Anger Management

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Welcome to the masculine journey. We are glad that you're with us this week and I think this week we have a topic. I know there's a lot of times the enemy doesn't like the topics we cover. I'd say hopefully every week he doesn't like the topics that we cover, but it's been very apparent to me that this week he really doesn't like the topic because we sent out an email or text last week about we're going to be talking about the topic of anger and how some men kind of run to it almost like a welcome friend.

They're used to seeing them all the time and others avoid it at all costs and neither one of those polarized positions are healthy. But since then, we've had plenty of opportunities to have real anger, no anger, perceived anger, all these angry things coming at us and it's just been comical almost over the last few days and we've actually been laughing a lot before the show, just laughing at this whole thing of how quickly that can kind of turn. You know, Andy, I made you angry just right before the show.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're sitting here discussing stuff before the show and I'm explaining something that I think Sam should get and he's looking right through me like he's got x-ray vision and not making any comments. So I'm like, come on, Sam, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, and I know what you're talking about.

I just want to see how long you'd explain it. So you knew how to draw out my anger, right? Exactly. And so we all laughed about it.

And sometimes that can be fun or it can be really damaging. But I want to go ahead and get to a clip because I think it sets up some of what we're going to talk about today. And Andy, if you go ahead and tell us a little bit about the clip.

Sure. It's from anger management. And Dave is this guy that's been on a plane and had anger issues. And you know what? That'll get you these days.

It'll get you in some serious trouble. And so he's got to go to see a counselor for anger management. And they've been through a few sessions and he's kind of talking to him about what the next steps are. And kind of the counselor, I think it's Dr. Riddell, is kind of telling him what he – Who is Jack Nickles? Who is Jack Nickles in the end? Not the guy you would want to go to. No.

You can't handle the truth. Same guy. Yeah, same guy. So anyway, he's basically telling him what the next steps are and kind of telling him what his perceived problems are or how he sees his anger problems. That was a little bit insane. If I had to do 20 hours of that, I think I'd end up killing myself.

Here you go. 20 hours in my class would be pointless for you. I agree.

I think I'm going to recommend to the court that we double your time. Well, what do you mean? Let me explain something, Dave. There are two kinds of angry people, explosive and implosive. Explosive is the kind of individual that you see screaming at the cashier for not taking their coupons. Implosive is the cashier who remains quiet day after day and finally shoots everyone in the store. You're the cashier. No, no, no, no. I'm the guy hiding in the frozen food section dialing 911.

I swear. So maybe you don't find yourself in either one of those equations. And like Adam Sandler, you think you're the one dialing 911 in the frozen food section. But I promise you, if you talk to people around you, you probably fall into one side of that equation or the other, whether you realize it or not. And sometimes you fall on probably both sides.

There's some things that you rush to enter into and other things you completely avoid. And all those begin to ask the question, why? Why do I act that way? So if I ask you guys, I know I've known you all and I've known you all to get angry at some point or another. Not you quite yet, Danny, but I know it's coming. I can just see it on your face. It's going to happen at some point. But what causes anger?

What's some of the things that can really get you going? If you're really just honest with yourself and if you do like we talk about, lift the hood up and look underneath and say, okay, God, help me see what's causing the anger. Let's begin with the ones that really do get angry, not the ones that shy away from it, but the ones that get angry. What's some of the things that can cause that?

Well, being the old guy in the group, I get to go first. And I was one of those people that was always angry for years. In fact, we've pretty much decided that that's the major reason why I had to have five bypasses done 18 years ago, that the stress I kept myself under is what messed up my body. So dealing with anger in the wrong way can get you in a world of trouble, both physically and spiritually. Another thing I found out about my anger was that you go into a downward spiral. If you don't get rid of it and deal with it, then the next little thing that comes along becomes a big thing.

And those big things just keep getting bigger and bigger. And that's why you're mad all the time with no relief. It's not a good place to be.

I advise against it based on personal experience. The Lord's been good to me because in spite of all that, I'm still here. So when we were before the show, we were talking a little bit about it. You said that, you know, you realized that it was times when you didn't get your way. And at the end, that really amounted to what and what God helped you see. Well, in most cases, it was selfishness on my part. I want it my way when I want it. And if I can't have it the way I want it, then I don't want it. And I don't want to be around it. So selfishness, I think, was one of the major things that drove me to be angry.

You're in front of me going slower than I want to go, and I can't get around you. So I get mad. Yeah, that is a one of the root causes, you know, it's a selfishness for me. You know, it's a lot of the same thing, but I call it control.

When I can't have control over my situation, it makes me mad a lot of times because I want to know what the outcome or influence the outcome anyway. For me, you know, I was a car salesman for a long time, 40 years. And you remember Marty and me fly like, nobody calls me chicken. Well, the thing that would just fry my bacon, and it was just like instantaneous, like it would go from like no sizzle to just complete fire in 20 seconds, was if somebody didn't trust me. And being a car salesman, you would run across that quite often.

You don't say. So my bacon stayed pretty cooked. But fortunately, really, fortunately, as I got into, you know, the boot camps and understanding that, wow, I've got a certain way that God looks at me. And when I discovered my new name was Faithful, you see, people were thinking that I was completely somebody that I wasn't. And if you walk into the middle of what my actual identity is, you know, you're going to find yourself, you know, on the other side angry. Which fortunately for me, God has been unpacking that there's parts of that that are actually quite wonderful. And there's parts of that that actually require some, you know, digging into and trying to find that that particular aspect of my life has been attacked my whole life. And since that's where the wounds lie, guess what?

That's where you light up my bacon. Yeah, absolutely. You know, to attack somebody's character. And you're going to see them come unhinged most of the time, because that's an assault on who they are at the end of the day.

And that's a hot button as well. You know, I think a lot of times as Christians, we fall into this impression that anger is bad. You know, and it doesn't say in Scripture anywhere that anger is bad. It says don't sin in your anger. In your anger do not sin, right? Because anger is an emotion that God gave us. And there are things in this world to be angry about. Absolutely things that happen to kids or things that happen to innocent people.

Absolutely. There's things to be angry about. But the only way we can really get there is to ask God to help us see the truth in the situations. Because if I'm limited to my own view, oh, man, I'm going to be angry all the time. And I was sitting there thinking about this topic since last week. And just today, I probably couldn't count on all your guys's hands how many times I've been angry over something that didn't last very long. You know, I was angry about traffic or angry about this or angry about that or this frustrated me. You can say frustrated instead of anger if you want to use a more politically correct term. At the end of the day, it's still anger. You know, this had me on edge.

Whatever you want to say, use whatever term you want. It's still anger at the end of the day. Then just ask yourself, what's really doing that?

What's really causing that? I didn't get my way. That's a part of it, right? Woundedness, as you talked about, can be a part of it.

Andy, what's some thoughts from you? Yeah, I think a lot of it is you don't get what you want. Somebody's getting in the way of what that is. And it could be not somebody, but some things.

Just trying to get something done for work or whatever. But I was thinking back about the past of where I used to have a lot of anger. Then I got saved and got really committed to God. And then I tried to do the whole, you know, have anger but don't sin.

So that just means push it down. And then I thought about after some bad things that happened in my life. And it kind of seemed like my life had blown up. Then I realized that I looked back at it.

I still love God and all that, but still really struggling with anger. I remember I had a few names at work than the previous place I worked. Like, I think they called me Angry Birds or, you know, just giving names. Some other stuff. We're going to call you from now on. Tasmanian Devil or something like that or whatever.

Taz or whatever. But, you know, and I really felt bad. And I felt like I got a new start with this job I had.

But really all this, it came back. There's nothing wrong really, like you said, with anger. But a lot of it is it can't be this selfish anger of just me not getting my way. The anger that I see, like you said, is getting angry about what God gets angry at.

You know, the injustices of the world that there's plenty of. That people are blinded by the enemy. That, you know, keeps them doing stupid things. You know, we get mad at them being stupid.

Well, they're stupid because they're blinded, you know, a lot of times from the enemy. I mean, it's straight up in the Bible that way. But, you know, it's kind of funny when you say it's be angry but don't sin. I heard that somebody say one time, yeah, you know, it says also don't let the sin go down on your route. You know, I've been up like three days before, you know, just trying to get over it.

But at least I didn't, you know, let the sun go down on my route, so. Yeah, it's hard. You know, if you ask somebody, you know, we can all share examples of being angry. You know, and there's lots of things out there that we can say cause us to be angry. One of the Eagle songs, it's called Hole in the World, talks about, you know, anger. They say that anger is just love disappointed, right?

And that's a way you can do it. You think about people that get into romantic arguments. It's just disappointment a lot of times. It's something that there was an expectation there, a missed expectation. There's lots of things underneath it. And again, they're not all bad. And we come back, I want to kind of unpack some of that and say, okay, how do you distinguish between the two, but also how do I find what's really causing my anger? Or what if I'm one of those people that just refused to enter in? You know, I'm the powder keg waiting to go off at some point, right?

How do I know what's causing that and what could be causing that? We go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming bootcamp, November 12th through 15th, masculinejourney.org. Robby Dilmore here, your mattress getting a little thin on top. Well, check out the new mattress topper from MyPillow. I sleep hot and my wife sleeps cold, which make its phase change material invaluable to us.

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It's not just me and God, but in reality, it's me when I get up in the morning, me when I go to work, on my drive, you know, my daily life. God has something for you at the next bootcamp. Come register now at masculinejourney.org.

Coming November the 12th through the 15th. Hi, I'm Carson Kuhn. I'm Darren Kuhn's grandson on the Masculine Journey radio. Mike's bootcamp experience was like mine. One of the things that I realized this week was that I need to take time to listen to God. I felt like the Lord had spoken to me and he said, Mike, how are you going to listen if you're always busy? So this weekend, what I've done is I've taken some time just to go on walks and to be alone and to think. Join us young guys at the next bootcamp.

Coming November 12th to the 15th. Masculine Journey radio.org. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Telling you it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Without a doubt it's a mad, mad, mad world. Things you thought you'd never hear on the Masculine Journey radio show. Now I'm ticked. I'm angry. You know, when I picked that bump, I thought of that movie, which was really a really old movie that Robby loved a lot. Yeah, it's almost as old as Rodney. It is.

It's there. But that movie was more about they're talking about in that it's a mad, mad world. It's crazy. It's a crazy world. But, you know, I think when we look around the world today, you can say that it is crazy, but also it's very angry.

Oh, yeah. We live in a very angry time. You know, again, whether it's politics, social injustice, you know, whatever you want to say. Texting with my sister some yesterday, she's just angry and over COVID, you know, and there's nothing you can really do about it. That's just anger. I'm so tired of it.

And she's in the medical field and they got to do all these, you know, things to be careful. But she's just tired of dealing with it, you know? And I think that's where we find ourselves is an opportunity to be angry over lots of things.

Right. And it's okay to be angry. And Darren, it's a biblical principle to be angry. I mean, Jesus was angry. Paul was angry.

You know, I mean, James and John were the sons of thunder, right? So they obviously got angry every now and then. Now, you know, they were called that because of the way they handled their anger, which may or may not have been, you know, holy or sinful. But the emotion is attributed to God through scripture a lot. And so it's a godly emotion. Anger is a godly emotion. You can say that. Now, you can talk about, well, yeah, but I don't always use it in a godly sort of way. I've never been angry.

I never get angry. I tend to make other people that way a lot, but no, and I've never told a lie either. Yeah, yeah. Well, Danny, you want to add something here?

I was thinking about when I was growing up, I was a skinny kid. I know that's going to stretch y'all's faith just a little bit. It is a little surprising.

Just a year or two. And it was picked on a lot, but, and I would have explosive anger fits. Matter of fact, to the point that I actually injured two friends and a cousin. I mean, I almost cut a cousin's thumb off and it was just explosive anger. So, but, and then I, but then I became, like Andy said, I became, well, you shouldn't get that way.

So you begin to suppress it and, you know, caused a lot of different problems. And so had to have some like anger management, so to speak. So one of my best friends was just like you, he was the skinny kid. He was, I mean, he was so, he was so fun. I mean, both of us were skinny kids, but he was so much fun. But Johnny was the most gifted and talented physically guy that I'd ever known. I mean, he, you know, he's the guy that could do the handstands on the skateboard, ride the unicycle 10 miles to school and, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

But he was picked on a lot. And so was I for being, you know, as, especially as we got to be a little bit into our teen years and we were still kind of scrawny and some guys were picking on Johnny one day and I said, don't do that. Don't do that. I'm telling you, don't do that. And they kept doing it.

And eventually Johnny put two of them in the hospital because, you know, he had a baseball bat in the back of his truck. And I, you know, I tried to warn them and sometimes that comes out and, you know, that scares us. So we try not to be angry.

And that leads us into what keeps people from trying to go there. You know, I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to get angry. You know, some of that, there's someone I knew as a good friend that in their past, when anger occurred in their household growing up as a kid, it meant that there was going to be physical abuse.

And so, you know, there was a vow made, an agreement made there that anger equal bad. You know, so I'm never going to let myself get there. You know, that word never, that usually doesn't apply, right?

I'm always going to stay calm. Well, that comes at a cost. You know, as Harold said, that could be a bypass surgery at some point. It could be a coronary. It could be lots of other things. It could be the eruption of all this emotion at some point. Right. And so that's a reason why.

But what's some of the other reasons why, guys, that people might refuse to try to even go there? Robby? Mr. Rogers syndrome. You know, really, honestly, you know, as I became a Christian late in life, in my late 30s, and I went to church, and I looked around at all the quote unquote godly men, and they all look like Mr. Rogers. I mean, that, you know, they were happy all the time.

The anger was not going to be part of the equation whatsoever. And so I just kind of thought, well, you know, that's a picture of what that looks like. And when I came to my first boot camp, and they held up two pictures, one of William Wallace and the other one of Mr. Rogers, and they were like, which of these guys is Jesus?

And like, oh, my goodness. And I realized the reason why my heart would get angry at times was because Jesus' heart gets angry at sometimes, and it gave me an immense amount of freedom to actually see and walk into a place where where does my heart need to be angry? And then how would that be expressed the way that Christ would express it?

And that freaks some people out, I realize. But the Lord is a warrior and a warrior in his name. And a warrior is usually, they're pretty angry, you know, looking, you know, and it's a good thing if you need that. You know, like Jack Nicholson said, you need me on that wall. You want me on that wall, you know, and that's the deal. You have that. You have when in their childhood, they've attempted to rise up with a justice, you know, to fight an injustice and was beaten down either emotionally, physically, some way along the way and have equated that to that's going to cause pain.

So I don't want to go there. You know, we have a good friend of the show that's not with us tonight, but he shared on the show many times it was he was raised in a household where he was told anger is a weakness, you know, and you shouldn't let yourself get angry because that's just going to show weakness, right? And I'm sure there's some truth in that, but taken to every situation that doesn't apply, right?

And he would share that with you as well. He has on the show many times, you know, and I think that that's other reasons why people just don't want to go there. Well, and it's a lie. That is a lie. Anger is a weakness. No, anger is a godly emotion. It is an emotion that God gave you for a purpose. Now find out what the purpose is.

The purpose is to fight a great battle. Just like, you know, Ravi talked about because God needs you on that wall. Sometimes he needs you standing between injustice and justice.

He needs you standing between righteousness and unrighteousness. I mean, look, if children being sold into sexual slavery does not anger you as a man or a woman, there's something wrong with your heart. And you need to spend some time praying about that. That should make you furious.

And there are lots of things. I mean, when your children are mistreated, try not to get angry. You know, I mean, try not to get angry. Now, I mean, doesn't mean I could tell you about all the times where that's gone badly. And again, that's what you meant is Satan takes that emotion because it's probably the easiest one for him to mess with, right? Because it is about control. And we lose control, which we've got a clip that kind of illustrates that, too, if we want to play it in a few minutes.

But that's when we're the closest to losing control. But the man who can harness the anger like Jesus did when he was angry, sat down intentionally, made a cord or a whip out of three cords or more and went into the temple, angrily cleared the temple, kicking people out, but yet was kind to the animals who were helpless. And so when you can be Jesus, you can be angry. Darrell Bock Yeah, and it's funny how we'll talk about where cartoons often will go right at a topic that adult shows won't necessarily. And there was a movie a few years back called Inside Out, and it was about all your different emotions. And so this is one of the promos from Disney, one of the ones that they advertised about the most. I saw this one, I think, more than any other one. And they know that anger is an issue.

They wouldn't use this as their promo. So let's go ahead and listen to it, and we'll come back. Narrator Ever wonder why you feel the way you do? Well, get to know your emotions. When things go wrong, anger is there. This is anger. He will make sure the world knows anger is in control.

But what you really need to watch out for is when he's out of control. Get to know all your emotions with Disney Pixar's Inside Out, rated PG. No, it didn't cause me to want to go see the movie. I will watch it at some point, but I did relate to that topic, because it's not about anger. It's about out of control anger. And I think that's when you hear the word anger, that's why people don't like to say it. I'm just a little peeved, whatever it might be. It's still angry.

At the end of the day, it's still the same thing. It's just, is it a controlled, justified anger? When I get recently, when I've tried to evaluate my anger more so now, I kind of do a retrospection. A lot of times, if I blow up, say, on my daughter or something, for maybe a reason that was instigated or maybe it wasn't, then I was like, okay, yeah, I probably shouldn't have done it.

I'll feel the conviction and say, no, that was not. But there are times when I have to stand strong, whether it's to her or somebody at work or whatever, and I communicate what I want to in the right and proper way, but it is within anger. And to evaluate that, it feels good when you know that there was that proper response of using anger that did not harm. It says speak the truth in love, finding ways of doing that. And we really have to depend on God to do that.

I mean, if we're trying to do it on ourself, we'll probably mess it up. So absolutely. I mean, it's the whole world is angry right now. I mean, political ads anger me beyond imagination. I can't stand any of them. Look, I mean, I just can't. I can't just they they make me mad.

I find myself talking to the TV on both sides. They're there. It doesn't matter whether they're Republican or Democrat. They're all stupid, number one, and and every single one of them is blaming somebody else for the problem. And I'll vote for the first person who takes responsibility for something. You know, I mean, that's that's basically where I'm at now is just take responsibility.

I'll vote for you. But nobody's going to. They're going to try to blame somebody else. Well, that's what we do with anger. A lot of times is we get mad and then we we vent and then we blame somebody else for our action instead of doing what Andy was saying, being introspective and going, wait, why am I angry?

Is angry the right thing to do? And how should I express that? Which I mean, I love my brother Andy because he teaches me things like that all the time. Yeah.

And don't do it just on your own. Say, God, help me to see the truth in it, because I'll give myself all sorts of reasons on why I should be angry. Right.

I'll justify it to death. But it's that introspective walk with him and say, God, what is really causing that? We're going to talk about some of those stories when we come back after this show with the after hours. So you can go to MasculineJourney.org to listen to that if it's not on the radio, of course, after this. And next week, we're going to bring a new topic to you. Not sure what it is, but we got a couple of them that are brewing. So we'll let you know next week. In the meantime, boot camp. This is the Truth Network.