Friday 3 January 2014

ANGER

'Anger is most useful as a diagnostic tool. When anger erupts in us, it is a signal that something is wrong. Something sin't working right. There is evil or incompetence or stupidity lurking about. Anger is our sixth sense for sensing out wrong in the neighborhood. Diagnostically it is virtually infallible, and we learn to trust it. Anger is infused by a moral/spiritual intensity that carries conviction: when we are angry, we know we are on to something that matters, that really counts...
What anger fails to do, though, is tell us whether the wrong is outside or inside us. We usually begin by assuming that the wrong is outside us - our spouse or our child or our God has done something wrong, and we are angry... But when we track the anger carefully, we often find it leads to a wrong within us - wrong information, inadequate understanding, undeveloped heart.'
Eugene H Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant, p.157.