I don’t think anger is a sin—although I think the anger of man is almost always likely to be.

I think there is a very rare occasion for righteous anger and very few of us have actually experienced it.

Mostly I think anger is a lack of self-mastery.

Yes, we are emotional creatures, but the more we master our emotions, the more in control of our actions we are.

I can’t think of any times in my life where I was angry and being angry ended up being a good or right thing and resulted in a good result.

Doesn’t mean that I’ve never disapproved of a thing rightly or be moved to logical action. I just think that anger is 99.9% of the time result of a lack of self-mastery rather than a truly righteous expression.

Hmmm… then what do you do with…
Jesus and the money changers. John 2:17 makes it pretty clear that was anger at work.
Or what about Romans attributing wrath to God (Romans 1)?
Or what about Eph 4:26 “In your anger, do not sin…”

I can’t think of anywhere in the Bible that says, “Don’t be angry?” Although I will admit there are many places that talk about the outcomes of anger. If my anger results in hate, that’s something the Bible has something to say about. But anger is not hate. In fact, it is entirely possible to be angry and love. That’s in Romans too.

More practically, how does one forgive an enemy without first feeling the wrong that was done?

We were created as emotional beings. And as such, our emotions will cloud our thinking. ALL of our emotions cloud our thinking. The laughing you speak of, while making it easier to kill in combat, also killed compassion in combat. I wonder what these spartan warriors were like when they got home?

And being an Internet marketer, you must realize by now that the crux of Internet marketing is based on the fact that people buy with their emotions and try to justify it later with facts. It is the core of copy writing 101.

I know you like the stoics, and I’m sure there are many things we can learn from them, but I’m pretty sure, in this case, the perversion of anger has confused their thinking. Ironic since confused thinking is the very thing they were trying to avoid.

Actually. I am saying that anger is to be completely avoided. There is almost no need for it at all. In almost all cases it is a weakness and detrimental.

You don’t think right when you are angry. You are more likely to make take brash actions and you often let something else or someone else control you and your internal state when you give in to anger.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we should just accept everything and nothing should move us to action or make us upset in anyway, I’m just saying a more stoic approach is favorable and achievable by setting proper expectations.

I should do a whole blog or video on this topic, because it’s difficult to convey my thoughts here.

But, consider that even in a fight to the death, Spartan warrior considered anger to be a foolish emotion that was likely to make you weak in combat. They actually trained to be jovial in combat and to not get angry in order to be able to calmly slay their enemies while their enemies made foolish mistakes.

Yep. Just being clear because so many people see anger as something to be avoided entirely. I’d hate for someone to walk away from this discussion thinking that’s what we are saying here.

I guess what I am saying is that anger always results from our expectations of a situation not being met.

Think about it.

You don’t get angry about things you expect.

Anger – an extreme emotional response based on a criticism we have? I’ll have to chew on that for a bit, but I think you are on to something.

But we need to be clear that some criticism and therefore some anger is justified and that changing our expectation is not always a valid path.

It is perfectly valid and right for me to be angry at the evils of the world. Extreme poverty that has children dying. Racial and/or class distinction. Murder, theft, abuse. Anger motivates us to action to right wrongs.

However, it is not valid and right for me to be angry at my employer for imposing a rule I don’t like (unless they are, of course, asking me to do something morally wrong).

Great comment. Totally agree.
Love what you said about how all criticism is based on an expectation.

The same is true about anger.

We only get anger when reality does not meet an expectation we have. The solution is then to change or expectations.

If we can realize where people are coming from and what their expectations are, it can help us to understand how to address, interpret, and most importantly, when to ignore their criticism, because it’s not really about us.

My dad was told something by one of his teachers YEARS ago which he still holds to as absolute truth on the subject. I think there are many programmers who have done the same. They’ve been told something is true and when you tell them it isn’t, it is easier to disagree than to admit that they are wrong.

This attitude also makes it easier to give criticism well because I can preface it with, “this is where I’m coming from, so you can see how that expectation would make me feel this way about that…”