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This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Reverend Mr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "Love Story, Part Six, The Answer to Anger." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side

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number two for the remainder of the message. Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Paul's letter to the Christians who lived in the area about Ephesus. We will begin with the selected verses from the fourth chapter of his epistle.

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"I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs

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to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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Put off your old nature, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirits of your mind. And put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

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Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave

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you." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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I would like to talk with you for a few minutes this morning about anger. And it seems to me very appropriate that we should talk about it. After all, the first sound that ever comes across our lips, that sound which we emit on the occasion of our birth, is an expression of anger.

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Not only that, the anger which begins in us then continues throughout the course of all our days. Every person knows what it feels like to be angry. But I wonder if you recognize the effect that anger has upon us physiologically speaking.

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I wonder if you realize what anger does to your insides. You know, our insides are directed by what is called the autonomic nervous system. And it has two parts, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Now when we become angry, only the sympathetic system is in full operation.

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And this is what happens when that system goes into full and unrestrained operation. Adrenaline is rapidly pumped into your bloodstream. Your heart beats more rapidly and your blood pressure climbs as much as 60 points. Red corpuscles are produced at a faster rate than normal.

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All of your digestive processes come to a halt. Your salivary glands cease their normal secretion. Your rectum and your bladder tighten and constrict. Your liver pours sugar into your circulatory system.

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Your breathing pattern changes to short, deep breaths. Your skin produces sweat and your blood vessels throughout your entire circulatory system expand. Now any single emotion that can cause that kind of physiological change in an individual

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needs to be talked about. When I think about anger, I often think of the internal combustion engine that drives your automobile. You know that it operates because of a series of small explosions.

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A little bit of gas being ignited explodes and drives the pistons and that's what makes your car move from one place to another. But if you were to ignite all of the gasoline in your automobile at one time, it would blow both the automobile and yourself to very little pieces.

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The difference you see is between controlling something so that it explodes the way it ought to explode and get you somewhere and on the other hand having the explosion control you to the place where it tears you up inside or tears up your relationships outside. Anger is like that.

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Anger is not right or wrong in itself. It is what we do with our anger that determines whether it will be right or wrong. So I've searched the scriptures on this subject of anger and of course the place where the scriptures speak most eloquently and in most detailed fashion about it is that passage

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from the letter to the Ephesians which I just read in your hearing. In brief, this is what Paul says about anger. First, be angry. Paul admits at the very outset that sometimes it's quite right to be angry.

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There was a Quaker who owned a very stubborn jackass and he was trying to get it moved one day and it wouldn't move. He tried every way he knew how to get that beast to move and it would not move in its stubbornness.

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So finally glaring at it he said, "Thou wicked and perverse creature, thou knowest that as a Quaker I cannot strike thee. Thou knowest that as a Quaker I cannot starve thee. Thou knowest that as a Quaker I cannot curse thee.

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But what thou dost not know is that I can always sell thee to a Presbyterian." Well we laugh at that and that's good but we must never apologize for that because you see anger is not always and invariably wrong. Our Lord Jesus Christ showed anger and there are instances recorded in the scripture in

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which his disciples showed anger. In fact I'll go so far as to say that sometimes it's a sin not to be angry. It seems to me that we murmur about some things in our society today which we ought to be yelling about at the top of our voices.

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It seems to me that if we as Christians filled ourselves with the righteous indignation which some of the indecency and lack of integrity in our society legitimately calls forth, then maybe we would have a society that wasn't so sick. There are times when it's wrong not to be angry.

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But that kind of righteous anger isn't what I want to talk about this morning. You see that kind of anger is always in response to something that's done to someone else. Jesus was never mad about anything that was done to him but only about things that were done to other people.

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So I'm talking this morning not about that righteous anger but about the anger which comes up out of the core of us and which is by its very nature an expression of selfishness and frustration and rage or of weakness and guilt and of a sense of worthlessness. I'm talking about the kind of anger which gets down inside of us and stirs up the mud

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in our souls and then splatters it all about. Generally this kind of anger manifests itself in people in one of two ways. And you might describe these people by two words, the skunks and the turtles. Now let me tell you about a skunk type person.

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Here is an attorney in court. He wants very much to win the case. He has prepared as best he can. He fights for the issue.

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He loses. Now when he loses, any one of a number of reactions could be his. Maybe he feels guilty inside that he didn't work hard enough on the case. Maybe he feels that the judge has not authentically heard what is said and therefore he feels

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that his will with regard to this thing has been frustrated by one who was not willing to hear. Maybe he feels that I've lost this case and this just shows once again that I'm really not worth anything and that his sense of personal worthlessness is accentuated.

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So what does he do? He doesn't want anyone to know he's hurting. He doesn't want anyone to know that his feeling of worthlessness is accentuated. He doesn't want anyone to know that he's frustrated so he raises a smoke screen.

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He slams his briefcase. He accuses the judge of injustice. He says the jury must have been asleep when they were in the adjury room. He attacks his assistants who helped him prepare his brief.

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He rages and snorts and tries, you see, to create such a fuss and a furor that people will be turned away from that in him which is really hurting, the sense of loss or the feeling of inadequacy or the feeling of frustration which is his. Now that's what a skunk does.

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When a skunk is threatened, you see, he raises, let's say, an olfactory diversionary experience and as a result people get so involved with the stink that they forget the skunk and that's precisely the tactic that some people use with regard to their anger. They explode.

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So everyone looks at the explosion and not at them because they don't want anyone to look at them at that moment. Now on the other hand, there are the turtles. Here's a turtle.

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He's out playing golf and he wants to come to make a certain putt and he putts and he misses it. He's practiced that putt many times but he misses it. So how does he feel?

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Well perhaps he feels the same way. I'll never be a good golfer or look how stupid I look in front of all these other people or if they'd keep these greens the way they ought to keep them, then that ball would have gone where I hit it.

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But he doesn't want anyone to know he feels this way so he locks this up inside. You know he smiles like this and he goes on to the next hole and he goes home that night and he puts his golf clubs in his garage and he never gets them out again. And he proceeds even that night not to enjoy his dinner because he's still all churning

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inside because of this and he goes to bed that night and he doesn't sleep well. The last thing he thinks about when he goes to bed is that putt missing the hole. The first thing he thinks about the next morning is the same thought. Now what's he done?

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Like the turtle you see, he's gone inside his shell and you can sniff and sniff and sniff and sniff around the outside of that turtle but he won't come out. And finally you go away and he just sits there stewing in his own juice. And that's a very good expression to use because remember we noticed what kind of boiling feelings

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anger creates inside, what it does to you and when you sit there and stew over it, let it simmer and boil, well terrible things happen. Many neuroses and psychoses have their root in anger which is bottled up. Many physicians suggest that the so-called migraine headache is actually an expression

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of locked up anger. Many adolescent psychiatrists say that the reason a lot of young people go into the drug culture is that they are hitting out against their parents. They know this will wound their parents and they do this as an act of around the corner

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concealed subversive anger. They won't explode, they keep it in here but then in another way they act it out. I read the work of one psychiatrist who suggested that most automobile accidents are not really accidents.

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They're people so filled with an inner rage that when they get out on the highway, well you've known the Casper milquetoast you know, who wouldn't say boo to anybody but put him behind the wheel of an automobile, give him 2,500 pounds of steel to direct and he becomes a highway maniac.

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Well that kind of person you see is letting out this locked up rage. The woman who always is sick, whose headache has come upon her again so that she can't do what her husband wants her to do, she has heart flutters or palpitations or this, that. Now maybe these come from a very legitimate cause but on the other hand in many instances

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this kind of tactic is in a way of showing anger to her husband or the husband who's always at the office, has to work late all the time you know, can't be home. This might be a way of lashing back at the wife, an expression of a locked up anger. So anger, this thing that boils within us can be expressed sometimes like skunks and

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sometimes like turtles. Which is best? Well Paul goes on to say we ought to express this anger which we feel. He says don't let the sun go down on your raft.

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That is, get it out of you. Don't go to bed thinking about this thing which is ripping you up inside or causing you to rip up relations outside. Get it out.

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It is better he says to be a skunk than it is to be a turtle. Just as if you wound your finger you immediately do something to take care of that finger, just so when you are wounded so that you feel angry you should immediately do something about that anger.

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Before the sun goes down, before that day is at an end, do it. Now we've already noticed some of the things that happen when an individual locks these feelings up inside. There's no question of the fact that restrained anger is one of the principal causes of heart

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disease in our society. Dr. John Turner, the great Scott surgeon, developed a heart condition because of anger and said on one occasion, "That man who can lead me to anger will claim my life." And that's exactly what happened to him.

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In a moment of fury he died from a heart attack. There's even one doctor, Dr. L.J. Saul, back at the University of Pennsylvania who believes that anger is one of the principal causes of the common cold. When you're angry your circulatory system is affected and when your circulatory system

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is affected the mucous membranes in your throat and in your nostrils are affected and become more susceptible to cold viruses. So you're more likely to catch cold when you're angry than when you're not. So it's important, you see, to get this anger out.

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And there's nothing in and of itself wrong with that. Let me ask you a question. If someone was angry with you, wouldn't you want to know about it? Would you really want them to put on some kind of a mask and pretend that everything

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was all right when it really wasn't all right? You'd say to them, "If you're really my friend, you'll tell me how you really feel." Well now if you want your friends to do that, shouldn't you do that with your friends? Shouldn't they be able to expect from you the same open honesty that you want from them?

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Expression of anger is an honest reaction. And something else. Anger never destroys real love. If a couple come to me and say, "Anger is destroying our marriage," I say, "What marriage?"

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Because anger is not stronger than love. Love will endure bumps, as was so beautifully sung to us a few minutes ago by Mrs. Valentine. Virginia just took those words of scripture and made them live. Love never fails.

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Anger will not triumph over love. And something else. Anger when it's expressed is something for the moment. But anger when it's bottled up, that becomes something that simmers, that boils.

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They're very much like tea kettles. And the fire under us makes us angry. Now if you clog up that tea kettle, the time will come when it explodes. But if you will let that anger out, if you will express it, then you see, the tea kettle

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can sing. So Paul says, "Don't let that sun go down on your wrath. Express it." But then he goes on to say something else.

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Why? It's better to be a skunk than a turtle, but it's better to be a Christian than a skunk. His last point is that there are certain ways in which we should express our anger. Kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiving one another as Christ forgave us.

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See, there are techniques we can use to express our anger. For example, here's a physical technique. When we get angry, our voices get louder and we pace back and forth and we wring our hands and we gesticulate and all the like.

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All right. Instead of that, when you feel angry, stand still. If you can sit down, sit down. If you can lie down, that's even better.

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Lie down. I read of a labor negotiator who was in the midst of negotiations, got right up from the negotiating table, went over and stretched out on a couch. He said, "What are you doing?"

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He said, "I'm beginning to feel angry and I find it's harder to feel angry when you're lying down." That's true. That's the reason the psalmist says in the fourth Psalm, "Be angry, but sin not.

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Commune with thyself upon thy bed and be at peace." Your fists clench when you get angry. All right. Consciously and deliberately keep your fingers straight out like that.

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Don't let them clench. And when you find your voice raising, then very deliberately speak more softly. It's very hard to argue when you're whispering. Now you see what you're doing.

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You're still expressing the anger. You're still getting this power out of you, but instead of getting it out of you like that, you're getting it out of you like this. That helps to direct it in a positive way.

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Another thing to do. When you are expressing your anger to this person, and remember, it's important to express it when you're expressing it, try, and I know this is hard, but the only place where anger is cured in one minute flat is on television.

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You know, between those 15 minute segments, the woman comes into her daughter's room and it's a mess. And she gets angry, she pops a pill and it's all over. It only happens on television.

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If you're going to be able to defeat the anger which is yours, you are going to have to work at it. And one of the things you can do is this. At the moment when you're expressing your anger at another person, try to focus on something

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good in that person's life. Look with kindness upon some blessing which is present in that person's life. You can develop this technique. Jesus did this just marvelously.

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Did you ever hear that Persian legend about the dead dog in the street? And one person walked by and said, "The filthy thing pollutes the scene." Another person walked by and said, "We shouldn't have to tolerate stinking things like that in the streets."

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Another person looked at it and said, "There's a rope around his neck. He probably was hanged because he was a thief." And then a voice is heard to say, "Why look, pearls aren't as white as his teeth." That, and it was Jesus.

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It's only a legend, but it's a beautiful truth. Jesus always looked for the beautiful in people. At the moment when you feel angry, look for that beauty. But there's a third technique and this is the most important one of all.

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And this is the one that Paul emphasizes. Have you ever heard someone say, "When you get angry, count to ten." Bad advice. Instead of counting to ten, using those ten words, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

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eight, nine, ten, I'll give you ten words to say instead. Same number of words. It takes just the same length of time. Hear the words.

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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. You see what happens? In the midst of your anger, you take a moment to focus upon God. When Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians, he was writing to Christians.

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And he points out very early in the letter that if you're a Christian, you are no longer living under the old nature. You no longer have, and this is the word he uses, a petrified heart. He refers to the word porosis, which means petrified, and it comes from the porous stone.

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And the porous stone was the hardest stone there was, harder than marble. And a porous stone isn't like that all the time. It starts out as a rather soft stone, and then over the years and over its contact with the air, it becomes harder and harder and harder until it becomes the hardest thing

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there is, until it's absolutely insensitive to anything that tries to break it. Now that's the way people are who haven't met Jesus Christ. They become harder and harder and harder and harder until they become insensitive. You ever met the person in their anger?

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They become more angry and more angry and more angry, and finally in rages, either rages inside or rages outside, they come to the place where they say, "You know, I don't even remember what I did then." Haven't you ever had someone say that to you?

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"I was so mad, I don't even recall what I said." See what's happened? They are insensitive to what they're saying and doing at the moment when they're doing it.

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That kind of hardness is an unredeemed heart. And the other thing Paul says about these people who live under the old nature is this, that they become progressively less and less concerned with those who see their anger. There's a sense in which anger is like drug addiction.

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When a person starts taking drugs, he doesn't want anybody to know he's doing it. But when the time comes that he needs them desperately, he doesn't care who knows it as long as he can get them. I stood one afternoon and talked for four hours with a teenage boy and tried to get

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him to admit to me that he was on narcotics, and he never did. In four hours, he never did. Three days later, he was in Juvenile Hall, and I was there to see him, and when I walked through the door, he'd been in withdrawal now for three days.

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When I walked through that door, he ran across that room, he fell on his knees with the tears running down his face, he grabbed my hands and almost pulled me onto the floor with him and pleaded with me to get him drugs. He didn't care if I knew it now.

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He was that hooked. Well, that's the way people are who are possessed by this kind of anger. At first, they're a little bit careful about how they show it, how they express it, either inside or outside, but gradually, they become more and more careless until they'll blow

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up or become a seething cauldron, and they don't care really who knows about it. When an individual gets like that, feels so guilty inside that they've got to attack other people to conceal their own guilt, feels so worthless inside that they've got to show how worthless everybody else is in order to build up their own self-image, feels so frustrated

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in the expression of their will and gaining their goals that they've got to either think horrible things inside or do horrible things outside. That person is rotten at the very core, and the only person who can touch that rottenness is Jesus, because as Paul notes, you can only forgive when you know you've been forgiven,

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and the only one who can relieve those inner feelings of worthlessness and guilt and failure is the Christ who forgives them. If you stayed with me this long, you stay with me for one minute and a half more. This is not going to be a pleasant minute and a half, but here it is.

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Jesus was crucified, that was the most public form of execution of that day. He was crucified naked. He didn't have any lily white loincloth about him like Rembrandt puts in the pretty pictures. He was exposed.

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He was nailed and bound to a cross. He had to be bound as well as nailed because the weight of his body would have torn those nails from his hands. And then he was put up.

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Now death by crucifixion is death by suffocation. The weight on the arms causes a growing paralysis of the diaphragm. The only way the paralysis of the diaphragm can be relieved is by pushing up with the legs.

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But can you imagine what that must have been like? To have pushed up with a nail through your bones and your flesh, and then the crown of thorns with its bleeding, and an unbelievable thirst, and the ridicule, and the flies, and on top of this, this one who is love being hated, this one who is gentle being crushed,

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this one who is forgiving being killed. There's no way to express the sorrow and the woe of that. But the weight of a whole world's iniquity was on him too. Every evil thing you've ever done or has been done to you, every lie I've ever told or has

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been told to me, every loveless thing that's ever been perpetrated or that I or you have ever perpetrated, the pain of it all on him, and he was innocent. Now if there ever was a time for the anger and the wrath of God, that was the time. But he blasted into oblivion this planet and everyone on it.

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No one could have called him unjust. Innocence murdered by evil. And Jesus looks out through pain-dimmed and tear-and-blood-blurred eyes and he says, "Father, forgive them."

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Now if you accept what he did at that moment, then when someone points to something ugly in you, you don't have to lash back. You've been forgiven. If you acknowledge that that Christ who died died on your behalf and you accept him as

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your Lord, you don't have to feel worthless inside. You don't have to feel unloved. You don't have to feel guilty or stained. No matter what anyone says or does, you don't have to respond that way.

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And not only that, but when someone else does something cruel or unspeakable or unloving or frustrating or insensitive or violent, you, forgiven so much and knowing it, will not be led to be unforgiving of them. You will be honest enough to say how you feel, but you will be loving enough to put your

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arms around them when you're saying it. It's a matter of having Jesus in the heart, or it's a matter of giving to him those little corners of your heart that you've been hanging on to. It's a matter of loving God, loving yourself because of God, and loving others because

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of what God has done in you. Jesus says, "I love you. Is that okay?" and in your answer to that question is the answer to your anger. Let us pray.

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O God, give to us men who fear nothing but thee, who hate nothing but sin, and who love nothing more than they love Jesus. And Father, if in thy providence thou hast brought to this place this morning someone who now stands ready to let the power of the cross and the Christ invade his or her life,

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then don't let that person leave this room, but bring them forward to this table, that they might at long last find release from everything in their lives of which they are ashamed and find the answer to the anger that now does to them so much hurt. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion

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of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

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