Venting anger can be done effectively

To be angry is to be human. It is a universal experience. In the United States, anger and violence have become widespread. Ours is now an age of rage. Road rage is on the increase. It has been estimated that more than two thirds of the 130 deaths on our highways daily are due to rage. To reduce this problem we must begin with the individual. How do we handle anger that plagues us? Fortunately we all have defense mechanisms with which to cope with our personal anger. Solving personal anger will go a long way to solving the social problem.
   
There are negative and positive ways of dealing with personal anger. Let us first observe some negative ways.
   
1. We tend to internalize anger and this leads to depression. To put it simply, we swallow it and it embraces us with a dark cloud of despair.
   
2. Some deny anger by calling it righteous indignation. This is not a clever way of wrapping our anger in a euphemism. Admit anger and find a positive way to deal with it.
   
3. Projection is another mechanism for dissipating anger. Blame others such as your spouse, children or colleagues. Get the “beam out of your own eye” and you will see that most of the fault is yours and that you can deal with it realistically.
  
Now, let us turn to some positive and healthy ways of coping with our hostility.
   
1. By catharsis, that is, discovering ways to vent our pent-up frustration, aggression and anger. By repression, we dam up our rage and anger is turned inward against self. Find ways to flush out the accumulated venom, hate and anger.
   
2. Try the apostle Paul’s principle: “Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath” (Eph. 4:24). Phyllis Diller, the comedian, put it: “stay up and fight.”
   
3. Personally, when I get angry I write articles and letters and file them away. This seemed to work for President Harry Truman.
   
4. Give $5 or more to charity when you blow your stack. That should reduce your incidence of anger.
   
5. Be calm. My long-time friend Clarence Jordan and I were filming the old Haymarket area in Louisville, Ky., in 1942. A notorious nightclub had been in the news due to murders and other crimes. Naturally, the owner was pretty sore about all that publicity. When he saw us across the street, he approached us like a raging bull. When he got a few steps from us Clarence, in his soft southern drawl, said “Friend, this is a free country is it not?” The angry man was astounded, turned around and headed back across the street muttering, “To h— with it.” I learned existentially what the Bible means where it says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” (Prov. 15:1).
   
6. Be courteous. Avoid name-calling; treat others with the same treatment you would like.
   
7. Be in control. By discipline and the infilling of the Holy Spirit, exercise self-control. If one is filled with the Spirit, he or she displays love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22).
   
8. Be a student of the problem of anger. Start a seminar in your church to study the problem.
   
9. Develop a sense of humor. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Prov. 17:22). Even Freud would agree with this fact. Read his essays where he declares wit or humor is a vent to our repressed dark feelings. Find yourself a laughing place. Here you will get a new perspective on your inner self and courage to conquer your anger.
   
10. Seek counseling. If you have a chronic problem of anger, get professional counseling. The etiology or source of your anger may be physical. Medication can help.
   
11. Always be kind to others; you never know what burdens they bear. Kindness reduces anger in others.
   
12. Recognize anger as a gift of God and as a part of the human self to be directed in the cause of justice. So “be angry, but sin not” (Eph. 4:26). Remember that both God and Jesus expressed anger in Scripture. On three occasions the divine record shows Jesus became angry: Jesus’ anger was directed toward justice in human relations.
   
So turn your anger toward personal and social righteousness. These are a few positive mechanisms to control your anger.
   
By all means, do not harbor hate in your heart. It is like a poison that destroys the vessel that contains it.