Further Thoughts on Anger and Pain Management (Thanks Ben)

Yesterday my good friend (and colleague up in New England) Ben left a really thoughtful and honest comment on my post from two days ago about anger:

I do this in ministry especially, trying to follow all the rules and do the right "InterVarsity" things so that I earn my right to be angry when things don't happen the way I want them to....

It's an odd thing to learn about myself, that I spend so much active energy putting myself in a position be angry.

Ben's struck on something here that I want to riff off of. There are few places in our lives where I think we are more self-deceived than in our own willingness to become healthy and whole people.

We are, in fact, wounded people. From that place of woundedness we can set out on the precarious journey of seeking healing. But most of us instead expend a tremendous amount of time and emotional energy excusing and/or justifying our woundedness. Or to use Ben's image here, we actively put ourselves in a place where we might then be justified in acting out of our woundedness, anger, or hurt.

Most of the conversations that you and I have in our heads with other people are about justifying and defending our anger, pride, brokenness...our un-health.

We are regularly offered lifelines out of this sickly place that we flatly refuse. For most of us, the cost associated with giving up my "right" to be angry or respected or appreciated or thought well of or noticed or whatever is too high. We have become addicted to feeling angry or hurt.

Jesus, of course, knows about our addictions to our wounds and is singularly ruthless in calling us to real health. Is your eye causing your to sin? Gauge it out! Not to prove how holy or "religious" you are, but so that you might be a whole and healthy human being...and one day enter into fullness of joy that you were created for.

"Do you want to get well?" Jesus asks the lame man beside the pool in John 5. It seems like the answer is obvious...except that the man can't answer him and in fact never does answer him.

He, like the rest of us, has expended an enormous amount of energy getting comfortable with his pain and in fact has learned to leverage it for his perceived benefit...just like we find ways to leverage our pain, anger, woundedness to try to get more of what we want out of life. To what end? Death. Always death. Even if there's inklings of pleasure in the process.

For the most glorious and easy-to-read unpacking of this that I've come across, check out C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.