H.A.L.T. (2)

You, even You, are to be feared; and who may stand in Your presence when once You are angry? Psalm 76:7 NASB

Angry – How long is your nose? God’s nose is very long indeed. His ‘erek ‘appayim (long before anger) is one of the principle characteristics of His self-definition (Exodus 34:6). Anger kills. God is patient. As the psalmist notes, no one can actually stand before Him when His anger becomes a reality.

Addicts know the truth of the long nose. They know that a short temper kills. And since addicts crave relationship more than life itself, they fear their own anger. So they suppress it. They turn it inward, denying its present detrimental effect. That, of course, doesn’t make it go away. It only means that the addict discovers the pain of hiding his feelings. Afraid that expressing himself will lead to rejection, he uses his addiction to relieve the stress of unexamined and unannounced anger. But the bottle must break. No one can stand before God’s anger and no one can be in relationship with an addict’s anger. Both are self-defeating. What relationships require is transparency. Masking my anger leads only to the constant addictive belief, “If you really knew me you wouldn’t love me.” Bottled anger produces addictive spirals.

Is the answer to simply explode, to let it all out, to rage against the night? Hardly! Don’t the rabbi and the psalmist instruct us to be angry and not sin? The point of being angry is awareness of inequity. Divine anger is merely the forerunner of our own feelings that something is not right with the world. And those feelings are good. It’s what we do with them that counts. Be angry! The world is not equitable, just or perfect. Be angry—and turn to the only One who understands your rage. Anger is the vehicle for self-examination for it allows me to recognize that there is something wrong with my relationship with the world. It just might be that the problem is actually out there—in the world. But if I search my feelings in order to understand my anger, I might also discover that the problem is within—that I am the one who is out of alignment with reality.

How will I be able to discover this? By looking at the author of anger—God. What God is angry about is legitimate, holy, permissible anger. Since He is the author of the emotion, I must judge my own experience by His assessment. If I am angry about what God is angry about, then my anger is right and righteous. But if I discover that I am angry about something that does not reflect divine anger, then I am the one who needs confession. And confession clears the soul.

Addicts are angry because life does not conform to their desires. It could, if their desires were God’s desires (and, by the way, He promises to make our desires His when we follow Him). That means if I allow God to replace my desires with His, my anger will be His anger and I will experience righteous rage. That builds relationship, the very thing that all addicts so desperately need. So how do I prevent anger from pushing me toward addiction? Not by suppressing it but by using it to examine what makes God mad. I need to feed myself with His anger. Then my world will be aligned with Him, my relationships will grow in ‘emet ve-hesed, and I will be freed from the power of hubris.

Be angry, and express His fury. You might discover that holy anger is filled with tears.

Topical Index: anger, af, ‘erek appayim, Psalm 76:7