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PROGRAM D-6857
I’m out to dispel the commonly-accepted belief that all exercise is good for your health. I want you to know that there are some exercises that are very harmful to you and to your witness for Jesus Christ.
We talked about the harm of jumping to conclusions. Here’s another harmful exercise: Flying off the handle. We all get angry, but there is right anger and there is wrong anger. Flying off the handle is wrong anger.
Anger is an emotion that has to be very carefully controlled. While it may not be wrong to be angry, it is wrong to rush into anger and it is wrong to harbor anger. In James 1:19-20 we read: “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
Galatians 5 lists outbursts of anger as one of the deeds of the flesh. When you rush into anger, that is flying off the handle and that is a very harmful exercise, for you and everyone around you.
Psalm 103:8 says that “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.” While God is sometimes angry, this verse says he is more importantly compassionate, gracious and abounding in lovingkindness. Therefore, we need to be slow to anger, while overflowing in kindness, love and compassion for those people who make us angry.
A friend of mine tells me that when he was younger, he had a violent temper, and it didn’t take much to set him off. He became a Christian, but discovered that his violent temper did not change overnight. He knew his temper was wrong, so he began to pray much about his violent anger, and he now can say that his temper is no longer a problem.
How did he get rid of it? First, he memorized all the verses in Scripture on anger, so that he could easily recall how God feels about flying off the handle. Then when he felt this great anger, he would say to himself, “If I’m angry, something’s wrong with me.”
At first, I thought that this couldn’t be a right approach, since not all anger is wrong. But then I realized how right it was for him to view anger as such a destructive force in his life, that nothing short of eliminating it would do the job. Jesus said if your arm offends you, cut it off, and if your eye offends you, pluck it out.
How about you? If your anger is quick, hot and often, perhaps you need to take some drastic action such as my friend has. There is no doubt that the person who rushes into anger, expresses it freely and emotionally, and exhibits a hot temper is not justified in that anger. That is the harmful exercise of flying off the handle.