I love my wife dearly. I believe that she is a gift from God, who has made me a better man during the 17 years we have been married. I will confess that those 17 years have not always been a fairy tale where the young lovers live happily ever after. There have been more than a few frustrating days and fights. It’s strange how easy it is to be angry with someone who you care for so deeply. I often hear people say that they are far meaner and find it easier to be angry toward their loved ones than they would be toward strangers or acquaintances. Anger is powerful and can be dangerous to relationships. It is important to deal with it appropriately and effectively, lest it take root and grow into bitterness that poisons the whole relationship. The following are simple, Biblical steps to take in dealing with anger.
- Pray for your spouse. It seems like Christian advice all too often begins with: “Have you prayed about it?” Which, I’ll confess, simply produced eye rolls in me for many years. For many years my attitude was: “I don’t want to pray, I want to do something productive.” Though I would never have vocalized it, because Christians are supposed to be serious about prayer. It’s easy to give prayer lip service, but to not take it all that seriously. My attitude toward prayer has since changed. Interestingly, I began to value prayer primarily in response to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:44, directing believers to pray for enemies. During a time of frustration with coworkers, I found myself praying for them. I carried a great deal of anger toward these individuals, but as I prayed for them over the course of weeks, it became easier to simply let go of offenses and forgive. Prayer changed my heart and my attitude. If praying for my enemies and those who offend me alters my attitude toward them, the same principle should apply to my family. If I find myself frustrated with my spouse, praying for her ought to be the first response. Further, the more I pray for her the harder it will be to get angry. Prayer alters our hearts to reflect Jesus’, creating a different attitude to direct our response.
- Deal with it quickly before your anger becomes resentment. A while back I cut my hand, not badly. Just a small cut. Because I am a guy, I simply ignored it. However, instead of getting better it got infected. The little cut grew red, swollen, and painful. The only solution was to lance it and drain the infection, which was unpleasant. The same thing happens with anger. Anger that we ignore and just swallow can grow into resentment. Resentment is old anger that shades our perspective on people and situations. Resentment can slowly grow into a constant state of low grade hostility. The surest way to tell if you have a resentment is if you frequently revisit old offenses and stew in them.
- Serve your spouse. You could probably make the case that you ought to be serving your spouse anyway, but when you are angry it is particularly important to do this. I recently heard someone say that prayer is good, but prayer accompanied by changes in our actions is really powerful. If you are praying for your spouse during a time of anger, serving them should follow close behind. In Romans, Paul directs us to serve our enemies: To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink;…” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. It may be an overstatement to call your spouse evil, though I am sure the word could have been applied to me more than once during my marriage. The general principle applies well. Serving others when they don’t deserve it is the ultimate in imitating Christ. It is a discipline that can provide opportunity for our hearts to change. In the past when I have served those I disliked and was praying for, everything changed.
- Evaluate your expectations. Often, anger toward a husband or wife begins with unrealistic expectations. It’s easy to develop unrealistic expectations for those around you. Your spouse doesn’t read minds, no matter how loud you think things at them. They won’t have the energy they did when you were in your 20s. Your husband won’t wake up tomorrow speaking poetry and looking like he stepped off the cover of a romance novel. Your wife won’t suddenly become hyper-sexual. The house won’t be always be perfectly clean. The honey-do list won’t be done before you even make it. They aren’t necessarily going to be excited about the same things you are excited about. Nobody is going to want to volunteer to get up at 2 AM and feed the baby. Expecting your spouse to suddenly be someone they aren’t, particularly if they don’t know you expect it, is unrealistic and will only lead to frustration and anger.
- Talk it through. I didn’t start with this one for a very good reason. It’s one of the most important things to do when dealing with anger, but it only works when you come into the conversation with your heart in the right place. It’s entirely too easy to devolve into a fight when you discuss things you are angry over. It is especially the case when you are still a little hot under the collar. Anger makes communication impossible. The previous steps are helpful because they tend to shape our attitude going into the conversation. It is important to eventually reach a point where conversation can take place. Some marriages have issues that prevent any discussion or dealing with the problems at hand without them devolving into shouting matches. In these cases, it’s best to back up and work toward an environment where communication can take place. It may require counseling or intentionally working to improve communication skills. Communicating needs to be a major objective in every area of marriage, particularly conflict. Without it, the relationship will whither and die.
- Recognize your role in relation to Jesus. The description of duties for husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 is often subject to confusion. Paul spends half the chapter comparing the relationship between a husband and wife to that which exists between Christ and the Church. Instead of focusing on this dynamic, discussions on the passage focus on “who is in charge”, “what are MY rights in this relationship”, or “what am I owed by my spouse.” The problem with these discussions is that they shift away from the truth that marriage is to reflect Jesus and the church. Husbands are to love their wives sacrificially and selflessly. Wives are to respect their husbands as with someone who has given up everything for them. Fighting over rights and what they owe me is foreign to this model. When we grow angry, it’s vital to remember our role. Husbands represent Jesus. That’s no small thing. Wives are to love their spouse like the church loves Jesus. What if he/she doesn’t deserve that? You and I don’t deserve the grace that Jesus offers us on the cross. Remember, these our our roles, not what we demand of them.
- Forgive. At the foundation of it all is forgiveness. The solution to anger is forgiveness, which is hard. It requires the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts to the point that we can let go of resentment and anger. It is modeled in Christ and the church and ought to be what we strive for in our marriages.
I haven’t posted to this blog in 3 months. The reason for this leave of absence is simple: I am a small church pastor in a rural community of 700. I love my job and the people I serve. Between early October and December 26th, the busy season for church work, I didn’t have a single day when I didn’t field a work-related phone call, head over to the office to take care of a few tasks, visit with someone from the church, run into town for a hospital visit, spend time working on a sermon, sat down for counseling, attended a meeting, or spend time working. I often joke that I work every day, which is true. As the excess or work ramps up, the productivity of writing goes down. That having been said, I’m not bragging or complaining about this. I don’t consider burnout to be a sign of spiritual health. I actually really like my job and most days I don’t think I work to excess. In the past, I’ve worked at similar levels of busyness and not felt as good about it. Most ministers have experienced days when they didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and when they felt like there was no escaping the crush of expectations.
Several times in the last few months, while scrolling my Facebook feed, I have come across friends who have posted those annoying fake news stories, that are technically “parodies”, but are not identifiable as parodies in any way, apart from reading the home page of the website it was originally posted on. These posts are usually political, outrageous, completely fabricated, and designed to induce rage in the reader. The thing that has blown me away is that on several occasions I’ve read where a comment will point out that the article is fictional, and the follow up comments will continue to pile on with rage about how “it might as well be true” or “that’s the sort of thing <insert some group here> would actually do.” In short, it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re true, these articles become an excuse to pour fuel on the fire of rage at an ideological group. They are, what I refer to as “rage porn.” They exist for the sole purpose of feeding an emotional state. They become an excuse to express rage and fury on the internet. Rage porn isn’t limited to the fake stories. There are whole websites that do the same thing with single line quotes and mischaracterizations. In these cases, the news articles will feature a single sentence and an editorial about how evil the speaker and everyone associated with them is. There is not attempt at context or intelligent engagement. The only objective is eliciting an emotional response, because anger is political strength in our culture.
Believers have no place in their lives for stoking the flames of rage over politics or anything else. We may mourn over sin in the world. We can feel free to disagree with the actions of others. We can speak out for Christ and the protection of the innocent and helpless. At the end of the day, we must love those who Christ bled and died for. We need to pray for the folks we would be tempted to judge and love the folks we are more tempted to despise. It’s important to note that love involves more than lip service. If I rage at and trash talk a person, then explain that I love them; I am not doing much in the way of demonstrating my love toward them. Our call is to serve and to love concretely. This isn’t easy. Turning to reading materials that inflame our rage at “the enemy” does little to produce the sort of holiness that Christ is directing us to.
The world of publishing has witnessed an interesting phenomena over the last few years. Sales of print books have slumped in almost every category as ebooks sales have surged. The only arm of book printing that has experienced growth over the last several years has been in the area of self-help. Self improvement book sales have defied the trend in the industry by experiencing a boom. Between books on weight loss, ways to improve your marriage, methods for overcoming depression, improve your career standing, and all manner of other do-it-yourself-to-yourself books; Americans are still buying. In our self-obsessed culture, feeling bad or inadequate is simply unacceptable. This has prompted a veritable gold rush of publishing in this area. The world of Christian books has not missed out on this trend. “Christian self-help” books are extraordinarily popular. I include quotation marks because far too often these books are simply christian flavored versions of their secular counterparts. Rather than being a distinct worldview, self-help Christianity has a tendency toward nearly identical in approach with bible verses attached to the ideas at strategic locations. At issue isn’t the notion of working to improve our health, emotional wellbeing, income prospects, or anything else we feel discontentedness toward. The issue is related to a basic philosophical incompatibility that exists between Biblical Christianity and most self-help approaches to the world.
There’s a saying that originated in AA: You are only as sick as your secrets. The more an addict hides their sickness, the worse it will become. Without outside assistance, recovery is nearly impossible. This is particularly the case with pornography addiction. Recovery from pornography addiction comes with some significant hurdles to beginning and sustaining recovery. Perhaps the biggest challenge in beginning the pr ocess of recovery is overcoming the shame associated with the addiction. This is particularly the case because of the social stigma accompanying sexual problems. This stigma and its bedfellow, shame, keep pornography addicts hiding in the darkness, often knowing that they need help, but unwilling to seek it out of fear of the judgement of others. This is particularly the case for married addicts, who risk losing their spouse by coming clean about their problem. The secretiveness makes recovery nearly impossible because of the nature of addiction. Simply put, addiction is a disease in which the stimulus reward process in the brain begins to dominate the addict’s behavior. The process reaches a point where the addict simply cannot stop using. In fact, one of the diagnostic criteria for addiction is repeated, failed attempts to control using. Pornography addicts may do this by deciding to quit using altogether, only to start again later. They may also try to come up with artificial ways of limiting their pornography consumption or the time spent searching for or looking at porn. These efforts inevitably fail. Secrecy eliminates the support essential to the recovery process for the following reasons:
One of the major difficulties with opening up about pornography addiction is finding appropriate people to begin talking with. Ministers or counselors are a decent place to start. Both are common in most communities. I also recommend Samson and the Pirate Monks by Nate Larkin or through the associated website: 
One of the newest trends in men’s grooming is premium shaving gear. This includes all sorts of oils, different shaving cream styles, suggested variations in shaving ritual, and assorted styles of razors. Most of these products are marketed with the basic premise that they are part of rediscovering manhood or some aspect of being a man that is authentically male. A few weeks ago, I came across an old safety razor at an antique sale, and having read all sorts of material on how they were more of a Mercedes shaving experience compared to my Pinto experience with the disposable razor, I invested $3 on a 60-year old shaver. After thoroughly researching the technique involved, I made my first few attempts at grooming with my antique razor. Incidentally, I also learned all about the proper use of a styptic pencil. For those unfamiliar with the styptic pencil, it is used to staunch blood flow for minor cuts and nicks. I also learned that the reason that multi-bladed modern razors exist is because shaving with a safety razor is difficult, more time consuming, and potentially much harder on your face. The other thing I discovered is that shaving with an antique razor, the way my grandfather probably did, didn’t make me feel more manly. I didn’t feel like I had discovered some secret to manhood. Really, all of the mystique of the experience seems to be a little overstated. Perhaps I am doing it wrong. Perhaps when I have completed the hazing period and have the scars to prove it, then I will understand. More likely, I suspect that the ads are attempting to tap into a deep-seated need in our culture. Many men are searching for a definition of manhood because they aren’t certain as to what it really means to be a man. They don’t have a clear definition or standard by which to measure themselves, and as a result, they struggle with a core component of their identity. We live in a culture that is uncomfortable with manhood and where fathers being estranged from their sons is increasingly common. Boys learn to be men by watching their fathers. They observe, imitate, and learn. Without a father who models manhood, many young men grow up with no real concept of what it means to be a man. Such young men must teach themselves about manhood. Self-taught men often grow up with learning about manhood from pop culture, peers, or not at all. Many live with a need, whether it is conscious or not, to be validated as a man or find manhood standards to live up to. These often materialize as success at work, sexual dominance, or even being the opposite of their own dads. They need not be so overt, as some men live out this need by simply swallowing it or drifting in their life course.
Ultimately, if you ask most males what it means to be a man you will get a hodgepodge of activities that men associate with manhood and even some isolated values that are associated with male identity. What is far less common is a clear definition of the foundational values or focus of manhood and from where they are derived. This results in some perplexing behaviors that are labeled “being a man” that are likely far from a complete male identity.
In Genesis 5:3, after the fall of man into sin, Adam has a son. Interestingly, the text says that Adam’s son was in Adam’s likeness. The reason for this shift is that man is now sinful. Instead of being as we were created to be, we are fallen. All people fall short of what they were meant to be. However, in Jesus we see the perfect representation of God and man without sin. In Him, we see what we were meant to be. Men may wander, chasing after images of manhood that fall well short of the ideal, because in Adam, we are fallen. In Christ, we can be what we were created to be. In fact, Paul writes that those who are in Christ are new creations. They become new for the purpose of imitating Christ. We can rediscover manhood in Him. The beginning of recovering real manhood is recognizing that He is the perfect model for us to emulate.
Earlier this summer, I was out running. A few miles into my run, my right hip started to bother me. A little research provided me with a several stretches, which alleviated my discomfort. Further investigation has led me to understand that I need to do core exercises and more stretches, or I can expect further trouble down the line. Pain, like the “check engine” light on a car, lets us know that something is wrong. In this way, pain is a good thing. Without pain we would not know when we sustain injuries that need our attention. Depression is one way our brain lets us know that something is not right. We experience this discomfort and it reveals to us that we are not operating the way we were made to operate, as such, something needs to be attended to. Simply ignoring the problem won’t serve as a consistent, long-term solution, but many people choose to respond to warning signs with attempts to ignore the problem. I knew a young woman who put a piece of electrical tape over the maintenance lights in her car, so that she couldn’t see them and wouldn’t worry about what might be wrong. This is essentially what we are doing when we find ways to ignore what ourbrains are telling us through our emotions.
There is an important principal in this. Comfort, a sense of meaning, and purpose for difficulty in relation to hard circumstances in our past can be discovered by recognizing God’s refining us through the pain we experienced, reflecting on the good it produced in us, and reflecting on how our experiences have shaped us into the person that we are. Doing so requires that we learn to take a different point of view in relation to our past. This can be terribly difficult, because hardship often creates bitterness, which tends to blind us to anything positive that may come of unfortunate incidents. It can also be hard because it’s easy to confuse finding positive outcomes with being glad a bad thing happened. We don’t have to be happy that tragedy has been present in our lives in order to recognize how hardship has shaped us. We can be thankful for what we have become without having joy at what made us the way we are. Learning to shift our perspective in relation to past pain can bring great comfort and release. As difficult as it is, it becomes easier to shift our perspective the further displaced we are from the events. This is often the first step toward healing.
Patching Cracks 