Anger and Depression

Overcoming Depression and the Cause of it:
Anger not recognized as the sin that it really is.

Author Tim LaHaye agrees with the astute observations of Dr. Ostow concerning the onset of depression:  1)  at all of the many stages of its development, anger is a prime component; 2) it is anger—whether visible or invisible, conscious or unconscious—directed against an individual who is expected to provide love but who disappoints; 3) anger may arouse a wish to irritate, to hurt, or to destroy, depending upon the degree of pain which the patient suffers.

In his fine book How to Win over Depression, Dr. LaHaye discusses “God’s Cure for Anger.”  It begins with a observation process discussed over the years by Radio Talk Show Personality Roy Masters, namely, that by recognizing (in his case, resentment—a combination of self-pity and jealousy) the problem, observing it, and ridding yourself of it/offering it to God, that the process is set in motion whereby that negative and destructive tendency of the emotions is eliminated.  In LaHaye’s “God’s Cure,” he suggests a five (easy) step process for eliminating anger, which is a chief component of depression, the subject of this writing.

1)      Admit that your anger is sin.  This is revolutionary to Christians for the following reasons: 1) Christians do not consider that anger (if it goes no further) is sin.  They liken it to the existence of temptation.  To have a temptation is not sin; to play with the temptation, fantasize and even go so far as to act upon the temptation—that is sin.  Christians stumble and have stumbled for decades over a lax translation of Ephesians 4:26.  This in the KJV reads “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:  neither give place to the devil.”  I happen to have a year 1611 edition and in this verse be ye angry and sin not there is no comma placed; it therefore equates anger and sin.  I would paraphrase it this way: Don’t be angry and sin.”  My “mentor” Gerrit Verkuyl, translator of the Berkeley Version, presents it this way:  “When angry commit no sin; do not remain angry until sundown; neither allow room for the devil.”  Look at the content here.  To fall asleep angry is cautioned against; it may even allow access of the devil to you.  Verkuyl suggests give up your anger before sundown; so if one becomes angry, say, early in the morning then it’s all right to remain angry for twelve hours?  but if one should become angry at nine o’clock at night, then it’s only okay to remain angry for, say, two hours… and then it becomes sin after that?  Common sense tells us that if something turns into sin, then it is already sin at any stage in the process.  Before you see bread mold with the naked eye, you can be sure that the spores are already there active in the bread churning up their byproducts.  Here is another example, let’s say you leave the house a little later than usual and are headed for work.  The speed limit on the highway is 55 mph, and you decide to drive 70.  When the red light on the black and white behind you goes on and you get pulled over, the ticket that is written for you says “70 mph.”  But, way back at 56 mph you were speeding, at 60 mph you were speeding and at 65 mph you were speeding even more.  Seventy miles per hour is the final declaration, just like saying really angry is the final state of the emotion.  Is a little anger “okay”, but a lot of anger (seeing red, hopping mad, angry “as hell”) finally becomes more than “okay” and is then “not okay” and sin?  I have heard pastors through the years say that anger is acceptable, but that we are not supposed to act in anger.  It doesn't equate to the “temptation” concept.  It is acceptable to be tempted—that’s no sin—it’s just not allowable to act in relation to the temptation; for when this happens, the result is sin.  We have to realize that anger in all forms is sin.  And when there is sin, this, then, leads to our second step:

2)      Confess your sin of anger to God.  It is in this stage that you take your own personal observation of your shortcoming to God.  You can say that you “mention it to him”—that’s all right.  You can say that you “turn it over to God”—I have no problem with that.  The process is that by giving God this sin you have in you, that has arisen from within you, you involve Him in the process of healing.  It is no longer just you bearing the weight of your sin, your shortcoming.  Catholics in the process of absolving from sin have the priest instruct a person to make a “genuine act of contrition.”  So, what is contrition, and does it apply to this process of confession to God?  In other words, how bad must you feel about having anger in you in order for God to listen to your confession and come to your aid?  By definition, contrition is “remorse for having done wrong; sorrow for having offended God.”  It’s synonym is said to be penitence.  We all know that for thousands of years Catholics “lay the personal guilt trip on real heavy”.  Let me ask you this, if you Joe-regular-Christian hardly consider anger to be a sin, then how severely can you feel yourself to have remorse over this barely recognized sin?  Answer:  almost negligibly.  You almost have to “take it on faith” when someone tells you that anger is sin.  And because it’s sin, you must confess this to God so that your soul is again free of sin (John 13:10, Matthew 6:11-12).  Roy Masters has it right:  it is enough for you to bring this sin of yours before God—you needn’t agonize over it:  just observe (look at) it to be part of you, and then offer this defect to God for Him to solve.

3)      Ask God to take away the habit pattern of Sin.  Who is going to be kinder with you than God?  Who has more invested in you in terms of time, opportunity, good experiences, faith and hope planted as seeds, blessing… than God?  Who wants you to be a success (and Christ-like, like His Son) more than God?  Who has plans for your successful life that you do not even know of, or are aware of, yet?  Answer:  God Almighty.  So take this next step after announcing the sin you now realize has been in you, and this step is asking Him—Your Father—to remedy it.  Ask God to take away the habit pattern of sin, to cure you.  Jesus is called the Great Physician.  If you have been told you have, say, four things wrong with you and that each of these four things is severe enough that it is going to hamper your success, are you going to pray for just three things to be removed from you, or are you going to do a complete job of it and ask God to remove all hindrances (sins) from your life?  You’re going to ask for everything to be removed.  But so He knows, and you know, what the hindrances are, you need to name the faults one by one.  You can’t bunch them up, unnamed, and call out, Heal me, Oh God!  This is why it is so important for you to recognize anger is sin, then say to God that you have it in your own life, and ask Him to remove this bad behavior and emotion from you completely.

4)      The important follow up that is needed right now, and continuing on into the future when God is actively curing you is “to give Him your thanks.”  Don’t wait until you obviously are not angry any longer over the least little thing—or the big things—thank God as you go, in concert with your faith that does not end just the day of your asking for this healing.  Your faith continues during the healing, and so must your thanks to God continue during this changing in your display of emotion.  How long must you give “thanks”?  Forever.  How long are you to praise God in Heaven in the hereafter?  Forever.  Thanking God is meant to be like breathing.  You keep doing it, and you benefit!!!  How do you thank Him, what words do you say?  LaHaye suggests mentioning His mercy, His grace, and His power.  As you praise God, your faith grows because you are recognizing how powerful He is.  The more powerful He is, the more sure you are that this request is not going to end in failure—you will be touched by God via the Holy Spirit; you will be healed!

5)      Repeat this formula every time you are angry.  “It would be idealistic to assume that invoking this formula only once would change a lifetime habit of anger.  The ultimate victory comes with repetition.  Quickly follow your sin with a prayer of confession, asking God to change the habit pattern and give thanks by faith for what He is going to do in your life.”  In this same book, author LaHaye also says, “The power of the Holy Spirit of God is able to put love in the heart of any angry-prone person who is willing to let Him.  When love replaces anger, depression cannot possibly intrude.”  I am not going to ask you to go back and reread this last statement, I am going to repeat it again right here:  When love replaces anger, depression cannot possibly intrude.  God’s principles of life are straight forward and not complicated.  The Bible book Proverbs is written for even the most simple-minded souls to understand.  What is not true is that you have to be super-smart to understand God’s ways and how to live in accordance with God’s ways.  God gives wisdom when it is lacking and is asked for by us (James 1:5).  But even so, His ways are there to be understood.  We have to want to incorporate them fully into our lives—that is every person’s own challenge that they face. You can read most of this directly from God's Word, the Bible. The New Testament book Colossians eloquently explains, in the third chapter, that we are to put off anger and be sure to practice tender-hearted compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. "Bear with one another," it says; "show a forgiving spirit when one has a complaint against another." Lastly, it tells, "You ought indeed to forgive one another as the Lord forgave you. And, over and above all these things, put on love, for that is the perfect bond which binds them all together (taken from F.F. Bruce's paraphrase The Letters of Paul, Eerdmans Publishing, 1965)."

How to Win over Depression, Tim LaHaye, Zondervan Corp., 1974 73-22692, pps. 88-96
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