve it without seeking justice. That we can leave in God’s capable hands. Easier said than done.

1 John 3:15 has strong words to say about hate. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” In this instance strong hatred toward another human is sin, especially when that turns into a rage that is acted on. We see this with crimes of passion where emotion drives someone to kill.

John is stating that you cannot be clinging to Jesus and having that kind of emotion inside you. This goes back to forgiveness which I talk about in my post on Why Murdering People is Wrong. This echoes the concept from love about action vs emotion. It’s a both/and kind of thing. Scripture instructs us to love those who hate us. Luke 6:27-28 states: “But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

Hmmm, so we act in love regardles of emotion. When I was in my early 20’s and seeing a counselor, I dealt with some hate and my wise counselor told me to pray for the good of the person who had wronged me. Two things to note here: Anger was mixed in with hate because I had been wronged, and I needed to act regardless of my emotion. Interesting, huh? The more I prayed good for that person, in spite of my emotions, the less that emotion had a grip on me. Now that didn’t mean I wanted a relationship with that person, that is an entirely different topic. I didn’t need to hold on to hate.

There is a flip side. “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you.” (John 15:18). This is so crucial to those of us who are Christ-followers. I want people to like me and not everyone will because I am not everyone’s cup of tea. When there are people who hate me, I need to step back and evaluate.

  • Is it because I have wronged them? If so, I need to apologize for any transgression I have done, intentionally or unintentionally. Having said that, if they don’t inform me and I cannot discern what that perceived wrong is, I can either ask them about it (if it is safe to do so). If I can’t find out the reason, all I can do is pray for them. 
  • Is their hatred of me because of my faith in Jesus Christ? This is sometimes the case. Just because of my faith, someone may despise me, regardless of any personality quirks or choices I’ve made.
    • It helps to understand this because it is too easy to hate someone who has wounded me because of my faith. Oh, they may not claim that is the case but when I pray and evaluate things it might truly be the root of the issue. When I strive to make wise choices based on Scripture or stand for things that God stands for, then peopel will hate me. Jesus said so!
    • The reality is, while they may direct the hate towards me, it is really the Holy Triune God of the universe they have an issue with and I am the convenient target.
    • When I can seperate that out I can pray more effectively for the Holy Spirit to do the work of convicting that person of sin and unrighteousness (John 16:8). That conviction can lead to their salvation even if I never benefit from it.
    • This removes me from carrying the weight of someone hating me. They hate Jesus and I can go to Him with my pain, instead of retaliating, because the world hated him when He walked this earth and the world will hate Him now as the Holy Spirit indwells me.
    • Taking that step back and understanding this can help me let go of any resentment toward that person. I don’t need to hate them, inspite of slanderous words or harmful actions taken. This allows clear-headed thinking when needed because hatred and anger can cloud good judgement.

When we can step back from the emotion we can recognize that any person who we feel hatred for or who hates us, is someone who is hurting and in desperate need of Jesus. Forgiving them is key as well so we can let it go and leave that person in God’s capable hands. Funny how once again the way we think about something can impact our feelings. Jesus is the first and best cognitive behavioral therapist.

Hatred shoved down deep, poisons our relationship with God and others, and can have a harmful impact on our health as well. I’m not a doctor but the kind of stress this emotion created within can, long term, pose serious consequences to our health.

Stepping back a moment to my post last week on The Dangerous Moral High Ground, it is easy to develop hate at a person for holding to a position, or maybe due to cultural differences, or politics. It’s easy to slip into that. I suggest if this is the source of your hate, you might want to revisit that post. It’s not wise to paint all people with a wide brush and lable along with hating them. This can be hard when we see evil at play, even if it doesn’t impact us personally. We should hate evil. That is not a sin. But to hate the people who were created by God? Not healthy.

How have you dealt with hatred? Whether within yourself or on the receiving end from others? What has helped you to move past the grip of that emotion?

The dangerous emotion of hate has a step-brother I will look at next week: Ambivalence.

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Love

Feb10
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Love

I suppose I should first address the big issue: is love even an emotion? According to Google AI it is. Strong affection at the least but in many ways, love is more a verb, it involves acting, regardless of feelings. So we will consider it as an emotion, and given that Valentine’s Day is this week, I figured it was a good time to ponder this topic. I guess as an author who writes romance, this probably should have been the first emotion I tackled, oh well!

Love is that feel good emotion, so how could that be dangerous? Well, when strong feelings of love are not reciprocated, it could result in the person becoming obsessed with trying to make someone love them. That kind of love is idolatry and coveting, both sins God instructed us to avoid.

In 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a, there is an interesting guidepost to true love which was exemplified in Jesus.

Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited,
does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked,
and does not keep a record of wrongs.
Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

Now many of us cannot honestly say we are perfect at this love thing. Strong affection though, when it is truly love, should be a model of Jesus to the object of love. That’s why a man and a woman, two distinct individuals from different backgrounds, jobs, temperaments, giftedness, traumas, successes, growth in faith, preferences…. you get the drift — will commit to loving their spouse for a lifetime. While love may be an emotion and can be directed at a spouse, a child, a friend, other family members, or in some cases even food or a movie…it involves action. Sometimes in spite of emotion.

A quick note about romance and love in fiction. I write romance. As a genre the requirement is a happily-ever-after ending. I am aware that life is full of challenges but when writing that kind of story the goal is to leave people with a happy feeling. Other authors, Nicolas Sparks for instance, since many know his work, doesn’t write romance. He writes love stories which inevitably involve loss and tears at some point. Granted, true life is filled with highs and lows…as far as fiction goes, it is where you end the story.

So what do we have with Jesus? We have the happily-ever-after, although if the story had ended at the crucifixion – it would have only been a love story of epic proportions. We get the happily-ever-after ending with Him in heaven regardless of how we depart this planet. Unless you reject Jesus, then your story ends in tragedy.

Love is hard. When one loves deeply, one grieves deeply. Love is also involved in attachment so it makes sense that one can love a dog, or a home, or a great book. We have a fondness, tenderness, and warmth toward something. We had a senior dog, Benji, who was with us for only eighteen months but he had issues we weren’t aware of when we adopted him that included: dementia, incontinence in the house, focal seizures, and an uninhibited bite response. He was so cute, soft, affectionate,and devoted to me. He was difficult to care for and make sure he didn’t bite anyone. When he unexpectedly bit me, that was the limit. A dog that bites is a liability. We had to be put him down. Part of me was relieved because he was such a pain in the neck in many ways, in spite of that sweet face and devotion. When we put him down, I was stoic, but later, I bawled. I kept looking for him everywhere. I loved him. I was patient, kind, and I bore with his idiosyncracies that come with adopting an old dog. I had invested in him and he had no idea that he even bit me or that it was wrong to do so. He sat there wagging his tail waiting for attention. Even writing this, years later, makes me want to cry and we’ve had to say good-bye to three other senior dogs since that time. Thinking about any of them will make me miss them and sad that we had to make that decision.

This is even harder with a person who is ailing. Dementia, birth defects, trajedies can change our lives and the emotion of love is not longer in control. Yes, we feel affection but it can be at war with despair, depression, and physical fatigue. Yet those who truly love, care for that person regardles of those issues, even when it is hard, hurts, and creates a burden or inconvenience.

See how complicated love is? True love lasts beyond the emotion. Sometimes acting loving can help us get back there to the feeling.

Both my husband and I came from verbally abusive first marriages and it left us wondering how well we could love another person after all of that. We obviously had the affection part down but we were old enough to know that emotions are fickle. “Do I even know how to love?” he asked me a few times. Yes, he does. He shows it to me not only in words but deeds. He provides a secure home for me, he treats me kindly, sometimes buys flowers for me “just because.” He cares about what concerns me.  He’s the one who graciously has agreed to adopt those old dogs even though their deaths wounded our souls deeply. Now we have younger dogs so hopefully we don’t have to make those kinds of decisions for a long time.

So how could love be dangerous? It can be dangerous if we are loving someone who is abusive and refuses to get help, or change. People with certain mental illnesses need love (don’t we all?) but would never make a good partner due to their illness. Love needs boundaries because we should have some affection for ourselves as well.

Boundaries are why we train our children not to run into the road without looking both ways among many other lessons. Love encourages the best of someone else but that does not mean approving or accepting abuse or sin. We will get angry with anyone we have a long term relationship with, however, it isn’t abuse if there is honest sharing of emotions. It is abuse when there is belittling, name-calling, contempt, bitterness, and put-downs.

Love without boundaries is dangerous and not really love. We should never blankly accept the terrible things someone might try to do to us. When my dad was on hospice, struggling mentally after having an extremely rare brain tumor removed, he could at times be mean. It had to be frustrating to him to not understand all that was happening or even recognize the people trying to care for him, even if they were his children. One day he got a bit snippy with my mom and she told him he needed to behave. He never acted out that way again. If he gave me any trouble, I would tell him mom would be angry and he’d comply with the plan. Once in a moment of clarity toward the end, he even thanked my mom for taking good care of him.

I love my dad and writing that made me cry. That’s love. I still have deep affection for a man who no longer walks on this earth. I admire the love my mom showed him by her actions even when it was a huge sacrifice.

Love as an emotion is dangerous when someone decides they no longer love someone anymore because they don’t feel that way. We can’t always let emotions be the litmus test for a relationship. I had a difficult time with two of my three kids as they grew up, and I still loved them during that time when they were not very loveable. Babies are cute and snuggly and easy to love, but some parents have to love one who cries all night and day, or won’t sleep, or has serious medical issues that sap every ounce of life from them. Love can and should prevail because it is almost as close to life as anything else during those times.

I’ve rambled here and it’s tugged my heartstrings so I suppose next week I’ll talk about grief.

Something else to think about though. God loves us and created you and me. Even when we wouldn’t acknowledge Him, Jesus died on the cross to bridge the gap of sin that seperated us from a holy and perfect LORD. “For God so loved the world…” I’m reading in the Old Testament right now and God’s longsuffering toward the nation of Israel is amazing to behold. He loved them even when He needed to allow, or force, negative consequences for their sins. God loved with boundaries, but His devotion never failed because LOVE never ends.

1 John 14 states: We love because He first loved us. When we are connected to the ultimate source of love, it becomes easier to love others.

The dangerous emotion of love is a deep subject and I’ve only scratched the surface. Remember that God’s love is better than any human love and should be the ONE we seek to love first before anyone or anything else. That’s hard for us fickle emotional humans to do.

 

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Guilt

Jan20
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Guilt

Are you seeing a trend here yet with these emotions? Any emotion can become a negative in some way when taken to an extreme and not brought under the truths of Scripture. My assertion that Jesus is the first cognitive behavioral therapist still stands. Long before this was coined as a psychological theory Scripture is replete with this.

Let’s take guilt. At first, I didn’t see this as such a dangerous emotion, but hear me out.

On the surface, when a person’s mind is working well, guilt is the emotion that tells us that we have sinned. Psalm 32:5 states: “I acknowledged my sin to You, And I did not hide my guilt; I said, “I will confess my wrongdoings to the Lord”; And You forgave the guilt of my sin.”

God has built into us the ability to recognize we have done wrong. We feel bad. That’s the uncomfortable part about this emotion but it is truly important, because when we feel bad and realize we did something wrong, we apologize to God (and maybe an offended party) and receive His forgiveness when we have accepted the free gift of salvation from our sin at the cross where Jesus died. I’m not going to go into the theology of sin here but that is usually when we feel guilt—when we have sinned or perhaps accidently hurt someone’s feelings. Sin isn’t always intentional or done willfully. Often, we sin without directly thinking about it.

Guilt might show up as cognitive dissonance. We say one thing and do another and there is mental and even emotional conflict that begs to be resolved. To have integrity we mentally need to live out what we say and believe.

So how does guilt become dangerous? There are four ways that I can think of:

  • When we experience guilt when we didn’t do anything wrong. We cannot take on the burden of someone else’s choices. That is enmeshment and damaging to self and relationships.
  • When we hold on to guilt even after confessing and apologizing for it. Remember yes, continually beat yourself up? Not good.
    • Now restitution might remind you of your guilt, but it doesn’t need to be carried forever. This might be harder to do depending on the sin.
    • Addictions, adultery, murder, or even an accidental death you might have been involved in, can be difficult to recover from and even create trauma that needs professional help to resolve.
    • Burying guilt can create health problems as well.
    • God forgives us, so we should walk in that freedom. Not as perfect or as if it never happened, but as a person who grows through this.
  • Lying and shifting blame for things.
    • Some avoid guilt by blaming others for anything that goes wrong. This is a cognitive issue and that person is essentially lying to themselves to protect them from the truth that they failed in some way.
    • They cannot grow or improve if they refuse to acknowledge their own guilt.
  • When a person never experiences the emotion of guilt and have no awareness of their wrongdoing.
    • This might be due to a variety of mental illnesses, the most notable: a sociopath or someone with antisocial, borderline, or narcissistic personality disorder or possibly some other brain dysfunction.
    • These people are not always dangerous, but they may not be safe people to be around often. They might parrot an apology, but they won’t truly believe they erred and won’t experience any guilt. Behavior won’t change.
    • This is an issue that cannot be resolved through medicine or even great psychotherapy in most instances.
    • The sad effect of rampant sin in our world impacts the way our brains develop and with the toxic environments (emotionally, relationally and physically) that someone might have grown up in.
    • Are these people irredeemable? No. I wouldn’t put it past God to do a mighty work and heal that numbed part of the brain and thinking process, but I also wouldn’t assume it will happen.

Guilt is good even if it feels bad to experience it. The great thing for most people is that when we acknowledge our guilt and seek forgiveness, God is willing to give that to us (even if another human being might not). Acknowledging you have an issue if the sin is a persistent issue, can help a person start to see patterns for that sin so that it might be broken. Anything else can pile guilt on guilt (sin upon sin) which can only be damaging to the body, mind, and soul.

A scripture to cling to is Romans 8:1: Therefore, there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus.

On a side note but important: When we hold on to sin and refuse to confess our guilt and repent (change our ways) we are, according to Scripture, grieving the Holy Spirit. Eph 4:30-32  Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Sin and unrepentance grieve God. Guilt is the emotion He gives to help us recognize we’ve wronged not only others, but a Holy God.

Daily confession (in prayer) can be a good way to acknowledge and own our failures before God to move forward with a clean slate by His grace. Something I don’t do often enough. The dangerous emotion of guilt can be tricky. How do you deal with guilt?

Next week: The Dangerous Emotion of Regret.

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Inadequacy (aka Imposter Syndrome)

Jan13
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Inadequacy (aka Imposter Syndrome)

I hadn’t heard of this until relatively recently. Imposter Syndrome is in reality feeling inadequate but it applies more to professional work. It is where someone feels like a fraud. Not good enough. Not worthy. Inadequate.

We’ve all experienced feelings of inadequacy at some point or another. Starting a new job, or perhaps that first job right out of college or in an internship. I felt totally inadequate to work as a therapist. I never got licensed so I never called myself a psychotherapist although I have counseled people and had the training. Maybe Imposter Syndrome kept me from pursuing that further? When I did counseling in my job it was while I was under supervision and getting my hours so I didn’t need the “title” or license to do the job. When I did it in women’s ministry, I definitely felt inadequate given the state of my private life.

When I served in leadership at my church and taught classes I experienced inadequacy for the same reason but since I was honest about my inadquacies and was encouraged to do the work, I soon lost that sense of being an imposter.

When  I first taught classes at writer’s conferences I was barely published myself so I was learning a lot as I prepared to teach. I learned and then was qualified to share that with others and since I was being paid I didn’t feel too inadequate.

Sometimes inadequacy is a minimalization of the gifts God has given and perhaps if there is a pendulum swing between that and prideful arrogance, then I think inadequacy is the lesser of the dangerous emotions and I probably will address that at some point.

If we are trusting God and following Him we are assured He will equip us for every task, even if we don’t feel adequate to handle it.  The apostle Paul experienced this. In 1 Corinthians 15:9-10 says: For I am the least of the apostles,  who am not fit to be called and apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by  the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain…”

Inadequacy can resolve to humility when we recognize that we are never perfect enough for the work God has called us to. Whether it is writing, preaching, counseling, teaching, parenting, running a business or any other job or task. When we lean on Him and are honest about what we don’t know, or that we are not an expert, we can avoid feeling like an imposter. If God calls us, then to stay mired in an emotion of inadequacy is denying the power of the Holy Spirit to use us as He sees fit.

Now that doesn’t mean there are not imposters out there. There are. I struggle to trust those who claim expertise in any area since that tends to exclude a teachable spirit which is essential to our lives. Not that I want to be corrected, that is never fun, but if I want to be good at anything God leads me to, then I should be open to correction and growing in that area. God doesn’t call us to a task and then expect us to not actually work at that task. He won’t do it for us but He will help us and equip us as we go.

This is why someone who has just come to Christ can zealously share the gospel without even having read the entire Bible much less attended seminary. He has enough for the task ahead. Even aspiring writers can encourage other writers with things they have learned.

I’ve taught on leadership but don’t claim to be a great leader or know everything about the subject. I’ve taught theology classes but don’t know everything there is to know about God and the study of God. I’ve taught on writing and editing but I still have so much to learn and have not mastered everything. In everything I’ve always admitted up front that I am fallible. I don’t know it all, but hopefully I know enough to help someone else on the path to learning about the subject. Now that doesn’t mean I won’t teach what I know with authority and confidence but doing that I don’t experience emotions of anxiety and inadequacy, nor pride. I can do the job God gave me to do.

A few years back I struggled with whether I would write again after a brutal tangle with an editor. That book finally released and I love it but hate to pick it up to read it because of the trauma of that interaction and the battles that ensued to that particular book published. The dangerous emotion of inadquacy almost had me quitting it all. I persevered, got the book published and have gone on to write others since then. I will admit there is a greater fear of failure now than there had been previously.

Have you ever experienced inadequacy or imposter syndrome? How have you dealt with that?

 

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Anger

Nov18
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Author Confessions: The Dangerous Emotion of Anger

If you are not aware, I have a Masters degree in Couseling Psychology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. I have worked in the field of mental health for several years with chronic mental illness clients on disability as well as served in various leadership capacities at my church in the past. I’ve also been on my own mental health journey (aren’t we all?). So how does that relate to writing? Because as an author I am responsible to be theologically biblical as I tell my stories and there are differing opinions on some key emotional concepts. I’m going to address one here and you can disagree with me if you wish but I’m honestly trying to be three things in this article 1) biblically true, 2) aware of my reader’s emotional wellbeing and 3) be brief. For that reason even though there are several of these emotions…I’ll be dealing with them seperately over a few posts.

I heard a teaching recently that made my blood boil. The preacher said that Jesus got angry and it was righteous anger and that was the only kind of anger that is permissible. In essence, if your anger is righteous, meaning you are angry about something that violates God’s law, then it is acceptable. All other anger is sin and destins you to hell.

For some reason, growing up, I had caught the concept that anger was sin. I won’t go into my family of orgin issues, but needless to say as a new believer at the age of fifteen, this caused some difficulty for me. Jesus was God, but He got angry. In my teenage mind that meant He sinned. This resulted in my stuffing down my feelings of hurt, frustration, and anger which then resulted in a variety of health issues. I didn’t understand that anger was an emotion that was part of the human condition because we were made in the image of God. My mind was blown when I finally grasped that Jesus didn’t sin! Whew!

So maybe you can understand why this teaching from the pulpit stirred my righteous indignation at a teaching that denies the very essence of a key part who God created us to be: emotional. This is a communicable attribute of God. We are created in HIS image and part of that is emotion, including anger.

Anger is mentioned 234 times in Scripture and the word angry is mentioned 44 times (based on Strong’s Concordance). The LORD repeatedly expressed anger towards His children who consistantly disobeyed the rules He set out to protect them. God has emotions. He created us with emotions. Those emotions are neither good nor bad, they just are.

Now let’s look a little closer at anger. Ephesians 4:26a states: Be angry, and yet do not sin. Wait. What? Anger is not a sin? It is only what you do with the anger that can be a sin. 

Let’s unpack the emotion of anger. Anger is often part of a continuum of emotions. Sometimes we are angry but it is really hurt or frustration. Anger can become rage. If you think of it as a continuum and expand the concept, anger encompasses a wider range of emotions, and in and of themselves, not a sin. Now if anger becomes rage and you start insulting someone, wishing them ill, or worse, seeking their destruction, then that is the sin.

In Matthew 5:22 it states: “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”  In this instance the Greek word for anger means to provoke or enrage, or wrath. (Strongs Concordance, 3710). This is a strong anger. Rage. And we all, I hope, can recognize how deadly that can be. There isn’t a term “road rage” without cause.

Let’s go back to Matthew. In this passage, Jesus is speaking against murder, which consists of taking someone’s life and Jesus is taking the action and stating the very thought of that is also sin. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? Sometimes when we think or feel things strongly, if we don’t confront those thoughts and emotions they can become actions. Jesus is expressing an early version of cognitive behavioral therapy here and going to the root of the issue: our thoughts. Thoughts precede emotion. What we think about something determines our emotions regarding that. Calling someone a derogatory name is also not really anger, it is pride. The person is exalting himself above the other and assuming a superior attitude.  2 Corinthians 10: 5 states: “We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Again, another cognitive action because thoughts influence actions, including words.

Who hasn’t struggled with this? We all have have violated the Thou shalt not kill commandment, even in our thoughts. Thankfully, we can repent, change our thinking and by the power of the Holy Spirit, our hearts and emotions as well. Jesus’ death on the cross even covers this sin.

Let’s be honest here. We cannot control what thoughts come into our brain, but we can determine what we do about them. Our brain isn’t always telling us the truth either. We have been fed lies all our lives and some we make up our own. We are to line them up with Scripture and replace those lies with truth.

In summary, anger is not a sin. It is an emotion given to us by God. Anger is a signal to tell us something is wrong. Maybe it comes from hurt, or jealousy, or frustration. We can be angry at ourselves, innanimate objects and, of course, other people. But when we are angry with someone, if it is possible to do so we are to go them and work it out like Matthew 18:15-18 states we should do.

We always need to be discerning about who and what we listen to and evaluate everything against Scripture. However, if confronting the person is not possible, as in this instance, we can talk to God about it, process it without slandering an individual, and pray that God will open this person’s eyes and protect the innocent and less knowledgeble people who heard the message. I am not superior to this preacher by any stretch of the imagination, and I pray God will correct this man by the power of His Spirit. And I will not be listening to his false teaching.

How does this relate to writing? Obviously, my characters experience a range of emotions but I need to be clear where that crosses into sin. Even if I don’t use scripture, I can help a reader understand that our emotions are given to us by God, but we can work to overcome them leading us into sin.

It does grieve me the damage teachings like this does to people. This isn’t the only one. I’ll be dealing with lust next. The dangerous emotion of anger hopefully has been dispelled. Be angry and sin not is a process we all need to work on and with the power of the Holy Spirit we can be victorious. We can feel our emotions, confront the underlying thought, and move past it to freedom.