Yesterday I posted RAW Part 1 (R is for real). This is Part 2.

A is for angry:

David and Job sometimes got angry at God. I imagine them shaking their fists up at him and screaming, “Why?!”

In Leonard Sweet’s book, “What Matters Most:  How We Got the Point but Missed the Person”, Sweet posits that after Abraham took Isaac to the mountaintop to sacrifice, Abraham never got real with God ever again.  He never expressed his anger, and thus lost intimacy in his relationship with God.

According to Sweet, God didn’t just want Abraham’s blind obedience, he wanted a true relationship. After the mountain top, Sweet claims that Abraham never spoke to God as a friend, but as some distant deity he feared more than loved.

I’m not sure I can dispute or verify Sweet’s points, but I know that trust involves intimacy. And true intimacy involves being real with our anger in order to be able to resolve and forgive.

God doesn’t want just our blind obedience–he has called us “friend” (John 15). He wants us to express anger to him in prayer, to wrestle with him and plead with him.

True intimacy is masked in smiling facades.

I seldom express anger– unless you count Saturday morning chore day! Ask my family, I can get real angry then.  I have a deep sense of justice, and when they don’t want to help or contribute to the peacefulness of a clean home, I am truly and unreasonably ticked off.

I can’t help psychoanalyzing to consider the root of my frustrated, misplaced anger:  My dad was an angry man, his only form of self expression for many years until cancer softened him. He would explode at seemingly innocuous circumstances, especially if people fell short of his expectations. I think I get that from him.

My anger is misdirected when I’m frustrated and can’t or won’t express another hidden emotion. On chore day and many other days, I feel like I have to get mad at myself and others in order to get things accomplished. I use anger as bad fuel.

I’m learning that expressing anger appropriately can bring healing. I seldom express my anger at being hurt in friendships or other relationships, preferring to bottle it up until it becomes resentment. It’s much easier for me to think and act like poor wimpy little me than to get real and confront.

But I’m learning that I need to tell someone if I’m disappointed in them so they have a chance to defend or redeem themselves, and, more importantly, so I have chance to forgive.

I believe God understands that we are sometimes angry at Him and angry at other people. He gets us. After all, we are created in His image.

But we don’t have to use anger as a weapon or defense mechanism. We express disappointment to God or to the people in our lives that have hurt us because only then can anger turn to true repentance, forgiveness and healing.

I have a long way to go, but I’m learning to be grateful that God has shown me I’m not a voiceless, helpless, quiet victim in Him.

I’m not going to start shouting at people that disappoint me, but I need to be more open to constructive dialogue rather than running away to seethe in my self-made pity place, or take my frustration out on unwitting recipients like my kin-folk.

How about you? Do you squelch or misdirect your anger?

Stay tuned for Part 3, W is for weeping tomorrow