“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

                                                                                                Ephesians 6:12

There are some angry folks in the world right now.

The protestors – on both sides – representing re-opening or not re-opening the states for business are a great example. They stand there screaming at one another, red-faced, shaking fists and pointing fingers, waving their arms and the signs they’re carrying (and guns in some cases), and shouting vulgarities. Angry. COVIC-19 is bringing a lot of the country together. Can’t count the angry extremes among those in that category.

Then I saw on the news a video of a fight on an airplane. Then another one. And then a third one. I mean all-out, fist-flying, wailing on each other fisticuffs. And what were they all about? One was about how loud someone else was playing their music. One was a disagreement about the level of government intervention in the Coronavirus pandemic. And the third one, well, no one knows what that one was about. It looked unprovoked. All were so bad, however, that the flights were either delayed or diverted in route. Angry. I guess the “friendly skies” aren’t so friendly anymore.

I read a blog recently about the causes of anger. Here were some of the answers.

-        It’s biological – since we are animals by nature, it is instinctual to be territorial and aggressive.

-        It’s populational – there are too many people on a small planet, and we have become instinctually claustrophobic (especially during “shelter in place” and therefore we lash out).

-        We are no angrier today than centuries ago, we just have more ways to hear about it today than in the past. TV and the internet have made it so that we see all the anger whereas years ago it existed, but we just didn’t know about it.

-        It’s a cycle – anger evolves from frustration, and frustration from powerlessness, and when we feel powerless, we use anger to overcompensate.

-        We have become a self-centric culture where entitlement is our mindset. We believe our needs and our wants, and our beliefs should be everyone’s and when they’re not, we get mad.

Could be some or all of them. Or. Maybe it is from the one thing a lot of people don’t like to think about. Just plain ole evil. The bible tells us we are to be a light in the darkness and one of the descriptions of evil is “darkness”. And it tells us the only way to overcome darkness is with light. (Think about it – how many times have you gone in a store to buy a “flashdark”? Never. It’s a flashlight because darkness can’t overcome light, but light can overcome darkness.)

Christ is the light of the world. And when we choose to follow Him, we are called to be lights also.  In his first letter John says, “If we walk in the light, as he (Christ) is in the light, we have fellowship with one another”.  That means if we live as the lights we are called to be, we’re in fellowship with one another. And fellowship does not include anger because anger destroys your life and the lives of those you are angry at and the ones you take your anger out on.

Love covers a multitude of sins. Even anger. Choose love. Live in the light.

“Father, Help us to put anger behind us (along with Satan), and to love as You have called us to love. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Grace,

Rev. Dan