The Beast Within Us: Anger

We have some beasts living within us. In some of us, the beast(s) may be active, or it may be dormant—but it’s there. I had a friend who shared this with me long before he passed on: “We are born with sin. We learn to deal with it, but it’s still there. It’s like a snake lying curled up in the sun. It lays there still so you might think it was dead. But every once in a while it’ll poke its head up, look around, and if everything is ok, it will go back to sleep. But sometimes it stays up just to stir things up.”

We have a beast in us called anger. It’s like that snake. It will poke its head up to remind us that we still have it, and sometimes it will stir things up to prove that point. Anger, in and of itself is good for us, and especially when it’s not  over-the-top righteous anger. As the opposite of happiness, we need anger in our lives, but it has to be controlled and appropriately used.

The problem some have with anger is that it has become a predictably unpredictable side of us. Those around us don’t know if we are going to just get angry, or if we are going to ingloriously explode in anger. It is our uncontrolled anger that gets us in trouble, and it harms our relationships. It helps destroy trust, and it can ruin transparency in those around us, simply because they “clam up” because they don’t know when or if the next explosion will come, nor how bad it will be.

An anger that isn’t controlled causes us to say things we never should and do things we shouldn’t do. When we are experiencing it, it will drive us because we have traded in our ability for rational thought for it. It has become the snake once lying in the sun. It has become provoked and it will strike in a very ugly way, leaving unwanted damage and injury behind. It is not godly, nor are our actions at that point.

Bottom Line Thought: Remember the serpent in the Garden of Eden? It is representative of the beast within us, of which anger is one. Do you allow anger to take over at inappropriate times and in an unwanted manner?