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Tired of Being Angry
Tired of Being Angry
The last feeling I need right now is feeling numb. Numbness makes it too easy. So much pain for so long though, tends to desensitize a person, either as a defense mechanism, or from sheer emotional overloading. Instead of feeling numb, I would rather be angry.
One way Facebook trains us is by offering a limited but somewhat adequate number of reaction buttons. Being so public, we are also trained to react in an understandable and accepted way. So when someone dies, or gets very ill, or contracts a disease, we click on the Love, Care, or the Sad emoji. We might click on Like as a way to let people know we read it. Like means “I acknowledge you”, not that we Like their suffering.
I give in to the crowd’s thinking. But I don’t want to hit Love, Care, Sad, or even Like. I want to click Angry!
But will anyone understand? I’m not angry at God. I’m angry at death and Satan. And Jesus is my example.
Everyone remembers, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Death brings sadness and suffering. But I think we humans have the ability – on a far more limited scale but divinely illustrated – to experience an emotional dissonance where we simultaneously feel more than one emotion at the same time. Or, if not simultaneously, at least a constant fluttering between 2 or more emotions. Besides sadness, what else did Jesus feel?
Most translations say in v.38 that Jesus was “deeply moved”. In v.33 most say Jesus was deeply moved and troubled.
The HCSB went a different route which I think matches reality and my mood:
• 33) When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He was angry in His spirit and deeply moved.
In v.38 we have this revealing translation again,
• 38) Then Jesus, angry in Himself again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
This more frank rendering is because
embrimaomai means,
• “snort like an angry horse; (literally) “snort (roar) with rage” (BAGD) which expresses strong indignation, i.e. deep feeling that is moved to sternly admonish. Jesus was strongly and deeply moved, but not just sadness, with anger!” (HELPS Word-Studies)
The second word in v.33 is translated in the HCSB as “deeply moved” because emotions move, or put us into motion. The word here, tarass, means,
• “properly, put in motion (to agitate back-and-forth, shake to-and-fro); (figuratively) to set in motion what needs to remain still (at ease); to “trouble” (“agitate”), causing inner perplexity (emotional agitation) from getting too stirred up inside (“upset”)” (HELPS Word-Studies)
Lazarus’s death is an emotional experience of more than weeping in sadness. Death is Satan’s power and domain. Death makes Jesus angry! It makes me angry too. I’m tired of being angry. Thankfully there is another emotion to experience – hope!
• 23) “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. 24) Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. 26) Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die — ever. Do you believe this?” (HCSB)
I believe this. So while I have hope, I also have sadness. And mixed with all that is anger. And I am tired of being angry.
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