Book #31: the heart of ANGER by Christopher Ash & Steve Midgeley
The Heart of Anger: How the Bible Transforms Anger in Our Understanding and Experience by Christopher Ash
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Humans are naturally prone to get angry; at injustice, at other peoples' behaviour, or if things just aren't going our way. This book sets out a structured approach, and first of all sets out the reasons why we get angry, and even Biblical portrayals of human anger, including those of the obvious "villains" like King Nebuchadnezzar, and also of prophets (for example, Jonah's response to God sparing the Ninevites, which surprised me a lot when I first read about it).
The second part deals with God's anger at humanity, as portrayed in the Bible, mainly giving Old Testament examples (surprisingly, Jesus sacking the temple in the Gospels isn't mentioned), and the authors do a good job of explaining why God gets angry, using the Bible's portrayal of him as a bridegroom, whose bride is being unfaithful. The book stresses that God is not "capricious", as Stephen Fry has claimed, while at the same time warning of the dangers of claiming that God is only a loving God, and not an angry God. God is a being who disciplines his creations like a loving father, as one of the New Testament books puts it.
The later chapters also give practical advice, along with some examples, of how to manage anger.
One of the main points this book makes is that a lot of the time we get angry because we have a desire to "be God ourselves", when we should leave all judgement to God.
This is another book that I read so that I can discuss later with friends, and I overall enjoyed it, although when the authors gave examples of how anger can manifest, and how it can be overcome, they gave examples from their own experience, and told of what the outcome was, rather than when they started giving hypothetical situations. It overall felt like a book about "What would Jesus do?", with the main point being that the only way we can stop being angry is to turn to God, keep praying through all our difficulties, and above all, show love to the other person who is making us angry.
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