I am not much for subtlety. If you know me at all then your laughter at reading that last sentence says it all. Thanks.
I certainly don’t understand, even though I am guilty of, passive aggressive anger. This doesn’t seem to be productive at all. The passive aggressive anger that I am talking about is the type of anger wherein a person slowly unleashes little cruelties that can at times be disguised as niceties if they are interpreted a different way.
The victim and the subject know differently if the subject is even to be known.
So the victim of passive aggressive anger is unaware what they did wrong and sometimes who is even trying to sabotage them. The angry person then goes on to let that anger contaminate and poison their lives until they feel like retribution has been paid.
I used to think there was a type of dignity in keeping it together and not getting all upset at someone and yelling and screaming about it. I really think that just eats you up from the inside. If you are terminal and are going to die on Good Friday, then we need to consider that we have to confront the people in our lives who make us angry.
That’s not fun.
You probably won’t confront them as a Christian.
We need to either rethink how we are going to confront someone we are angry at or rethink how a Christian confronts someone. I’m sure Peter and Paul had confrontations. Jesus certainly didn’t tiptoe around the Apostles when they were power-tripping. That doesn’t mean that we set someone up on the tee and take a Tiger Woods’ sized whack at them either.
Somehow we need to make clear the level of our anger and do it in a way that respects the dignity of the other person. We may not be able to help the fact that the other person is going to think what we are saying is harsh, regardless. Now is not the time to run from humanity in all of its glory.
If we are going to rush to express our pain then we need to rush faster to express our forgiveness. We need to give the other the benefit of the doubt. It is what Christians do because we do not know their nature.
That means even if the other gives you no benefit of the doubt whatsoever we need to continue to forgive when apologized to. We need to apologize when confronted.
We need to love with an intensity that burns, that does not allow for the slow degradation of another person in some passive aggressive way. After all, God’s love is not passive aggressive. There was nothing passive aggressive in the Cross.
Time to be love to everyone around us, and let the passive aggressive love and hatred go.
