Anger

Names. We all have one, or two or three, maybe even four or five! Names identify us, don’t they? At least to some degree. Yet, we recognize that we are more than merely our name(s). My parents could have decided to name me by any other name besides David, and yet I would still be me. Our human...
There was a time when 2 Timothy 3:12 worried me. In it, Paul tells Timothy, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” It wasn’t the idea of persecution that worried me, but the idea that, at that point in my life, I couldn’t really think of any great moments...
An old spiritual laments, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen, nobody knows my sorrows.” A modern rock song languishes, “You don’t know how it feels to be me!” But Jesus does . In Matthew 26:36-46 , Jesus’s agonizing, lonely prayers in Gethsemane show the hellish human suffering of His soul before...
To understand anger and its peaceful Biblical therapies, we make use of the Puritan John Downame’s book, The Cure of Unjust Anger . [1] Downame focuses on Ephesians 4:26 to frame his discussion: Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Downame describes anger as, “…an...
There are tremendous pressures in our culture. Talk radio proclaims that “America, as we know it, has been, or soon will be lost.” Members of Christ’s church can succumb to fear and the cries that “we need to do something!” There is talk of violence. Some speak of the potential need to take up arms...
Kindness is easily pondered, but not so easily carried out. We live in an age of velliety, where simply publishing our desires for kumbaya and world peace are lauded as good deeds, and nice intentions are stated as if they are triumphs. However, we struggle daily to be kind across the internet,...
The Cure for Unjust Anger Jonathan and James welcome Brian Hedges to the podcast. Brian is the lead pastor at Redeemer Church in Niles, MI and is responsible for breathing new life into one of the works of John Downame, a 16th century Puritan who was known as a “physician of souls.” In The Cure for...
Fear Podcast Jonathan and James lead a timely conversation about fear. As we all grapple with a viral pandemic—and the social isolation, anxiety, and economic uncertainty it can bring--fear can creep in, bringing with it hopelessness and even despair. How must Christians respond when the world is...
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) Evangelicalism is a house divided politically in 2020. The last few weeks have seen major evangelical volleys back and forth over the political divide. The brouhaha started with Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Mark Galli’s...
W. Bradford Littlejohn
As we come to Wrath in a Digital Age, we must once again begin by asking, "what is this vice exactly?" Is Wrath a vice like Gluttony - too much of a good thing, or wanting a good thing in the wrong way? Or is it more like Envy - intrinsically disordered, and purely destructive? At first glance,...