I am not a very angry person and in fact I am extremely calm and collective in most situations, but I have been thinking about anger and why we get so mad all the time.

I was driving home from work bumpin my worship music, singing and praising to the Lord probably looking like an idiot to everybody from the outside, when I pulled up to a red light.  I was on the outside lane ready to make a turn when I looked over to see this guy get out of his car and storm to the car in front of him.  He went up to this poor ladies window and started pointing his finger and yelling like a mad man directly at her.  I really thought I was going to have to stop my car and  pull this guy off of her.  Luckily, that was as far as it went because the light turned green and he stormed back into his car and took off.

What was it that made this guy SO angry?  Did she cut him off accidentally?  Or was she driving to slow for him?  Whatever it was, it seemed like it had to be pretty bad; so you would think.  But my guess is that it was just a small inconvenience to this guy that triggered his anger.

This got me thinking about the source of why we get angry.  I suggest to you that MOST of our ANGER comes from SELFISHNESS.  Think about it!!  When something doesn’t go the way that we want it to go, we get angry. When we create some kind of expectation upon a situation and it doesn’t go according to the way we planned, we get angry.   When we are taken out of our comfort zone and don’t want to be, we get angry.

There are millions of reasons that we can get angry, or situations that can cause us to get mad, but the foundation comes from selfishness and not getting what we want.  If we were to live as Christ and deny our selfishness and live a selfless life, we would not get angry as often as we do.  But this takes practice and changing our mindset to see our selfishness when the anger arises.

One thing that helps me when I get angry is to look at Christ’s ultimate example of love.  He was spit on, beaten and nailed to a Cross and didn’t deserve any of it, but still loved us so much that he was willing to die for us.  He could have gotten angry and righteously so, but He didn’t because His will was not His own, but the Father in Heaven’s.  When we live as Christ and understand the big picture our reason for getting mad dissipates and we can find real joy living life to the fullest.

I hope this helps and I would love your feedback.