Crouching at your door: The anger that lurks

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” – Fredrick Buechner

It seems like everyone is ticked off today.


I was driving a little slow out of my subdivision yesterday at 6:40 a.m. and a woman began honking and flashing her lights behind me all the way to the neighborhood exit.

I thought 20 meant 20. But to her, it was an early morning chance to display her angst. I was stunned that someone could be so angry so early.

I had a coworker just lose it over a creative difference. I sat slack-jawed at the crazy display.

A friend who takes customer calls told me that almost every day, someone dives right in, dropping explitives and name calling to this complete stranger on the other end of the phone.

And the nation is boiling at taxes, spending, dishonesty, corruption, and the establishment. Voters are expressing themselves loudly, often driven out of anger.

Cain was an angry brother. God called him out on it and said this: “If you do not do well, sin is crouching at your door; and its desire is to master you, but you must master it.” Anger is certainly a precourser to terrible human disasters. You might not have the propensity to kill, as Cain eventually did, but you might be motivated out of anger to do something with long-lasting effects.

I’ve been angry at the wrong things. And I’ve angry at the right things. It’s a great motivator. I get angry when I trip over that box in the hall, so I finally move it. I get angry at sin and finally, have enough of it, and start making changes.

But righteous anger is parceled out in very small portions because we simply do not know how to use it properly.

How about you? What role does anger play in your life? Do you get angry at home, but not at work? Or do you get angry at work and not at home? Comment here.