Anger...More From The Sermon On The Mount

You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, you shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Matthew 5:21-24

This is really a continuation of my last entry "The Next Right Thing For The Right Reason." But that could also be said of the rest of the Sermon On The Mount. Jesus made it clear in the verses that were the focus of the last blog that following the rules without love was empty religion and we can't do it well enough to please God, but to love and accept love through relationship brings about an inner change in us that also brings about the fulfillment of the law, which we could never do on our own. He then provides six examples that illustrate the point and show the difference between outward and inner approaches to what is right. Today's verses cover the first of the six examples.

Books and commentaries, even some Bibles, break up each of the six examples as though they were separate topics. I shall do the same, much as I have broken the previous verses in the series starting with the Beatitudes. This does not mean that each of these blocks of scripture are unrelated. It is simply a way of taking a passage of scripture that is a huge a juicy steak and cutting it up into bite size pieces.

I often attend recovery program book studies. There may be six paragraphs in a book used to explain a principle of recovery, but that is usually way to much reading to use as a topic. There is just so much there that it would be difficult to cover it all in a single meeting. So if we take it one paragraph at a time, we can delve into the meaning and individual experience, strength and hope of each part more fully. I write all of this to explain that this is why the verses we assigned to passages of scripture in the first place and why something that is really all one subject is broken down the way it is, but I would encourage the reader and anyone who studies the Sermon On The Mount to not approach these as separate issues. They all go together.

But I am finished explaining today's menu. Let's delve into the bites for today. When it comes to my relationship with God and a spiritual way of life, including and especially dealing with recovery, the verses for today really hold a twofold meaning. Or another way of putting that is that there are two ways I approach understanding these verses and applying them to my life and recovery, and both are important and true.

I will start with the interpretation that is on the surface of my recovery and to ignore it is to quickly risk the return of insanity that tells me to drink and or drug is a good idea. These four verses are sometimes labeled "Teachings On Anger." This is one of the most important issues I had to face in the beginning of my recovery. I was consumed by anger, and I could not stop drinking as long as that was the case.

The Big Book puts it like this on page 66, "If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison."

Anger and resentment will get me killed. I can not go about my days in a fowl mood, irritable and snapping at everything like a dog with rabies for long and maintain my spiritual connection with my Creator. I can not let anger grow into resentment and bear the fruit of hatred and access the power that comes from the love of God working in me and through me. If I find these symptoms appearing in my life I need to address them quickly, pull these weeds from my spiritual garden before they choke out the good seed that has been planted. If I do not, then I will lose my hold on the the truth that I have learned and the power that comes from relationship with God and fall into the abyss of my addictions once again.

Jesus is saying it doesn't matter if you break the law by killing someone physically, if you feed anger against someone in your heart your in just as much danger than if you had drawn a weapon and used it on him. This is definitely my experience. There may be times when my anger towards another did not effect them, since it never manifested in an outward attack. But the damage it did to me spiritually and mentally kept me in bondage for years. Instead of hurting or killing someone who hurt me one time and moving on, mentally I fantasized and imagined and played out hurting or killing that person over and over, whenever something brought the person or incident to the forefront of my memory, sometimes for years. I stayed sick as long as I fed of the poison of this resentment rather than forgiving.

These verses directly address the Fourth and Tenth steps. With the Fourth Step I learn what the anger and resentment in my life has done in the way of damage to myself and others. I see exactly how my chains of addiction were made up of anger and fear. If I was a slave to alcohol and drugs, then Anger was the field boss that whipped me into submission. It doesn't matter if I acted out against the person I was angry at or not, when I harbored resentment, I acted out in many damages ways in almost every relationship and area of my life. I couldn't help it. The poison of hate and anger infused every thought and action I had. I could not live in relationship with God while suffering from the delusion that I had a right to be mad.

Then in the Tenth Step I learned the importance of starting, going through and ending my day pursuing connection with God and examining my spiritual condition. I "continue to take personal inventory, and when [I] am wrong, promptly admit it." Jesus says here that if I am going to spend time with God and enter His presence, then I need to first look at me, and if I have done something to give someone cause to be hurt or angry I need to take care of that, clean up my part in the situation, before I make my offering. I offer myself to God, but if my relationship with others is full of trash I refused to clean up, then my offering is diminished. If I make my amends quickly and forgive, then I can offer myself to my Creator in a state which is much more pleasing for both of us and therefore enhances rather than hinders my relationship.

Throughout His teachings, Jesus made it clear that man deals with and approaches life looking at the surface and outer appearances, but that God cares about and looks at the heart, our motivation. These four verses deal with that as well. I can outwardly obey the letter of the law that says I can't kill someone and yet hate them. I can kill them over and over in my mind. I can even say I hope they die a horrible and painful death, and legally I have done nothing wrong. Following the law can not save me. To live like that, even though I don't break the law, leaves me sick and cut of from God. But when I practice patience, love and tolerance, when I am quick to forgive and refuse to be angry, then resentment has no hold on me. I am free to love even my enemies and those who despitefully use me. Just as God loved me when I gave Him every reason not to, I can love others who don't appear to deserve it. God in me can love in a way that I on my own can not, and that is what leads to life.

The Big Book, also on page 66, puts it this way, "It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us to drink is to die."

Very simply, when I hang onto resentment, when I fan the fires of anger in my heart against another, when I cut someone down and allow contempt rather than love to flourish in my heart towards or about that person (calling someone "Raqa" for example, which was an expression of contempt meaning empty headed or vain), when I treat them as though they are of no value to God or man, I cut myself of from the sunlight of the Spirit. I separate myself from God, who says He values us and loves us and that each person on this floating rock in space was fearfully and wonderfully made. To be separated from God is the very definition of hell, and I don't want that in my life. The alcohol and drugs do not work long against the pain of hell. Never mind the afterlife, I want to be free of hell now. Today is the day of salvation, because today I can enter into relationship with God and find there happiness, joy, serenity and freedom.

It's awesome how God shows Himself to me when I seek, how He comes to me right where I am. I have been writing on the Sermon On The Mount every third day since I began with the Beatitudes. This is exactly where the schedule put me this morning. Yet yesterday, I was irritable to the extent that it worried and scared my wife. My anger was boiling just beneath the surface, flaring out at the least little excuse. I am not sure why. But I am sure that during that time, I was not in fellowship with God. I needed to delve into this topic, to be reminded of how dangerous anger is, and to be encouraged to surrender to my Creator in a way that suffocates the flames of anger and resentment and causes love. I started something last month that led me to be writing on the topic I most desperately needed to look at today. God knew where I was and where I would be and guided me to the safety of the truth and principles I needed to see where I was off course and how to get back on. I am so grateful for His guidance and wisdom.