A Root of Anger

I know the rules: "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires" (James 1:19-20), but like so many, I struggle with anger, often over what are ultimately silly things. But I noticed something about myself that made me think.

On the little two-lane highway near my house, the speed limit is 55 mph. There is no legal passing zone. I frequently get stuck behind someone driving 10-15 under the limit all the way into town, which is all of five minutes. And I lose my mind.

In the city, the speed limit on the freeway is 60 mph. It's common to get stuck in traffic moving at 25-35 mph for a good 10-15 minutes. And I'm generally peaceful and content. Why the difference?

On the country highway near my home, in the area where I grew up flying down these roads as immortal teenagers do, I expect to be able to drive the speed limit (at least). Then I get behind one of the many, many transplants who don'tknowhowtodrive! and don'tknowwherethey'regoing! or drivewiththeirphoneintheirhand! while on the freeway I thoroughly expect to get stuck in traffic. The difference is not what's going on out there but what was going on in me before I ever started the car.

Once I noticed this pattern, I began to see it elsewhere. I expect things to go a certain way. More than that, I think I deserve for them to go that way. And they don't. I get frustrated. Frustration turns to anger.

To borrow a phrase, frustrated expectations are a root of all kinds of evil.

So what can we do about that? First, we can lower our expectations. Honestly, our expectations are probably unreasonable a lot of the time: that everything will go smoothly, that the children will do what they were told the first time, that the mayo will be where you left it. OK, maybe "unreasonable" isn't quite the right word. How about "unlikely"? Because we know how the kids are. We know what the roads are like. We know how politics works. Why did we expect everything to go our way? If we expect things to go like they usually go instead of how they'd go in our ideal world, we'll be less frustrated.

I'm not calling for pessimism here. I can see how it could turn into that if we're not careful, but that's not the goal. It's not looking for the cloud in every silver lining but acknowledging that things don't usually go my way, so why would they start now?

But we're always going to have expectations, and they're not always going to be met, no matter how low they are. So the more important step is to notice when we're getting frustrated. When we know that we're getting frustrated and know what tends to happen when we get frustrated, we can watch ourselves that we don't let it turn into anger. (By the way, this works with getting "hangry", too. Yes, I have a lot of anger issues.)

Does this keep me from ever getting angry? No, of course not. But a little self-awareness can result in the self-control to keep minor annoyances from becoming big problems.

And that's what it really is about: self-control. Making myself behave like a rational adult — and a Christ follower — when things aren't going my way.

Maybe you don't get frustrated easily. Maybe you don't get hangry. But you can pay attention to the things that do make you angry and try to be more self-aware, to head that off at the pass. Because "human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires", but the Holy Spirit will help us as we seek to be more like Christ. Ask him and trust him for his help.


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