Curtis Klingle

Anger and Hate

I saw the movie “Hope Floats” many years ago. In this film there is a scene in which the character played by actress Sandra Bullock states, “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to get over.” What she said resonated with me and I have never forgot it. Now think about what she said for a moment. The majority of your personality traits, both good and bad, as well as your actions and reactions were all acquired during childhood, especially during the formative years. These things were “learned,” actually, a better descriptor would be that they were “programmed” into you. As we grow through the adolescent years and into adulthood those learned behaviors become entrenched. The easiest way to assert that belief is to ask you to look at your own life.

Being a Christian, I believe that Original Sin is the bedrock of our many woes, but unlike some, I do not believe in the doctrine of total depravity. Thus, I do not believe a child is born wholly evil, though all of us have a propensity towards it. For example, we are selfishness creatures and if you doubt it, just watch a couple of two-year-old children go at it over something they both want. Though we are all selfish from birth, and we often express that selfishness through the channel of anger, I do not think we are born with any natural inclination to hate. Hate is anger consummated. Hate must be learned. A child may have tantrums, or angry outbursts when he doesn’t get his way and these are linked to that selfish nature, but that doesn’t make him hate the parent that is inhibiting his ability to have a particular toy or the extra cookie. Once the tantrum has passed, the child will return to his typical good nature. An angry or hateful child is “created.” These children are anomalies, as are the adults they later become. To make an angry or hateful child you must inflict damage into his inner self, his soul must be affected. This kind of alteration can also take place after reaching adulthood if the person is tortured or maligned to a magnitude to effect these changes.

The two most obvious negative attributes we all possess are indeed anger and hate, and they go hand in hand. These two can be transferred from parent to child as easily as love and compassion. The effects of love and compassion are far reaching, but hatred and anger even more so. Hatred is anger directed at a specific target. That target can be a person, an object, a people group, or even an idea. Anger is the foundation upon which many of society’s issues rest.

If you want to ensure that a person’s life will be haunted by rejection, poor self-image, lack of trust, difficulty loving others, and riddled with hatred and anger, the easiest way to accomplish this is to catch them when they are a child. Our mutual Enemy is well aware of this and implements this tactic shockingly efficiently. The most effective vehicles are verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, the latter being the pinnacle.

I once gave a talk on the effects of sin and used sexual abuse as my premise. As I did research on this subject, the things I discovered were beyond horrifying. One in four boys and one in six girls will be sexually abused. The average pedophile molests over 100 children in their lifetime, and many of their victims will grow up to be molesters themselves, thus perpetuating the devil’s evil scheme. But the other thing all of these children have in common is anger, copious anger. Some can conceal it, but most cannot.

Anger effects everyone it comes into contact with. Human beings are very perceptive and we always know when someone is angry. Often, the angry person will gloss it over and put on a façade, but you can still sense its presence. It lies still, its muscles taut, like a crouching lion waiting to pounce on its prey.

Anger is a cancer. Its goal is to destroy all, even its host, but that’s not going to happen before it has left a wake of pain and destruction. Anger seeks to be birthed into existence and its most effective form is hate. Hate is not the opposite of love it is a state in which no love can exist. It is the absence of love. It is void of all emotion save one, it is a vacuum of anger. I liken it to a black hole in space. Anything that crosses the event horizon of a black hole is destroyed, and the gravitational pull is so great that not even light can escape it. Life is extinguished. If you are the recipient of hate and unfortunate enough to have crossed its event horizon, hate will use every energy to destroy you. It will attempt to rip all joy from your life and transform you into something less than human. If you happen to be the hater, you are standing upon the threshold of the entrance to hell, and I mean that quite literally. Hate does as much or more damage to the actor. Like your victim, it will transform you and your soul’s appearance will be more demonic than that of a human being.

Henry Drummond wrote a treatise on the subject of love titled, “The Greatest Thing in the World.” I must include here that Drummond was described by the great evangelist, D.L. Moody as being “the most Christ-like man I have ever known.” With that level of accolade, Drummond’s beliefs should be paid close attention to. I have studied his book extensively, and there is a section that troubles me, and that deeply. I quote, “You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath…in a word, it is the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins.” And isn’t that an apt description of the malady we call anger? C.S. Lewis wrote, “One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the mark on the soul may be much the same in both.”

I, like many of you have struggled with and battled this demon. It is a horrid thing to be caught in its grasp. If you have never wrestled with this affliction then count your blessings, for it is a formidable foe. Most times you can control it but, under the right circumstances you can feel it clawing, trying to find a way out. Like Drummond describes, it is “…rottenness underneath.” For me, immediately following a bout of anger, I am completely undone. The shame and conviction which comes is devastating, and it is quickly followed by a wave of depression so dense that it feels like there is no hope, only despair. To know that I am a believer and yet have this inside of me creates a dichotomy. The former is a life of love and devotion to the Person of Christ, the other is straight from hell. There is no reconciling the two.

Many have developed the skills necessary to conceal the beast, but as I’ve already stated, people are quite perceptive. The camouflage of a radiant smile will not hide the truth. Lewis also wrote, “…surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.” There was a time when the rats were always alive and well in the cellar of my soul.

But there is hope.

Drummond went on in his book to prescribe a prescription to “cure” anger. “Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in—a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This can only eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.”

I am here to testify that it does indeed work, and just like Drummond described. This is only possible through surrender to Christ. The more you surrender your life to Him, the more healing will take place, and this is applicable to virtually any problem of the soul you face. You are transformed into something new, you are literally “born again.” Coupled with this is Christ’s command to forgive. If you were the victim of abuse, you must forgive, He’s not asking you, He’s telling you to forgive, and with good reason. Anger nests in unforgiveness. It is an incubator of anger and hate. They become some intertwined that they are difficult to separate. Anger nurtured will always evolve into hate, at any age. If you want to be free of the anger, then it must begin with forgiveness.

I like to use the analogy of an ancient form of capital punishment to describe the effects of unforgiveness. In this mode of punishment, the murderer would have his victim affixed to his back. To paint the picture, you must now imagine yourself as the murderer. Let’s say you weigh 180lbs. and your victim is of similar size and weight. Your victim is attached to your back via chains. As you walk about, people who encounter you will give you a wide berth because you are carrying the evidence of your crime. You became an outcast, a pariah. No one will come near you. No one will help you. Human compassion and help are now a thing of the past. You must do what you can to provide for yourself, with a permanent, soon to be rotting corpse tied to you.

Decomposition in warmer climates is evident within several hours. The swelling of the body, especially in the abdominal area becomes prominent after about two to three days. The odiferous cloud that lingers about you will draw virtually any insect or creature that feeds upon carrion. As the days pass, your victim begins to ooze liquids from every orifice and most of the liquid ends up on you. Every time you try to take a drink or eat a bite of food, there the liquid will land. The constant odor of putrefaction is always about you. There is no rest from the constant barrage of insects and animals. Soon the decomposition process exposes your victim’s ribcage and other bones. As you move about those bones begin digging into your own flesh, causing minor cuts and wounds. As your victim rots, those bones become even more exposed and begin gouging your body. The decomposing liquids that cover you and your victim now begin to seep into these wounds. These liquids enter your bloodstream and eventually, due to their effects, sleep deprivation, lack of sustenance, insect activity, and a plethora of other peripheral factors, you succumb to the effects inflicted upon you by your victim. Your victim finally receives justice. You die.

Unforgiveness will destroy you. Like the rotting corpse in our analogy, the resentment, anger and hate, will fill you with deadly poison. The analogy breaks down in one respect, you were the victim in the original offense which birthed your anger. However, your refusal to forgive has made you an active participant in your own murder. And do not hand me that tripe of “I can’t forgive them! You have no idea what they did to me!” The truth is you can forgive, but you choose not to. And yes, it is that simple.

A word of caution: do not entertain the blame game, which is so prevalent in our society. “Oh, I am angry because of the things inflicted upon me.” Your anger may have been elicited by some foulness you suffered, but it is still your anger. You must take ownership of your actions and reactions. You, I repeat, you are responsible for what you do with that anger. Your actions are yours alone, and you will have to answer for them. One of the most profound lessons I have learned came from a question posed to me once regarding our emotions and our subsequent reactions. A wise person asked me, “If I spit in your face, will I make you angry?” I responded, “Of course you will make me angry!” She replied, “No. I wouldn’t make you angry, I would make you wet. You chose to be angry.”

If you are an angry person, I implore you to seek Christ. He is your only hope. We are eternal beings, meaning we will live forever in one of two destinations. Anger must be destroyed; it must be eradicated from your life. I used to think that even an angry person might gain admittance into God’s kingdom, but I no longer think that is possible. We are meant to grow here; this is our training ground. The semblance of Christ-likeness must begin here. If you are consistently angry or given to bouts of rage, then there is something that Christ has still not dealt with in your soul, and the only one limiting Him is you. Yield all to Him and receive healing. There are some wounds in each of us that we cannot get at, they are buried too deep. We actually have no idea where they lie. Cry out to Him, and if necessary, tell Him that He will have to do it for you because you cannot do it yourself. He will answer, He will heal you.

All of that hate and anger can be replaced with love, joy, and peace. As you progress in healing you will find that you are developing a genuine love of others. As you love others, more healing takes place and you are able to love even more. And the cycle doesn’t just continue, it multiplies. Your greatest joy will be loving and serving others. Hate and anger will have been eradicated and replaced with Christ’s love, agape love.

So no, I do not believe for a second that there will be any angry people in heaven. If you doubt, imagine what that anger would look like after it had festered and grown over a hundred years, a thousand, or ten thousand years. It would be by definition: hell.

C. Klingle

I have included a few Scripture references on anger for your review. Remember, we are admonished not to even entertain anger in the form I have described.

Ephesians 4:26-27, “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, 27 nor give place to the devil.”

James 1:19-20, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”

Ecclesiastes 7:9, “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.”

Ephesians 4:31, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.”

Matthew 5:22a, “But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment.”