You would'nt like me when I'm angry

If you have anger issues and feel like you can't seem to change, check out what Jesus says in Matthew 5:21-26. He goes straight to the core issues that anger management books miss by a mile. He tells us why our anger is worse than we think. It murders others in our heart. It diminishes them. You think people don't know when we judge and hate them - think again. They feel it. And the world is much worse off for it. That anger gets forwarded on to others and even the generations coming up behind us. Ouch.

Then Jesus links anger to worship. Yeah, we can't worship when we have a broken relationship. How can you love God when you hate someone else (1 John)? But it goes deeper. Our anger reveals what we worship. We all have these stories inside of us, largely unconscious, that fuel our anger and reveal what we really worship - control, power, admiration, respect, safety, perfection and the list goes on.

Jesus does a major Jiu-Jitsu move on us at the end of this passage. He encourages us to stay out of court, where anger really gets cranked up. More importantly he links anger to the topic of justice. He takes our anger that pulls us away from God and towards our idols and then he re-directs it towards justice, where it belongs. He wants our anger to engage us with the injustices of the world like; human trafficking, kids who are bullied, prejudice in all its forms, bad marriages, sexual abuse, and your neighbor who is spiritually missing out.