Thursday, September 22, 2022

You Can’t Always Get What You Want – Mixed Emotions

September 22, 2022/in Bible Study, Week 2

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This summer, I worked as a preschool teacher. As you can imagine, I gained a lot of experience dealing with unregulated emotions. I quickly learned that young children have underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes and act on their emotions immediately. This is vice-based anger: they act out when they do not get what they want. If they don’t want to share, they throw the toy. If they don’t want to nap, they scream, cry, and protest. If they don’t get the snack that they want, when they want it, they unleash their anger and stomp away.

Unfortunately, as adults, we still often do this when we fail to get what we want. Even when we know it is healthier and more productive to acknowledge and reflect upon our anger, so many of us (myself included) still have emotional reactions, leading us to lash out internally or externally. When life does not go exactly as planned, sometimes, we even take our anger out on God. Therefore, it is so important to understand and handle our anger in a Christ-like way.

James 4:1-2

1 What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? 2 You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.

In this passage, James explains that so much of our anger comes from lacking the things that we want, no matter how trivial. He details the great lengths that people go to because of vice-based anger, which usually results in negative consequences for ourselves and for others.

The frustration and helplessness that often come with anger can make us feel like it is insurmountable on our own. Thankfully, we have a good God who knows our every need and wants what is best for us, even when we cannot see it. Let us take our anger to God and pray for him to help us let it go—use these opportunities to practice patience and self-control.

Last weekend, we received a mini science lesson on how the prefrontal cortex (the thinking part of our brain) and the amygdala (the feeling part) work together to regulate our emotions. When the amygdala is activated through intense emotion, be it delight, fear, or anger, it quickly releases chemicals which dial down the potential for the prefrontal cortex to provide a thoughtful response. Left unchecked, this can lead to those raw and potentially irrational emotional responses.

Thankfully, we were given a trick to help prevent us from acting on our emotions, especially anger—simply take deep breaths. Taking deep breaths for 90 seconds gives the prefrontal cortex time to process the chemical reaction, allowing us to respond thoughtfully and logically to our emotions. Then, you will be in a state to address your anger in a level-headed way.

Questions:

What are some things that make you angry? Are they based on a virtue or a vice?

Has there been a time recently where you immediately acted on your anger without stepping back to think through it? What were the consequences of acting solely upon emotion?

Next Steps:

Identify ways that you can better control anger in your life. This week, keep track of the number of times that you get angry. Determine if it stemmed from vice or virtue.

Join a Group this upcoming semester. Seek out a group of people that you can trust and will hold you accountable in your everyday life.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us the opportunity to better understand our emotions. You gave us emotions to allow us to feel and experience all aspects of our lives. Please help us to not let our emotions control us, and instead guide us to act upon them in a biblical and level-headed way. Please provide us with a godly community that can help us work through our anger and guide us to bring our anger before You. Help us to lay our anger at the foot of the cross and to let go of any resentment or hurt that unresolved anger has caused in our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.