I have an anger problem. To be specific, it’s an anxiety problem that shows up as anger when I am uncomfortable, surprised by a change that wrecks my plans in a way that may seem I just want my way when really I feel like there is now no way. So I explode (sometimes publicly) and blame all sorts of people and things around me. You may too. But I know some people in these types of situations who implode. And they blame themselves. Neither response is a response at all. Neither is a choice. Both are reactions to life as it whips and turns and flows and furies around us. Both can be ruled, leading us to a place of choice, to a place of response rather than reaction.
“Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit [temper] than he who takes a city.” - Proverbs 16:32
According to these words to conquer your own temper is more powerful than taking a city. No wonder we often find our emotions ruling us, rather than us ruling them. In fact, we often believe we aren’t able to rule them illustrated by our repetitive attempts to deny them, hide them, push them back to those deep places in our soul where they can’t get out - until they do without our permission and by their choosing, rather than our own. According to these words in the book of wisdom, we can rule them. But doing so requires effort.
A simple and neurologically useful tool that helps us rule our emotions is first to pause. Pausing in and of itself is hard and requires a choice in the moment. This is the kind of choice my mentor used to say we should “pre-decide”. Decide before you are in a sticky situation what you want to do when you get into a sticky situation. That’s part of the effort. Pre-decide to pause and take a FEW and you’ll know what you want to do. You’ll also be more positioned to actually do that thing. Here’s what FEW means:
F - Find your feeling that your feeling
E - Express it out loud
W - Welcome it and what it has to say with a deep breath or two or three or four
Pause and take a FEW and you’ll know what to do.
Ruling over our temper also requires believing emotions actually have something to say to us. It requires believing they aren’t this part of ourselves like wisdom teeth, for instance, which seem to exist only to cause pain and misalign other parts of ourselves. I think this is how we see emotions, for the most part. Their mere existance causes pain and misaligns other parts of our thinking. Yet, to see emotions in this way would be to dismiss an entire portion of the processing of our heart and mind.
Here’s an example of the necessity of emotion and the importance of what they have to say to us. According to the authors of the book “The Emotional Hostage”, one of the elemental structures of emotion is comparison. We can see the scriptures apply this element throughout to illustrate understanding.
“Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?” Psalm 71:19
“This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing.” Jeremiah 13:10
“The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens! Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?” Psalm 113:4-6
And this ultimate comparison to give us understanding in Isaiah 40: 10:31:
“Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Pause for a FEW on these and you’ll know what you want to do. In fact, you’ll know who you are, who God is, what He does and what you will do. Comparision is an element of emotion because it elicits understanding within us different from comprehension. It assigns value, not answers. And this value informs our choice of action, useful toward emboldening our obedience to God.
Comparison isn’t always so useful. I came across the following recently in a study through 2 Corinthians:
“Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” 2 Corinthians 10:12
Here would be a situation where this structure of emotion is applied “without understanding”. This is one of those ways that our emotions gain rule over us. Having an understanding of emotions that allows us to rule over them and use them to the service of our obedience to Christ is not only possible, but necessary to guard us from opening up opportunity for them to rule over us simply as a result of our own ignorance of how they work. We have more choice than we may realize and if I am aware that comparing myself to others is unwise, I can also be aware that I can choose to rule over my emotions by choosing to NOT compare myself to others. It requires awareness of what such comparison does to me. It requires understanding. I may have to remind myself to not compare myself like this daily. It requires strength and more power than it takes to conquer a city.
Which then offers me opportunity to apply comparison in such a way as to elicit an emotional response of felt security and strength in God by comparing myself to Him that I may see Him and want Him and take what He has for me to receive from Him and share it with others and live depending on Him for life and value and worth. Or I could push feelings away and miss the message He has for me to receive through the mind He gave to me. A mind that processes both cognitively and emotionally.
Pause for a few seconds or days or so on this.