David Powlison & Ed Welch & CCEF & Anger …

I woke up at 5AM again this morning–not quite ready to go back to the gym. (72 hours on antibiotics now–so it shouldn’t be long.) As I sat in the Christmas lights (SO nice! Don’t you miss them when they’re gone?), I picked up the latest issue of The Journal of Biblical Counseling.

Friends, I just cannot more highly recommend this wonderful ministry (The Christian Counseling & Education Foundation).

As soon as I begin to read ANYTHING by these authors (David Powlison, Ed Welch, Timothy Lane, Winston Smith), it is as though my heart SIGHS, my mind ENGAGES, and my spirit is immediately EDIFIED. I am drawn to worship CHRIST. I am motivated to pick up the WORD. I am helped in my meager efforts to LOVE PEOPLE and live for GOD’S GLORY ALONE.

The latest issue (Fall 2006) is all on ANGER.

Now I realize that this topic might not sound like a “fun read” … but don’t we all deal with anger all the time?

– Our child repeats the same phrase for (literally!) AN HOUR and we finally turn and use “the tone” and “the look” (and the scared/sad look in her eyes rightfully shames us).

– We look around at the happy marriages in our church and then we cringe again at even the THOUGHT of our husband TOUCHING us because we despise him with every fiber in our being.

– We long for ONE thing … one tiny, GOOD thing that everyone else around us seems to have (and TAKE FOR GRANTED!) … like a child, health, a home, the ability to pay our bills on time … and when we don’t get what we want, we secretly shake our fists at GOD and live our lives ruled by destructive, poisoning ANGER.

I could go on and on (and on and on). (Seriously–just try teaching, writing, and blogging on peacemaking and women for awhile and you’ll hear a LOT about anger. Plus, of course, my own oft-faithless, oft-selfish heart gives me example after example.)

So please consider spending ten bucks and buy this issue. Read it and be helped–and then donate it to your church’s library or give it to your pastor.

(Or better yet: buy your pastor/church twenty years of Journal Issues for only $120! Searchable, indexed–this is a steal at twice the price.)

No, I don’t work for them.
 No one there would know my name.
But I love and respect these men and women more than you can imagine–and I encourage you to get to know them.

Fred and I are even thinking about trying to go to their Annual Conference in 2007: Running Scared–Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest. Maybe we’ll see you there?

I’ll close with this little excerpt from the issue (hoping that Dr. Powlison doesn’t mind). In this article, Dr. Powlison begins with an example he observed in a grocery store (that we’ve all observed, I am sure) … a young woman, obviously beaten down by the cares of life, rages at her preschooler who wants a candy bar. Here is what just a sliver of what he writes in response:

“These three angers aren’t like anything on Oprah or in the self-help books. Half those books teach techniques for keeping your cool amid the irritants of life. The other half urge you to stand up for yourself, to own your anger in order to feel empowered …

But this slice of life in the supermarket is not about irritants or about managing reality to get more of what you want. It’s about evils. It’s about things that are wrong and destructive. They need to be made right. What it takes to make it right is not obvious–but the right kind of anger is part of the solution. Platitudes, techniques, self-assertion, or calming medications can never do what needs doing. None of these angers are explained on Oprah, but they are what the Bible is about.

… The boy’s anger was the kind we’re most familiar with: “I want my way. When I don’t get it, I make a stink. I feel sorry for myself. It’s so unfair when I don’t get what I want when I want it. I manipulate to get what I want, and bully if necessary. I punish anyone who crosses my almighty will.” … Anger whines and sulks … persists and throws a scene … anger is savvy and strategic.

… Very rarely, wonderfully, (this kind of anger) prompts the constructive responses of peacemaking.

… The mom’s anger is like in kind, but not so simple … Her wrath had ripened through the years into a more complex evil. It had more history tangled into it. It incorporated more strands of current events. It wrapped into itself a hopeless future. It came as a torrent of mixed feelings, blind motives, bad experiences. It was raw hostility, and it was also despair, fear, habit, regret, hurt, disappointment, consequences of past bad choices, no role models of anything different, accumulated provocations, a mob of other desires, tight finances, other mutually destructive relationships, lies believed, lousy life options, accumulated resentments, futile goals, too much TV, and perhaps a hangover. Her anger at her son was cosmic in scope and scale … “Right now, I’m angry at everything.”

… A real understanding of anger and a true solution to anger problems must go as deep as these problems. And it must go even deeper. In the supermarket there was a hint of some other kind of anger, qualitatively different in intention. It is inextricably mingled with love. It is not problem anger. It is one part of the solution, one element in peacemaking, one part of mercy. I caught the fragrance in the supermarket that day. I am persuaded that the substance is in Jesus.”