Do you get angry?

(Here’s my sermon that I preached yesterday. You can find the full service on our church website — www.ststephenlc.org).

A 2015 Psychology Today article titled: “Anger’s Allure: Are you Addicted to Anger?” offers a fascinating look at anger. The very first sentence caught my attention — remember, this was written in 2015. Here’s the first line of the article — “Anger is a public epidemic in America.” That was in 2015!

The article stated four things — 1. In the moment, anger feels good. The body rewards it. You know this — anger offers a warm feeling and gives an adrenaline rush. 2. Anger is similar to other addictions. In anger you get a hit of dopamine, which is like a reward for the brain and can make us want more of it. 3. Anger can make people temporarily feel like they are in control. And 4. Anger can actually offer something to help some people avoid unresolved emotional and psychological feelings and issues like fear and emptiness.

Do you ever get angry? I do. There are certain things that will trigger me. Now, I will say that it takes an awful lot to get me to the point of anger though. It’s usually something around abuse or exploitation of someone — maybe that comes out like when I see purposeful hypocrisy designed to mislead for personal gain, or narcissistic behaviors and attitudes. I can get pretty angry over these type of things and I don’t have much patience for these kind of behaviors.

That first line of the article though. “Anger is a public epidemic in America.” Would it be fair to say…