[PTC 301-Ed Welch] ANGER: final exam study guide - outline

3) Anger
a) Brief Description
Anger exposes the heart’s allegiance to what a person considers is right and wrong. It says that your allegiance is primarily for your own welfare and pleasure. Usually anger against others reveals anger against God. Anger says, “God is not good/just” or “God does not give me what I want, when I want it.” God’s anger is not comparable with human experience: slow, loving, directed towards Jesus.

b) The Most important Question/Feature/Issue to consider
Anger illustrates the noetic effects of sin: Anger makes people foolish.
Anger blinds. Angry people often don’t know they are angry.

c) Issues you need to be particularly alert to in your relationship with the counselee

• Humility/Love. Angry people will tend to make you angry or cower.
• Thermometer. Anger has different degrees: hot (overt) anger; cold (covert) anger.
• Righteous indignation tends to be short-lived.
• Self-righteousness. Anger is usually saying more about what a person wants to bring about for himself.

d) One significant biblical text relevant to the problem area, why the text is relevant.

• Anger against a brother can feel right, or indifferent to your relationship with God, but actually reveals your relationship to God.

• 1 John 2:9 Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness…
• 1 John 2:11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

e) A biblical conceptualization (Causes? Roots?)

What is anger saying?
A. (Victim) I am afraid, I have been hurt, I feel alone, powerless.
B. Expressing a moral judgment, I am right, you are wrong.
C. … and I am authorized to punish you.
D. I am jealous: I deserve it, you don’t.
E. I am guilty.
F. I want to treat others how I’ve been treated.
G. Leave me alone. I am tired.

f) Two homework assignments showing awareness of uniqueness of the problem.
1) Ask others “how have I been angry today?”
2) In anger, ask how you can still love the person.

g) Your basic method of approach

1) First, I would determine what anger is saying. Why are they angry? This would help determine whether anger is the root problem.
2) Then, I would invite them to understand how their anger affects other people around them, since they probably don’t see the damage they are doing.
3) Then, I would have them focus on their relationship to God; remind them of God’s character: his goodness, love, righteousness, graciousness, humility in Christ. What is God’s anger like? What is Christ like?
4) Then, I would look for little ways in which that Christ-likeness can make a change in how he relates to others over time, and point out the work of the Spirit in these areas.