Life Lessons with Neil Anderson: Anger
I’m starting a new series about life’s lessons. I had the great privilege last fall to go back to my alma mater. I was really looking forward to seeing some of my old colleagues—and then I thought… they’re all dead! Haha! I had trouble comprehending that it has been 20 years since I taught at Talbot School of Theology. There were two very important connections that I had there. One is the new dean, Clint Arnold. We’ve both written on spiritual warfare; he’s a terrific guy with a terrific mind. Secondly, Bob Saucy’s son in law teaches there, and I had the privilege of handing him a new copy of the updated Bondage Breaker which I dedicated to his Dad. And I said, “Mark, your dad was my hero.” He replied with, “Me too.” It was a real neat experience. I always told students that they were going to learn a lot of truth here, but that they don’t really learn it until they live it.
I’d like to introduce my friend Matt. We’ve had such rich conversations with one another; talk about iron sharpening iron! We’d like to allow others to listen in. Matt has a very unusual God-given insight into people’s lives, whereas I probably have more of the educational background. Our conversation has been documented below:
Neil Anderson: Let’s talk about anger. What a time in culture to do that. We have a new book called Managing Your Anger that I wrote with Rich Miller. Rage is the number one emotion expressed on the internet. We’re seeing people all over the world just ready to explode over at the smallest little incident that happens in their life. There’s got to be a way to handle this! The problem is: anger has always been a problem. If you go back to the garden of Eden when the fall took place, anger was there. But it’s so exacerbated today because of the media. You can just look at your phone have anger triggered by something that pops up. Even kids are instantly mad or upset because something didn’t go their way. If you do “anger management,” it’s probably a one-dimensional thing, and you likely will not get to the core of what is causing your anger. But there are three dimensions of anger: managing your anger by managing your thoughts, flesh patterns, and that people aren’t getting angry, they simply ARE angry.
I’m delighted to introduce to you my friend, Matt.
Matt, there was a time that you shared with me that you really struggled with anger. Let me hear your story.
Matt: It all started when I was age 14. We lived in a rural area in North Louisiana out on a lake. There was a lot of transient traffic coming in to go to the lake for a weekend to camp and drink; I was around a lot of that. But when I was 14, my uncle and my family lived next door to each other sharing a 100-yard driveway. It looked off to the lake and was a beautiful setting. A friend of mine and I were shooting basketball out in the front yard—nobody at home. A truck turned to go down the driveway, and neither my friend nor I recognized the vehicle. They start coming down the hill, and we notice that there are 3 guys in a single cab truck. We had this feeling of dread. We don’t know these guys. They don’t need to be here. One guy stepped out on the passenger side and asked us how to get to the lake, but I could tell when he asked the question that he was drunk. And I thought this is really, really not good. But I told him, “Just go back out, take a right, go a mile, and you’ll run into the lake. You can’t miss it.” About that time, the other two guys get out of the truck and start walking toward us. I told my buddy, “We have no defense. We’re 14 year old kids, and they’re three men. I don’t know what their intentions were, but it wasn’t good. Just take off running—you go one way; I’ll go the other.” All I knew was that one of us had to get to the store down the road to tell my dad in case they get one of us. At 14, you don’t know if you can outrun a man or not! Thank goodness, they were drunk because we did outrun them, and they didn’t get us. And overall nothing really happened.
But that event just got down in my soul, in my body and my mind. I’ve had six events that happened that were triggered off of this event. It turns out that anger was not the issue. I got really angry really quickly, but it wasn’t the issue. Two events happened right after that within a year. I walked out the door to go to an event at my highschool one night, and there was a man walking toward my house. It was dark, and I asked, “What are you doing in our yard?” He turns around and walks toward our boat dock. I was triggered. It’s never good to see someone in your background that you think may bring you harm. My dad wasn’t there; it was just my aunt and my mother. So my plan was to defend. I grab a pistol and a shotgun.
Neil: [Laughter] Oh gosh!
Matt: And my mom drives me down to the boat dock. And I asked her just the other day Why did you do that?! Nonetheless, she drove me down to the boat dock, and here are these two guys.
Neil: [More laughter] This is Louisiana, people.
Matt: [Laughter] Very Louisiana. So the men are sitting on the end of this boat dock that we had, and they have no way to get out except through me. So I’m walking down there with a loaded shotgun and a pistol, and the men make fun of me—Here’s a little man with a big gun. I could have so easily shot one of those guys. Had they made a move toward me, I would have killed them. I was that out of control.
In another situation, a guy held up a pistol in a window when he went by me on the interstate—just got right beside me. I reached down and grabbed my same 357 Magnum that I had underneath the seat. Why my dad let me have a pistol at 15 years old, I do not know!
Neil: Which is one big gun!
Matt: There were two couples in the car, and the guy in the back letting me know that the guy was beside me with his pistol out. I told my buddy to duck, I pulled my pistol out, I rolled my window down, and I pointed it at him. If the guy had pointed his pistol back, I would have shot him. This rage just absolutely came over me with a trigger that was just that quick.
It happened again in high school, it happened in college, it happened in my early work career with a boss. But I wasn’t an angry person… I would just get really angry, really quickly—and I didn’t know why. 25 years later, when I was 39 years old my wife, two daughters, and I were driving down the interstate headed to the mall. An 18-wheeler was coming up to merge onto the interstate. I move over to let him on, and then I pull back in front of him because I’m less than a mile to the mall exit. I don’t know what I did—if I cut him off or if he was just having a bad day—but he got right on my bumper, and all I could see was his grill as he was honking his horn acting like he was going to run over me. A trigger. It’s less than a minute, and on a scale of 1-10, I was at a 20 in regard to my anger. He went by me, and as he did I used my fingers to point an imaginary gun in his direction. I pulled off on the exit, I told my wife and daughters to get out of the car and walk across the overpass to the mall because I was going to follow that guy until he gets out of his truck; then we’re going to have it out. And my wife said, “No! We’re not getting out of the car.” Thank goodness!
So I went home that night and everyone went to bed, but I knew I needed to deal with my anger problem. I so lost my temper that I told my wife, “I could absolutely kill somebody and go to prison for the rest of my life and just think What did I do?”
I had actually started reading your books at that time—this was around ‘96/’97. I had gone throughThe Steps, but I still didn’t know what was triggering this anger. I just started praying, “God what is causing this? What is the root of this?” And I could see the truck driving down my driveway when I was 14 years old; and this is 25 years later that I’m realizing this! I’m sitting there as a 39 year old man in my living room on my couch at midnight, and my pulse is 180 beats/minute. When you’re 14 and three guys are stopping and you think you’re going to be raped or kidnapped or murdered, you just run. But when you’re 39, you don’t run anymore; you fight. But at 39, you can’t pull truckers out of their truck and beat them up or shoot them. So I had to deal with this.
There was this deep-seated thought in my head that I am not going to be taken advantage of. Anything that looked like that, resembled that, smelled like that, I was triggered.
Neil: So how did you deal with it?
Matt: I had to realize that it was all a control issue. I felt completely out of control, and when you feel out of control, fear is just overwhelming. And I had not dealt with the fear.
Neil: Matt is bringing up a flesh pattern called a primary motion—that people have some event in their past that has caused them to be in bondage to the lies they believe based upon trauma they have experienced. And until they sort that out, something will come along and trigger those feelings. We have to be aware of that.
I’ll just give you one example that relates to control: You are struggling with your kids, so you get angry with them. And they respond to you'r anger; they’re scared, to be honest. So it worked! They stopped misbehaving in your presence. You really haven’t taught them anything though. However, you have developed a pattern in your life with the notion of, “I can control my kids with anger.” That is a flesh pattern, and that is not healthy. You don’t want to control your kids out of anger. Scripture clearly tells us that outbursts of anger is a deed of the flesh.
The gospel has to relate to where people are, and everybody out there struggles to a certain degree with anger, and fear, and depression in their life. That’s why I talk and write about these issues! If you are paying attention to a deceiving spirit, there will be outbursts of anger. So we have to understand that aspect of well.
Matt: On that point right there, I have to point out that this event occurred when I was 14, and I accepted Christ as my Savior at 15. Within that year that I accepted Christ, there were two opportunities with an armed weapon where I could have gone to prison for the rest of my life. You think that didn’t have a spiritual dimension to it??
Neil: Tragically, those kinds of happen. And they seem to happen in a vacuum, like all of a sudden you’re a good kid that just stepped out of character that didn’t something harmful. You can easily wonder why, but we need to look at their past as there is more than likely something there that you don’t know about. Now a lot of people tend to say, God took care of all that on the cross. That’s one of those half truths that people get caught up in and don’t realize it. Yes, God did defeat the devil, gave us new life, and forgave us our sins, but truth of the matter is, nobody cleared the memory button in our minds. So everything programmed in our minds before we came to Christ is still there. That’s why should no longer be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind—that’s a time concept!
Matt: I went from 24 years old to 39, 15 years, without that triggering, but it was there. Just as dangerous and just as quick.
Neil: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Listen folks, you can be free from your past. It doesn’t have to have a hold on you, but you have to want that. And we’ll do everything we can to help you. You can have peace.
Matt: One last thing. When you deal with your own issues, you have a lot more grace and extend a lot more mercy toward other people. Now when I see people overreact, I just think What’s their story? You’re not just angry for nothing; there’s always a reason for it.
Neil T. Anderson is the founder of Freedom in Christ Ministries. He began the ministry in 1989 and continues to spread the message of freedom to this day.