God’s Anger, Our Anger: Practical Guide to Responding

``Anger is a reflection of love. Now, God's angry doesn't perfectly translate to human experience, but I do think, like, we get this on some deep intuitive level. Like, there have been a few times when my children have not been treated appropriately by either by other people, and my response is not, Yeah. Okay. Like, I'm not neutral. I I immediately get angry because I love them, and I want what is best for them, and I want them to be treated, with respect, care. [00:27:04] (48 seconds)  #AngerFromLove

anger is the emotion that declares this is not how things are supposed to be. Anger is the emotion that declares or signals or alerts us that things are not how we think things are supposed to be. Now, the delta between God knowing how things are supposed to be and his perception of reality is, you know, very small because God's ability to perceive reality accurately is quite good. The delta between my understanding of how things are supposed to be and how things are actually supposed to be is a bit wobbly. [00:28:22] (46 seconds)  #AngerSignalsWrong

Inger functions like the sign on your dashboard in your car, but in your life telling you this is not the way it should be. That's sort of helpful actually to think about God's anger this way too. Right? God created human beings to flourish within creation, embodying his love. He deeply loves people. He wants us to flourish and love one another, and yet, after the fall, this is often not how human life goes. And so, God's anger in the Bible is a sign that creation is not as it's supposed to be. [00:31:00] (39 seconds)  #AngerDashboardAlert

I find in our cultural moment, we do a number of things that really don't work as apologies. One, we say, I'm sorry you felt. This is not an apology. It's just not. If you're going to make an apology, it should be specific. So it should be, you know, with anger, like, I'm sorry I took my anger out on you. I was defensive. I don't want to be defensive in my relationship with you. Will you forgive me? [00:54:59] (35 seconds)  #RealApologyOnly

One of the things you don't do during this time, but I think this is so this is a funny thing. This is the one number one thing you should not do, and this, I would say, is what most of us do 90% of the time, is we just replay in our mind all the ways that we were wronged in that conversation, and maybe even like that that really snide, brilliant remark we should have said but didn't, and all we're doing is like throwing just like dry kindling on the fire of our anger. [00:43:07] (32 seconds)  #StopRuminating

we we one of the reasons we don't do this is because we think feelings are like ideas, but actually, feelings are not ideas. Feelings are deeply embodied. When anger comes online, the adrenal glands release two hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine. They create arousal, so that sense of the heat of anger. Blood is then redirected to the amygdala, away from the prefrontal cortex. And the prefrontal cortex is really important if you want to make good decisions. [00:38:23] (36 seconds)  #FeelingsAreBodily

So this is the problem, right? If you don't acknowledge that you're angry but your body is doing all of these things and then you don't pause, you are literally setting yourself up for a bad conversation because your body is telling you, pump the brakes or fight. And this usually leads to two things in my experience. One is some sort of venting of anger. So this is like the greatest speech you'll ever regret, you know? [00:39:19] (36 seconds)  #PauseBeforeYouSpeak

So first thing I want us to do is begin with acknowledgment. And the reason I say this, particularly with Christians, is I find that we have sort of this allergy to acknowledging anger. We're actually quite hilarious about this. People will say, oh, I'm not angry. I'm frustrated. Okay. I'm not angry. I just hate it when people treat me that way. Okay? I'm not angry. You just have the facts wrong. Okay? No. You're angry. [00:35:55] (32 seconds)  #NameYourAnger