Overcoming Dysfunctional Emotions & Sin

It's important to understand the relationship between emotions and sin. Gal 4:26 says to be angry, but don't sin in your anger (it varies depending on translation, but the message is pretty clear). So, there's an emotion that comes up, then we are told not to "sin" in response to the emotion. In other words, sin is not part of our emotions (our heart). Sin is simply dysfunctional behavior. But we are not our actions. And we are not our emotions. We are not our thoughts. We are not our bodies, either. Those are parts of us. We are our spirit (our child-of-God self) which is having a human experience in a human body. So, since sin is a behavioral response to an emotion that's dysfunctioning, then sin does not make us "bad." Since our heart is not what we are, it doesn't make us bad. And if an emotion is simply dysfunctioning, it doesn't make us bad. It simply means our heart is immature. Here's a simple way to look at our makeup:

1st Level: Physical Body (our body and physical interaction with the world)
2nd Level: Mental Body (mind)
3rd Level: Emotional Body (heart)
4th Level: Spirit (Our authentic self--Our child-of-God self)

The path that our actions take is as follows: It starts in the spirit, is conveyed to the heart, then to the mind with a thought, then is carried out in the physical body. However, that's only how it works if someone has all of those parts aligned--working as one. Everyone, though, has to go through the process of aligning everything. So, since we're not aligned to begin with, when we become an adult, we have all of those things developed to a level where we can start aligning them. Unfortunately, no one shows us how. So our hearts are full of immature emotions, several of them dysfuctioning. The dysfunctional emotions are anger, grief, and sadness. All other negative emotions are made up of one, both, or all three of those emotions.

This is the path our actions take when our hearts are immature (out of balance): A dysfunctional emotion is triggered in the heart, a thought results from it in the mind, and a dysfuctional action (sin) takes place. That's the reality we live in. There's nothing wrong with us, per-se. We're just living out of the dysfunctional part of ourselves--our ego. The Bible calls it "the flesh," and sometimes "self," but our translations are pretty awful at being specific. It would be best to call it ego. Ego is our identity we build around our negative emotions. Most people live their lives out of their ego entirely and they don't realize it. They'll have some moments where they do authentic things from their child-of-God nature. But most people are still asleep, unaware that their ego is driving their actions. This is why the Ancient Hebrews in the Old Testament were so set on focusing on the heart. If it's out of balance, we're cut off from experiencing and operating out of our spirit. Christians like to use the mind to learn things so they can try to get around the heart and connect directly to their spirit and God. But that doesn't work. That's trying to go around the dysfunctional emotions because the person is scared of them or doesn't realize he or she needs to deal with them. Not suppress them--deal with them.

In the Ancient Hebrew, the word we translate as "perfect" actually means, "Mature in thought and action; a feeling of wholeness--complete." So, perfection is not "perfect actions" as religion and our hearts often perceive it to be. It's emotional maturity. And actions performed out of a mature heart don't always look like the idea of "perfect" we create in our minds.

The solution to this is one we rarely realize. We simply do what the Bible says and "be angry, but don't sin." In other words, we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, but we don't react to them with harmful actions. Instead, we just feel them and either do nothing, or respond with loving actions. It's incredibly hard to do regarding anger. Because anger usually sucks when you feel it. You'd be surprised what behaviors we do to avoid feeling our anger or fear. Sadness isn't fun when it's mixed with fear. But to me, they're easier to be with than anger. Yet I've seen so much benefit from integrating anger.

As you give yourself that unconditional love (aka - be with your emotions, accepting them as they are, they'll eventually integrate). There's nothing wrong with anger, sadness, or grief. They're just emotions. They simply exist. They require love in order to integrate them into our hearts properly so that they'll convert over to positive, healthy emotions. Once they integrate, a person has much more energy, and positive impulses. And there's tons of joy and peace, too. It's "life abundant." The emotions are so much stronger and more enjoyable than before. Most of our lives are about suppressing our ability to feel emotions, so life becomes very bland--very dull and dry. We get bored easily and don't want to be stuck with ourselves doing nothing (that's why jail or prison is so scary). But personally, once I integrated some dysfunctional emotions, life was so much more enjoyable and had so much more depth. It's this awesome experience now. I love watching movies and listening to music a lot more now, because they constantly evoke awesome emotional sensations all throughout my body. Emotional integration through accepting and loving our dysfunctional emotions by being with them unconditionally is the path to that.

I highly recommend The Presence Process (Revised/Second Edition) by Michael Brown to lead you though it. That was a huge help for me. It's made me a more loving person who loves life and is no longer afraid of painful emotions. I dive into them courageously now, because it's fun! You might not agree with some things in the book, and that's okay. Just toss out what you don't agree with or redefine it the way you see things. I agree with most of it, but there are little things I'm not sure about so I just don't worry about those ideas/beliefs. It's not a religious book. It works with us on basic human level so anyone can do it. It opens the door to being able to really have an awesome relationship with God if someone wants to walk through that door. I believe God is interwoven with our child-of-God selves, and that's what this process helps us do--line up with that part of ourselves and experience it.

BrianC wrote:

Overcoming Dysfunctional Emotions & Sin

It's important to understand the relationship between emotions and sin. Gal 4:26 says to be angry, but don't sin in your anger (it varies depending on translation, but the message is pretty clear). So, there's an emotion that comes up, then we are told not to "sin" in response to the emotion. In other words, sin is not part of our emotions (our heart). Sin is simply dysfunctional behavior. But we are not our actions. And we are not our emotions. We are not our thoughts. We are not our bodies, either. Those are parts of us. We are our spirit (our child-of-God self) which is having a human experience in a human body. So, since sin is a behavioral response to an emotion that's dysfunctioning, then sin does not make us "bad." Since our heart is not what we are, it doesn't make us bad. And if an emotion is simply dysfunctioning, it doesn't make us bad. It simply means our heart is immature. Here's a simple way to look at our makeup:

Hi Brian,

"Be ye angry, and sin not" (Eph 4:26)
This verse is NOT saying that it is OK to be 'angry', it is instead saying
that you still shouldn't sin even if you are angry. This idea is confirmed in James 1:20:
"For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20)

Now consider what it says in Colossians 3:8:
"But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth." (Col 3:8)

Does "put off" mean to delay, like put off going to the store? ...I say No
Or
Does "put off" mean to discard, as in get rid of? ...Yes, that's what it means.


I turned to God when I was 12. I was baptized with God's HolySpirit when I was 14-15.
And I have accomplished the task of getting rid of Anger when I was around 20-22.


____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

EdJ,

Great discussion topic, Ed.

Translation is always an issue. You've said before that you don't understand what I mean when I'm talking about translation problems. I'll share with you the very best multiple-rendering translation I know of:

TRANSLATION ISSUES

Col 3:8 "But now, you folks as well, at once put all these things away from [you, as of clothes put off and laid away] (or: set off; = renounce or get rid of): inherent fervor (or: So at this time you yourselves in one stroke set away and get rid of all the [following]: even natural impulse, propensity, internal swelling and teeming desire; or: Yet now, you people at once lay aside all intense anger, rage and wrath), strong passion (rushing of emotions; outbursts of rage), worthlessness (poorness of quality; influence of the bad; hateful intentions), [and] from out of your mouth: blasphemy (abusive and injurious talk; slander) [and] foul-mouthed abuse (obscenity; ugly words; deformed and shameful language).

Above, the bold is this translator's best rendering, in his opinion, of the manuscripts. The expansions and amplifications are in parentheses, and the other possible quality renderings are in parentheses followed by "or:". This translator does this to offer insight into the translation process so that we can see how different each opinion is and decide ourselves what we think the text is saying. I like this translator's approach, because he tries to lay out in his translation what each word means to the old culture. So a single word of the old culture brings many ideas with it that may be difficult or impossible to express properly in the English language. We do the best we can.

Notice that in none of these translators' renderings is anger, by itself, said to be one of these things to be cast off. Only intense anger and forms of intense anger. Notice how this translator opts for "inherent fervor" as opposed to anger. One of the renderings says "even natural impulse". So, basically, anger itself was not to be cast off. Only intense anger. It's important to note that from an Ancient Hebrew perspective is more like this: inherent fervor, natural propensity, internal swelling and teeming passion of desire. When God's anger is mentioned before, that's how it's described in these multiple renderings, but wrath and anger are one of the multiple rendering options, too. The point is that it's hard to know exactly what the person writing it meant. Also, it sounds like it's not God's wrath teeming up against these things in verse 7. It sounds like it's His passion that is stirred up against these things. He keeps wanting to take care of these immature emotions in people. It doesn't necessarily mean He's anger. It means His passion to mature these issues is what He's feeling. Maybe that passion gets turned into anger. In the Old Testament, we see God seemingly get angry and do some horrible things. But again, the translation makes it hard to know if anger is exactly what the Hebrews meant.

Sometime, I'll post our translators' Aaronic Prayer, and I'll post a more up-to-date translators' rendering of it. That should be a good show of how different, inaccurate, and lacking translations can be.

I'm going to post another point on this subject below this post.

EdJ,

Even though I showed possible translation issues above, I'd like to make a different point.

Let's assume for a moment that this is talking about the basic emotion we call "anger". Putting it off (getting rid of) doesn't mean that it's evil or wrong. Yes, it comes from selfishness, and selfishness comes from fear and immaturity, which is perfectly normal for kids. Kids must go through immaturity and progress into maturity. Most don't, though. So we mostly have adult children running around the world. Rarely do we find adults who are fully matured emotionally so that they no longer even experience the dysfunctional emotion called anger. The only reason that happened to them is because their parents didn't know how to love themselves unconditionally to resolve their anger, and so they didn't know how to model that for the child and treat the child with unconditional love (that includes actions, too). Children develop emotionally in freedom and responsibility. I don't want to get onto that subject, but if you wish to read about it, Summerhill by A.S. Neill is an amazing book. Also, a good follow-up book is A Free-Range Childhood: Self Regulation at Summerhill School by Matthew Appleton (a former houseparent at the Summerhill school). That school is amazing, as are the children it produces in its freedom and unconditional love.

Anyway, we cannot just throw our emotions aside, as the text seems to say. I say "seems" to say. It's important that we understand this is a saying. To cast off does mean you want to take care of this unhealthy issue. But how do we do that?

Most people judge anger as wrong and evil. This immediately binds it in our emotions so we cannot possibly get rid of it. We can only suppress it at that point. We end up dropping it from our awareness eventually. Then, it will show up in covert ways that we don't recognize such as illnesses (see Sigmund Freud and Dr. Sarno on psychology and illness) and also unhealthy behavior (aka - sin). People will not notice the behaviors they do, some of them seemingly beneficial, that are stemming from anger. And all anger has fear behind it, driving it.

To "get rid of" anger, first we have to not judge it. We cannot lot at it as bad, evil, or wrong. We have to accept is as it is: an emotion. Emotions just "are." They exist.

Next, we have to be with it unconditionally without doing unhealthy behaviors (sin). So, we feel the anger and let it be. We do not react to it in any way. Reacting to it in any way will suppress our awareness of it, and it'll come out in illness and unhealthy behavior.

As long as we let it be, it'll eventually integrate/resolve. This means that the emotion (energy) that was being dystorted into anger (dysfunctioning energy) ends up converting to functional emotions (positive emotions that drive healthy behaviors).

EdJ,

(Alright, I have to edit this one. I answered it too quickly and wasn't thinking straight.)

I'll give my opinion on the translation of Col 3:8. From what I can tell, this is either talking about putting away dysfunctional behaviors, or it's talking about putting away intense emotions that cause the behaviors--mainly forms of intense anger. What it's definitely not mentioning is regular anger. It only indicates intense emotions. And that makes a lot of sense. Intense, dysfunctional emotions bring on intense, harmful behaviors (sin). I had to go back and re-read that translation I typed out. There's so much information there, I was getting bogged down with it all and missing the point.

Suppressed emotions become very intense and can cause intense reactive behaviors. When we stop doing a behavior, the dysfunctional emotions that that behavior is suppressing will surface. Then we can deal with those emotions. We just feel them unconditionally whenever they come up, loving them (which means just accepting them and giving them our attention). They'll resolve eventually, converting over to healthy emotions. At that point, they no longer trigger the dysfunctional behaviors (sin). It's pretty simple. Takes patience and consistence, though. There's nothing wrong with anger--it's just a dysfunctioning emotion that's passed down to us from our parents, and their parents, and their parents, all the way back to Adam and Eve. It's always our job to try to resolve/integrate it using love. When we love ourselves unconditionally, and it's authentic, then we will can love our neighbors authentically, too, as Jesus said to do.

EdJ,

So, how did you get rid of your anger?

I worked with people with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD or DID) for five years, so I'm very good with psychology. I can tell you if what you did suppressed it or if it actually integrated/resolved it.

- Brian

BrianC wrote:

EdJ,

Notice that in none of these translators' renderings is anger, by itself, said to be one of these things to be cast off.

Hi Brian,

Correct, in addition to anger we are to get rid of these as well: malice, blasphemy, and filthy communication.

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

BrianC wrote:

EdJ,

(1)Let's assume for a moment that this is talking about the basic emotion we call "anger". (2)Putting it off (getting rid of) doesn't mean that it's evil or wrong.
(3)Rarely do we find adults who are fully matured emotionally so that they no longer even experience the dysfunctional emotion called anger.

(4)Anyway, we cannot just throw our emotions aside, as the text seems to say. I say "seems" to say. It's important that we understand this is a saying. (5)To cast off does mean you want to take care of this unhealthy issue. But how do we do that?

Most people judge anger as wrong and evil. (6)This immediately binds it in our emotions so we cannot possibly get rid of it.
(7)People will not notice the behaviors they do, some of them seemingly beneficial, that are stemming from anger. And all anger has fear behind it, driving it.

(8)To "get rid of" anger, first we have to not judge it.

Hi Brian,

1) OK
2) James seems to agree: "For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20)
3) Seems like you are having trouble making up your mind whether anger is OK to have or not.
4) Yes we can.
5) To "cast off" means to get rid of - we have already established that is the meaning.
6) Huh?
7) That seems to be contradictory to James 1:20.
8) Is this speculation on your part?

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

BrianC wrote:

EdJ,

(1)So, how did you get rid of your anger?

(2)I can tell you if what you did suppressed it or if it actually integrated/resolved it.

- Brian

Hi Brian,

1) I got rid of anger by killing the ego - how?
....by starving it to death. What you don't feed - dies.

2) I did neither; I got rid of anger by killing the ego.

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

Ed J wrote:

BrianC wrote:

EdJ,

Notice that in none of these translators' renderings is anger, by itself, said to be one of these things to be cast off.

Hi Brian,

Correct, in addition to anger we are to get rid of these as well: malice, blasphemy, and filthy communication.

I'm sorry, I didn't communicate what I meant very well. I meant that the translators' range of renderings never say anger without a modifier. They say "intense anger," or other similar terms. Not just "anger" without a modifier. In fact, this translator went with "inherent fervor." Fervor means to speak with great passion. But he's talking about something that's inherited from the parents. Our natural fervor comes from within us. It is not inherited from our parents. But we do inherit dysfunctional emotions from our parents. And when those are mixed with fervor (passion), we can sometimes do awful things. That's why some crimes are classified, by law, as crimes of passion. We got most of our laws in the US from the Old Testament Mosaic Laws, actually. We stripped them down quite a bit, but that's where we get them. If a guy walks in on his wife cheating on him and kills the man with whom she's cheating, or kills his wife, this is a crime of passion. In the Old Testament, that was dealt with in a different way than full-on murder. God understands that we do some awful things when our dysfunctional emotions get so intense that they drive us.

The point is that it never said to get rid of anger. It says to get rid of intense anger. And we don't even know if it says that, actually, because all of those different rendering could be taken different ways. Fervor simply relates to passion. Inherent, most likely, is relating to dysfunctional emotional signatures of anger, fear, and grief. That passage, as you can see, is not necessarily being translated exactly Paul intended it to be meant. That's the problem with translation. All of these things must be read very carefully.

Also, it's important to understand that just because the Bible says it doesn't mean it's Law. In other words, Paul was writing to those people at that time to help with their specific problems. He was giving them sensible solutions to the problems they had written to him about. These letters are Paul's responses to letters sent to him from those assemblies (churches) of people in the different cities throughout Eastern Europe. So, maybe they wrote to him saying that people were lashing out in anger and beating up others, and Paul responded to that specific issue. We're told in 1 Corinthians that women need to wear head-coverings as a sign of their authority to the angels. In that culture, head-coverings were the way a married woman identified herself as married. The women back then had not been wearing them, even though they were married, and this was enraging the husbands. The wives were also withholding sex from the husbands, if I remember correctly, out of spite. I forget exactly. So, some religions make that a law (Old Order Mennonites, Amish, etc). What's interesting is that it still works if someone believes it works and they do it obediently. But it's not the only way to let the angels (that verse is talking about fallen angels) know that they have no authority over us.

I think the verse is saying we need to integrate/resolve our emotional patterns. And the verse in Galations that says "Get anger, but don't sin in your anger" is telling us the way to do that. We simply feel our feelings, but don't react. We love the feelings and let them be there without condition every time they come up for as long as it takes for them to resolve/integrate. It's that simple. However, we must tend to our emotions daily, consistently, so that our heart begins to trust us. Right now, our yes doesn't mean yes and our no doesn't mean no (our actions don't follow our true feelings) as Paul recommended. That's why our hearts don't trust us. And our hearts continue to live in fear and rule our lives by fear with those passionate dysfunctional feelings.

Ed J wrote:

BrianC wrote:

EdJ,

(2)Putting it off (getting rid of) doesn't mean that it's evil or wrong.

(3)Rarely do we find adults who are fully matured emotionally so that they no longer even experience the dysfunctional emotion called anger.

(4)Anyway, we cannot just throw our emotions aside, as the text seems to say. I say "seems" to say. It's important that we understand this is a saying. (5)To cast off does mean you want to take care of this unhealthy issue. But how do we do that?

Most people judge anger as wrong and evil. (6)This immediately binds it in our emotions so we cannot possibly get rid of it.
(7)People will not notice the behaviors they do, some of them seemingly beneficial, that are stemming from anger. And all anger has fear behind it, driving it.

(8)To "get rid of" anger, first we have to not judge it.

2) James seems to agree: "For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" (James 1:20)

I'm not sure whether you're agreeing with me or disagreeing. lol I'll respond as if you're saying anger is wrong. And I'm just discussing my view of it. I could be wrong.

James doesn't say it's wrong. He says it doesn't work the righteousness of God. In other words, it's dysfunctional, because it doesn't function in righteousness. And keep in mind, the Ancient Hebrews didn't look at "dysfunctional" as wrong or evil. Wrong is a human term, and evil is a religious term. But the Hebrews didn't mean it like that. We are the ones who translated "dysfunctional" as "evil." We did this because our way of thinking didn't match the Hebrews' way of thinking. We couldn't translate it properly. Just because God is different than us doesn't mean we're bad. It just means we're maturing. There's nothing wrong with maturing. I don't see people's actions in shades of right an wrong. I see them in shades of maturity. I believe every action is either done out of unconditional love, or it's done out of an attempt to get unconditional love. So, what religion calls "wrong," I call "an attempt to get unconditional love (be unconditionally loved)." That's some deep psychology there, though. lol It's not an easy concept to grasp. What I just expressed is what happens to a person's view of the world when they put off all judgment and opinions and accept things and life as it is.

Quote :

3) Seems like you are having trouble making up your mind whether anger is OK to have or not.

Nope. If it sounded that way, I either conveyed it badly or it was misinterpreted.

Quote :

4) Yes we can.

This is a misunderstanding of terms, then. If we throw away (cast off) emotions, we're suppressing them out of our awareness. They're still there, but we don't know they're there. We've condemned them, so that part of our heart that feels that anger hardens. Again, this is very deep psychology and it's not always an easy concept to grasp. The human heart is very abstract and difficult to understand, especially for intellectual people who are very much about the mind and logic. I'm very intellectual, so it took me a long time to bring up those emotions I "cast off" as a kid. They were so buried that I could barely get them to come up. But I had to get them to come up so I could process them (love them unconditionally through feeling them without condition). Once I did that, my heart began opening and I could feel so much more. Life became so much more enjoyable and fun and interesting and exciting. I wanted to just be done with life before and get to heaven so all of this could be over. Now, I love life. I understand why God put us here. I understand why He wants us to experience pain and suffering. There's so much value in it. Anger, sadness, grief--He wants us to experience all of that and process it (love ourselves and those emotions till they integrate) so that we can mature. I cannot describe how awesome life becomes when those emotions are allowed to surface and process.

So, what I'm saying is that the translation says "cast off," but what I believe that means is to integrate/resolve those emotions. That's why Paul, in another verse, says to "be angry, but don't sin in your anger." If Paul says to be angry, but then he says to cast it off, then he's contradicting himself. Anger cannot be evil and it cannot be gotten rid of unless it's suppressed. When it integrates, its energy turns to positive energy driving positive emotions. Emotions are energy. They're energy-in-motion. They drive us--fuel us. They're awesome. Men like to get rid of them, and that's a shame.

Quote :

5) To "cast off" means to get rid of - we have already established that is the meaning.

As stated above, I don't agree with that take on it. I believe it means to integrate/resolve, not get rid of.

Quote :

6) Huh?

Okay, this is a concept that's very difficult to understand. When we deem something as wrong or evil and we intend to get rid of it within ourselves, we've just bound it to ourselves. Take priests for instance--they have to take a vow of celibacy. When you talk to the psychologist whom those priests see, they say, "All those priests talk about is sex, sex, sex. They can't have it, so it eats them up inside. They've starved it for years, and so they're bound to it." Priests can be trained psychologists, so priests will go to other priests who are trained in psychology to talk about their issues. It's always about sex. lol I tried to get rid of my anger. I found that I'd just buried it. And it came up eventually so I could process it.

Quote :

7) That seems to be contradictory to James 1:20.

That doesn't have anything to do with James 1:20, actually. I'm saying that people suppress anger, and it ends up turning into other behaviors that might seem healthy, but aren't. Religious people are probably the worst offenders. They suppress all of their dysfunctional emotions and behaviors, but then those behaviors shift to other behaviors that are "religious" and very unhealthy for them and others. They don't know that, though, because the religious think these new behaviors are great. lol They approve! Oh, the deception we find in approval of the masses or small groups...

Quote :

8) Is this speculation on your part?

No, that's not speculation. I, and many others, have found this to be true in our own lives. I could not get rid of anger while I had judged it as wrong. I just kept suppressing it. And when I'd try to deal with it, it stayed. It wasn't until I stopped judging it as wrong that it finally would surface properly and integrate/resolve. You'll find a lot more people in the East understand this as opposed to people in the West due to our religions deeming anger as evil. We're full of judgments here in the West. And the dysfunctional people in the East are full of judgments too. Religion, no matter where a person lives, is full of judgments and opinions, and those things cause the suffering inside of us. It all comes from fear.

BrianC wrote:

I'm sorry, I didn't communicate what I meant very well. I meant that the translators' range of renderings never say anger without a modifier. They say "intense anger," or other similar terms. Not just "anger" without a modifier. In fact, this translator went with "inherent fervor." Fervor means to speak with great passion. But he's talking about something that's inherited from the parents. Our natural fervor comes from within us. It is not inherited from our parents. But we do inherit dysfunctional emotions from our parents. And when those are mixed with fervor (passion), we can sometimes do awful things. That's why some crimes are classified, by law, as crimes of passion. We got most of our laws in the US from the Old Testament Mosaic Laws, actually. We stripped them down quite a bit, but that's where we get them. If a guy walks in on his wife cheating on him and kills the man with whom she's cheating, or kills his wife, this is a crime of passion. In the Old Testament, that was dealt with in a different way than full-on murder. God understands that we do some awful things when our dysfunctional emotions get so intense that they drive us.

Hi Brian,

You seem to be using a supplied scenario to justify your belief.

If you think 'anger' is OK, that's fine by me; but I would like to offer a different conclusion to your scenario example.
The perpetrator is also a victim, and the leniency in the law is based exclusively on that consideration.
(meaning that he would not be a murderer without this attached fact: he is "the victim")

Look at an associated example: that of self-defense. If you kill someone that
has attacked you - the law would look at that with leniency as well.
But the difference here in my example is: no anger is need.

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

BrianC wrote:

Also, it's important to understand that just because the Bible says it doesn't mean it's Law. In other words, Paul was writing to those people at that time to help with their specific problems. He was giving them sensible solutions to the problems they had written to him about. These letters are Paul's responses to letters sent to him from those assemblies (churches) of people in the different cities throughout Eastern Europe. So, maybe they wrote to him saying that people were lashing out in anger and beating up others, and Paul responded to that specific issue.

Hi Brian,

I would like to draw attention to something Jesus said
and how it could possibly play into what we are discussing.

"Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." (Luke 17:33)

I took this verse to mean that we should lose the ego.
So what I did was starve it to death - and "I" was still there.
So I indeed found my life, no longer having an ego - losing anger.

Do you have a different explanation of Jesus' words in Luke 17:33? If so, what is it?

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

BrianC wrote:

James doesn't say it's wrong. He says it doesn't work the righteousness of God.

Hi Brian,

Are you saying that there is some usefulness in anger that is apart from God's righteousness?
If so, spell it out. Please feel free to give me a scenario, and explain how its a benefit.

____________
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org

BrianC wrote:

I don't see people's actions in shades of right an wrong. I see them in shades of maturity.

It looks like you need "a comma" here then, instead of "a period".

"I don't see people's actions in shades of right an wrong, I see them in shades of maturity" - Brian