Human Wrath

Anger is bad for your health in more ways than you think. Getting angry doesn’t just hurt our mental health, it’s also damaging to our hearts, brains, and gastrointestinal systems, according to doctors and research.

For instance, one study in the Journal of the American Heart Association looked at anger’s effects on the heart. It found that anger can raise the risk of heart attacks because it impairs the functioning of blood vessels.

Researchers examined the impact of three different emotions on the heart: anger, anxiety, and sadness. One participant group did a task that made them angry, another did a task that made them anxious, while a third did an exercise designed to induce sadness.

The scientists then tested the functioning of the blood vessels in each participant, using a blood pressure cuff to squeeze and release the blood flow in the arm. Those in the angry group had worse blood flow than those in the others; their blood vessels didn’t dilate as much.

The lead author of the study said, “We speculate over time if you’re getting these chronic insults to your arteries because you get angry a lot, that will leave you at risk for having heart disease.”

A speeding car can be a deadly weapon all by itself, but a new survey finds many Americans make sure they’re armed when they get behind the wheel. A poll of 1,000 U.S. residents finds that a staggering 65 percent of drivers keep a weapon in their vehicle in case they need to defend themselves during a road rage incident.

The most common weapon drivers keep hidden is a knife (50%), followed by pepper spray (45%). However, 40 percent admit that they carry a gun with them while on the road. Other weapons American drivers have on hand include tire irons (39%), baseball bats (38%), hockey sticks (31%), tasers (31%), and lacrosse sticks (14%).

As for which cars you may want to stay away from if things get heated on the road, the poll finds BMW, Hyundai, and Mercedes drivers are the most likely to keep a dangerous weapon in their car.

So, what do we mean when we’re talking about “road rage”? These actions include everything from:

Speeding 40%

Honking (28%)

Brake checking another driver (26%)

Angry hand gestures (24%)

Yelling (23%)

However, things can get out of control quickly, leading some drivers to:

Chase or race other cars (20%)

Cut off vehicles on purpose (16%)

Tailgate (16%)

Point a weapon at a fellow driver (4%)

Possible Preaching Angle:

Some advice from AAA for avoiding road rage matches nicely with Scripture: Avoid honking and irritating other drivers (“Judge not, that you be not judged” Matt. 7:1). Being kind - imagine that the person ahead of you lost their job today, (“Be kind and compassionate to one another” Eph. 4:32). Don’t engage with angry motorists (“a soft answer turns away wrath” Prov. 15.1).

A playground scene turned tragic after a woman was shot and killed after a basketball game. Cameron Hogg, 31, is facing murder charges in connection to the shooting of Asia Womack, 21. Womack had recently defeated Hogg in pickup basketball, and witnesses say the game was heated and that there was plenty of trash talk on the court. Later that day, Hogg drove his truck to another location where Womack and another friend were seated outside, watching a football game on TV. When Hogg got out of his truck, Womack stood up, ready for another confrontation. But instead of saying a word, Hogg pulled out a firearm and shot her four times.

Her mother Andrea lamented the killing, noting that the two had been friends. She said, ”He’d pull up to my house, pick her up. They’d ride together, eat food together, take his phone calls, give him money in jail, and you turn around and kill her? It was senseless for him to kill his friend over a basketball game … Not even the basketball game itself, but the words that were spoken after the game."

After witnesses identified Hogg in a photo lineup, police arrested him without incident.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society is witnessing increasing acts of spontaneous rage and extreme violence. This highlights the words of Scripture which describes that “the works of the flesh are evident…strife, jealousy, fits of anger” (Gal. 5:19-21) and confirms that “in the last days terrible times will come. For men will be abusive … unloving, unforgiving … without self-control … brutal” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

In CT magazine, Greg Stier shares his journey from a violent dysfunctional family background to the salvation of his extended family:

To my five-year-old self, it was a perfect afternoon. No gunshots, no gang-filled cars creeping by looking for trouble as they often did in our neighborhood. Everything was good that day—at least until a shiny, new car pulled up. It was Paul, one of the men my Ma had married. He had up and left us without warning, and we hadn’t heard from him in months.

Ma caught sight of him out the kitchen window. Cursing like a sailor, she hunted down our baseball bat. Charging out of the house, she started swinging at the headlights and the windshield. When he peeled off, I knew we’d never see him again.

Instantly, I realized two things: One, I would never disobey Ma again. And two, something had ignited a rage in her that consistently led to incidents like this. Years later, my grandma told me what that something was.

Ma was a partier, and I was a result of one of the parties. She got pregnant. Instead of facing her conservative Baptist parents, Ma drove from Denver to Boston, under the pretense of visiting my uncle Tommy and aunt Carol. But she was really there to get an illegal abortion. Tommy and Carol talked her out of it.

Until my grandma told me I was almost aborted, I had wondered why Ma would often cry when she looked at me while reproaching herself: “I’m a bum. I’m nothing but a no-good bum.” But after I learned her secret, I understood—not only her tears, but her rage toward men. It was a shame-fueled rage.

My entire family was filled with rage. Ma had five bodybuilding, street-fighting brothers, whom the North Denver mafia nicknamed “the crazy brothers.” You know it’s bad when even the mafia thinks your family is dysfunctional.

My Baptist grandparents took me to church, and one day in “big church,” everything suddenly made sense. The preacher shared how Jesus died for our sins and rose again. He said that if we put our faith in him, we would be saved. At the age of eight, I trusted in Christ as my Savior.

Miraculously enough, at around the same time, God was working renewal within my family as well. A hillbilly, church-planting preacher nicknamed Yankee reached out to Uncle Jack, the toughest of the “crazy brothers,” on a dare. When Yankee knocked on the door, Jack had a beer can in each hand. Surprisingly, he listened to Yankee’s gospel presentation.

“Does that make sense?” Yankee asked Jack. “H***, yeah!” was his sinner’s prayer. In just one month, Jack brought 250 people to church, wanting them to hear this same good news that gave him hope. One by one, all my uncles came to Christ. But the person most on my heart was Ma.

When I tried telling her about Jesus, she would shut me down. She’d say, “God can’t forgive me. You don’t know the things I’ve done.” Finally, at the age of 15, I marched into the kitchen and made Ma listen to the gospel. “You mean to tell me that if I trust in Jesus, he forgives me for every sin?” she asked. “Even the really bad ones?” “Yeah, Ma. That’s why he died on the cross,” I explained.

She took a drag of her cigarette, stared off into space for a moment, and said, “I’m in.” And when my Ma said she was in, she was in.

At age eight, I had met the Father I’d never known, the Father who would never leave me nor forsake me, the Father who changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of my whole family.

Editor’s Note: Greg Stier is the founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries. He is the author of Unlikely Fighter: The Story of How a Fatherless Street Kid Overcame Violence, Chaos, and Confusion to Become a Radical Christ Follower.

The issue of verbal and physical abuse is a problem in high school sports around the country. As an example, a 22 old-year-old man from Polk County, FL, disagreed with the umpire and beat him up. More and more referees are leaving. A study conducted by the National Association of Sports of Officials discovered that adult misbehavior contributed to 75% of high school referees quitting their jobs.

How did we get here?

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd says, “I think it’s because sometimes parents are wanting to compensate for their shortcomings or live out their own fantasies about sports. I think it’s the degree to which we are becoming less communal and more tribal and more individual.”

He goes on to offer us a solution to this prevailing problem. It starts with promoting the value of being part of a community and the importance of both winning and losing. Weissbourd, a secular psychologist, recognizes the benefits of religious practices, instilling values like sacrifice, gratitude, morality, empathy, and the obligation to care for each other. The competitiveness of sport ought to be a catalyst for both personal growth and building community.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture teaches us to use discernment when making judgment calls and to deal with our faults first before judging others (Matt. 7:1-6).

Revenge really is a dish best served cold--as people who feel wronged by someone else can take up to a year to exact retribution, according to new research. Instant retaliation is uncommon, say Dutch psychologists, who found that only about one person in ten strikes back immediately after being offended.

Study co-author Maartje Elshout said, “Our results show that revenge takes place after some time. Real-life revenge is not so much focused on deterrence, but on restoring self-esteem or a sense of power. The act of revenge does not need to be instantaneous nor proportional.”

In the study, Dr. Elshout and her team quizzed nearly 2,000 people aged 16 to 89 about their experience of revenge. Results show that 14 percent took revenge immediately, within a minute. About 36 per cent took up to a week, with 23 percent striking one to four weeks later. Some 21 percent hit back between one month and a year later, and around five percent took more than a year to get their own back. Dr. Elshout said, “Our findings suggest that revenge is typically delayed.”

Revenge acts admitted by participants in the study include infidelity, damaging a car, disclosing secrets, making false accusations, and trying to get someone fired. Other ways of taking revenge included humiliating someone, gossiping, lying, and breaking a promise.

A Florida man was jailed for assaulting another man, but unlike most scenarios, the conflict was not over a woman, a debt owed, or even sports fandom. According to a Facebook post by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Justin Anthony Garcia was charged with aggravated battery in connection with an altercation with his cousin, who sustained injuries from a pocketknife. Authorities and witnesses confirmed that the argument was over whether almond milk was superior to whole milk.

“Their verbal argument became physical when Garcia became enraged at the victim for disagreeing with him … [He] proceeded to punch the victim with a closed fist to the victim’s left side of his forehead.” When the cousin tried to fight back, Garcia produced the knife. “The victim became scared of what Garcia might do with the knife and proceeded to run away from Garcia as he chased the victim through the front yard,” according to official court documents.

A confidential source at the scene was unable to confirm which variety of milk Garcia preferred, nor whether any actual milk was spilled in the fracas. After seeing some of the injuries that resulted, however, they are confident in the likelihood that crying took place.

Possible Preaching Angles:

If we are to take a stand in public, let it be for justice and righteousness; when we quarrel and fight over trivial things, we reduce our ability to impact the things that really matter.

It's difficult for parents who are trying to navigate how their children relate to social media. Here's one story about how NOT to do it. The following story ran in a British and then an Australian newspaper:

Taking away electronics is a common parental punishment, but this mother decided to take it one step further—and shoot up her children's iPhones with a rifle. "I hereby denounce the effects that social media have on my children," the mom shouts at the beginning of a YouTube video, a gun in her hand. "Their disobedience and their disrespect."

She then points the gun and the camera moves to reveal that she's not about to shoot a pheasant or a bottle, but is aiming straight for an iPhone perched on a tree trunk. With perfect aim she blows the smartphone to smithereens, as its pieces go flying into the grass.

"I also take back my role as parent to my children," she then yells … She then blows the remnants of the iPhone to bits, once again hitting it on her first shot. "My children's lives are more important to me," she begins, as the camera reveals she is standing over the iPhones with a sledgehammer, "than any electronic on this earth." She then hammers the remaining pieces a few times, her dog watching, before screaming: "I'm done!" And with that, she drops the hammer and walks away.

Mike Love, 83 years old as of 2024, is one of the original members of the Beach Boys, known for his contribution to such hits as "California Girls," "Help Me Rhonda," "I Get Around," and others. But according to an article in Rolling Stone, the most important thing to know about Love is that he meditates twice a day, without fail, and has done so for years. "It helps you deal with whatever you're dealing with," said Love. "I meditate in order to cope with things."

And over the years, he's certainly had a lot to deal with: a former wife had an affair with his cousin Dennis Wilson, also a member of the Beach Boys; Love's name didn't make it onto the publishing credits for many of the Beach Boys early songs—something Love filed a lawsuit over; as well as a strained relationship with Brian Wilson—considered to be the genius behind the Beach Boys.

So has years of twice-daily meditation helped Love? When asked what he would say to his cousin and former band-mate Brian Wilson if he were standing before him, Love responded, "I'd probably say, 'I love you,'" moisture gathering in the corner of his eyes. "And I love what we did together. And let's do it again."

But then he gives his head a shake, narrows his eyes, any wetness there drying up, frowns and once again gives voice to what no amount of meditation can ever smooth over. "I've been ostracized," he says quietly. "Vilified …"

An article on Esquire magazine begins with this quote in bold capital letters:

WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED. THE BODY POLITIC IS BURNING UP. AND THE ANGER THAT COURSES THROUGH OUR HEADLINES AND NEWS FEEDS—ABOUT INJUSTICE AND INEQUALITY, ABOUT MARGINALIZATION AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT, ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO US—SHOWS NO SIGN OF ABATING. ESQUIRE TEAMED UP WITH NBC NEWS TO SURVEY 3,000 AMERICANS ABOUT WHO'S ANGRIEST, WHAT'S MAKING THEM ANGRY, AND WHO'S TO BLAME.

Here's one of the most interesting statistics: "Half of all Americans are angrier today than they were a year ago." And white Americans are the angriest of them all. Here is a summary of how they see life, "From their views on the state of the American dream (dead) and America's role in the world (not what it used to be) to how their life is working out for them (not quite what they'd had in mind), a plurality of whites tends to view life through a veil of disappointment."

The first question in the survey is "About how often do you hear or read something in the news that makes you angry?" The top three responses are: 37 percent once a day, 31 percent a few times a day, and 20 percent once a week. In total, about 88 percent of all Americans are angry at least once a week.

The actor, comedian, and author Patton Oswalt was asked the by The New York Times, "If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?" Oswalt replied:

Garret Keizer's, The Enigma of Anger. A meditation and history on rage, both righteous and unrighteous, which seems to be infecting so much of world events these days, both the high (politics, statesmanship) and the low (pop culture, social media). We haven't seen the first truly great leader of the 21st century, but he or she is going to have to address, remedy, and control rage. It's the hidden poison of our tight-wire planet.

In his best-selling book The Telling Room, Michael Paterniti shares a true story he heard when visiting his father's ancestral village in Sicily. Every day while he was in the village he saw a very old woman walking with her cane, struggling up a steep road to get to the local cemetery. It was said that at her tortoise pace, the walk from her home to the cemetery and back took about six hours out of her day.

What grief inspired her difficult daily walk? Was she driven by sorrow over a departed child or a deceased husband, the love of her life? No, the locals told Paterniti that she was driven by Astio, or bitter hatred. Her archenemy was buried in that cemetery. So, rain or shine, the old woman walked up the hill every day to her enemy's gravesite, just to spit on it one more time.

History seems to confirm at least a few key details from the life of Nicholas of Myra, the real early church leader we know today as Santa Claus. One of the most gripping stories occurred between 330 and 332 AD. Nicholas, now 70 years old, was serving as the Bishop of Myra (or modern day Turkey). One day Nicholas received an urgent report that Eustathius, the governor of the region, was about to execute three innocent men.

Nicholas set off at a brisk pace for the Praetorium, or palace, to speak with Eustathius. Nicholas suspected foul play as Eustathius was known to be corrupt and easily bribed. While en route, Nicholas was stopped and informed that the convicts had already been moved to "the place of the beheading" known as Byrra. The concerned bishop wheeled around and took off at dead run in the opposite direction.

He burst into the plaza of Byrra to find the condemned men on their knees, hands tied behind their backs, and faces covered with linen cloths. The men had given themselves up for dead. Nicholas forced his way through the crowd of wide-eyed gawkers, yanked the sword from the executioner, and threw it to the ground. Dramatically, he untied the prisoners' hands and set them free. Then he marched off to find the governor, Eustathius, in order to chastise him for his miscarriage of justice—condemning innocent citizens without a proper trial. (At the time, as a local bishop of the church, Nicholas had the constitutional right to intervene in legal matters like this.)

Back at the Praetorium, Nicholas "broke down the door." He burst inside, and a sentinel hurried off to inform the governor of his arrival. Eustathius, trying to maintain his composure, greeted Nicholas with deference and compliments. Bishop Nicholas was not amused; he stopped the governor in mid-sentence and accused him of being a "thief" and an "enemy of God," calling him "sacrilegious and bloodthirsty and unjust." According to one historical account, Nicholas told Eustathius:

And you even dare to come before me, you who do not fear God! You who had the cruel intention to kill innocent people! Since you committed this kind of wickedness I cannot have any respect for you. God is reserving for the unjust a tortured life …. He knows how your government works and how this province allows looting and killing men against the law and without trial for deadly greed and gain.

Eustathius wilted under the assault. He fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness. After Eustathius admitted his guilt, in the end, Nicholas prayed a long prayer and pardoned the guilty governor.

On June 17, 1966, two black men strode into the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, and shot three people to death. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a celebrated black boxer, and an acquaintance were falsely charged and wrongly convicted of the murders in a highly publicized and racially charged trial. The fiercely outspoken boxer maintained his claims of innocence and became his own jailhouse lawyer. After serving nineteen years, Carter was released.

As a free man, Carter reflected on how he has responded to injustice in his life.

The question invariably arises, it has before and it will again: "Rubin, are you bitter?" And in answer to that I will say, "After all that's been said and done—the fact that the most productive years of my life, between the ages of twenty-nine and fifty, have been stolen; the fact that I was deprived of seeing my children grow up—wouldn't you think I would have a right to be bitter? Wouldn't anyone under those circumstances have a right to be bitter? In fact, it would be very easy to be bitter. But that has never been my nature, or my lot, to do things the easy way. If I have learned nothing else in my life, I've learned that bitterness only consumes the vessel that contains it. And for me to permit bitterness to control or to infect my life in any way whatsoever would be to allow those who imprisoned me to take even more than the 22 years they've already taken. Now that would make me an accomplice to their crime.

It is a bewildering experience to come face to face with the fact that you are angry with the almighty Creator of heaven and earth.