Trade Anger for Pity

By Bobby Neal Winters

As Christians we are under orders to love not only our fellow Christians, but to love our neighbors (broadly defined) as well as our enemies.  This is hard, especially the first one sometimes, but there it is. You can find it in black and white right there in the Bible.

This puts us in a quandary when we move from the safety of the church sanctuary out into the real world.  There are some difficult people who live out in the real world.  They will say things that hurt your feelings; they will do things that will hurt your body.  

They may even disagree with you.

But we are not given any loopholes.  Love in the answer.

Here I would be remiss if I did not say that love means desiring good things for the person you love.  The good things that we desire for them are that they be brought closer to God.  This is not done by preaching to them, nagging them, or any other means of speech or persuasion. 

It is done by praying for them.  Pray for them, and don’t tell them about it.  

C.S. Lewis wrote: “I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”

In taking up seriously the idea that I should pray for my enemies, a remarkable thing happened. My emotions shifted.  What had been anger at someone who annoyed me and caused me trouble, shifted. I didn’t feel the heat of anger burning in my heart anymove. The sharp pain of anger shifted to the softer pain of pity.

The person who had been causing me anguish was another human being like myself. That person was made in the image of God.

That person was in pain.

I remembered something a preacher had said to me a couple of decades ago. At the time it seemed, well, idiotic, quite frankly, but something has changed in my head and heart in the meantime.  He said, “Hurt people hurt people.”

So I go from being very angry to being a bit sad.

Anger is nasty: It fouls everything.  Anger is an acid: It burns you up.

Many of those in politics are now using anger (and its sibling fear) like the ring in the nose of a bull, to turn the head of the voting public to the left or to the right.

Is exchanging anger for sadness a good thing?  We don’t like being sad, certainly.  While anger is acidic, it has a narcotic-like effect: you may have a hangover, but there is a certain exhilaration. 

While we don’t like to be sad, sadness--and maybe pity would be a better word--doesn’t steal your brain in the same way wrath does.  Sadness allows us to think; to inspect our own hearts; to see if there is anything we can do to actually help the situation.

Sadness can often be a manifestation of love. Love can’t live long within anger.

In chapter 21 of Revelation we are promised, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Through prayer, we turn our anger to tears, and God will wipe away our tears.

Loving your enemies is not easy.  Loving your friends can be a chore at times. We live in a beautiful world, but as has been said by many before me, our view is obscured by this veil of tears over our eyes.

This is radical. If you follow it to its logical conclusion, slaves should feel pity for those who enslave them. The victims of the Holocaust should feel pity for those who exterminated them.  That is a big ask, and not very many can get there. I am not saying that I can. 

But that is the way we were pointed.

Maybe I’m a fool.  No, I take that back, I AM a fool.

But not because of this.

Love your enemy. Give up anger for pity. Pray a lot.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.