“The Bible says, “A wise man will be slow to anger.” If you visit the prisons, we see many inmates, male and female, who are there, not because they are bad, but a circumstance came up in their lives that ignited the passion of anger. They lost control and, in that moment of loss of control, they reached for something to inflict pain on the object of their anger. When it was over and the anger subsided, someone lay wounded or dying, and a human being was sent to prison for many years because we lacked control of the emotion called anger.
“Most of us, when we think we have been disrespected, it kindles anger. But the thing that has been wounded is your self-concept, which is your ego, and because you may not have the characteristic of humility, you see disrespect as a great insult. If the disrespect is fueled by another passion called envy, then it leads us to anger.
“When you are angry, sin is right at the door of your anger, because your passion is about to cause you to break the law. Allah (God) talked to Cain and asked him to analyze why he felt anger. There is nothing that hits the ego as hard as being rejected in comparison to something and somebody that appears to be accepted. In every family, some children grow up feeling accepted while others feel rejected. And the more rejected you feel, the uglier your countenance becomes.
“Anger has to be controlled, lest in our anger we harm what we love. Jesus became angry and greatly disturbed over the moneychangers in the temple. They were defiling the House of God because they loved money more than the principles that the House is founded upon. So, Jesus drove them out of the temple with anger, but his anger was controlled. He let them know he was angry, why he was angry and he took appropriate action—controlled anger, controlled disapproval and controlled chastisement.”
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