Mad for the wrong reason
“When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord”
Proverbs 19:3
Anger most always comes when a given situation in life is less than ideal. Frustration and disappointment collide in a storm of dissatisfaction with anger as the by-product. To make matters worse, we tend to search out causes for anger. Dissatisfaction must have a cause, and that cause must not be ourselves. To assuage our brooding heart we find something or someone on which to blame everything. The result, we feel wronged and somewhat better about the situation, but find increasing anger in the person or thing blamed. The reason for the increasing anger is simple. C. S. Lewis writes, “If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.” It is the simple rule of diminishing returns–the more anger you unleash the more you will be pulled down into anger.
Proverbs 19:3 steps into the middle of the blame game with a blunt–some might say harsh–word. “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.” Personal experience has shown that, if anger is unchecked, people will blame, or at least question, God for their disappointing circumstances. I must point out that people do not normally begin with blaming God. Blaming begins with people or situations that are easily pointed out. Persistent problems, however, force one to find a more pervasive thing to blame. For example, if an individual has repeated ‘disappointing’ experiences which spread over many relationships, many jobs, or many experiences he will be forced to blame something that connects them all–and that brings us to God. When all else is exhausted a man shakes his fist at God and says, “why did you let things happen this way.”
Of course, there is another common factor that connects all the events in a mans life; namely himself. That is the point of the proverb. It is not God that ruins a mans life. Personal folly has its price. Drink to much and you will find you have a failing liver. Smoke and you will discover ailing lungs. Live like a sluggard and your pantry will be bare. Make decisions based on ‘folly’ and you will find repeated unpleasant circumstances. How often our anger is misdirected. There is something to be angry at–folly, more specifically sin. If only we were angry at sin–then we would see the remedy is the pursuit of holiness through the purifying word of God. A great irony is found here. Shake your fist at God and you rebel against the one person who can change you, the one person who can address the root behind the problem.
