Anger Management

Psalm 145:7-9 says:

7 They will celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
8 The LORD is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.
9 The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.

What does it mean to be "slow to anger"? If we look at verse 8 we see that this characteristic is coupled with being "gracious and compassionate" and being "rich in love"; All of these traits go hand-in-hand. So in order to be gracious and compassionate, we need to be slow to anger and rich in love. In order to be slow to anger, we need to be gracious and compassionate, and rich in love. You get the point.

Other than begging the question within these verses, what does "slow to anger mean"? Literally, it means not getting angry quickly. Isn't this difficult for most people in general? I believe these verses set a high standard for us to maintain a non-critical and non-judgmental attitude when dealing with others. I believe a broad description of the standard would be that anger should be the exception in our lives. There should be very few circumstances that make us angry.

Anger is not a sin and it's not inherently wrong, but it can be abused and especially unjustified. But if God is slow to anger and he's gracious, compassionate, and rich in love then we need to strive to be like that. When we become angry, we need to ask ourselves if we're being rich in love towards the person we're angry at. All spouses out there can think of times when they became angry with their spouse and therefore they were not exhibiting love or being gracious and compassionate. Again, they all go hand in hand. I definitely believe there are situations where anger may be necessary, but we have to learn to channel that anger in the appropriate manner and try to hold fast to the grace, compassion and love that God would have. We get the point I think.

This leads to my last point which is that generally humans do not like to be around angry people. I know I don't. Some people in life exude anger. I'm sure you can think of someone who seems to be angry every waking hour of the day; they wake up angry, they go to work angry, and they go to sleep angry. I don't understand how people live like this. Most people wear their feelings on their sleeves as they say and it's pretty easy to recognize when someone is dealing with anger issues. Honestly, I feel sorry for these people; they need a touch of God's grace, compassion and love. They need to realize that anger should be the exception and they need to figure out ways to deal with situations and emotions in a better way.

I think this emotion is something that lawyers deal with on a regular basis. Maybe the client is going through a divorce and is angry at their spouse. Maybe the client is suing the defendant with a tort claim. Perhaps, the client is suing for patent infringement and the list can go on and on. So, not only is anger something that as individuals we must learn regulate in our own lives, but as attorneys and future attorneys, we must help others with this powerful emotion as it can ultimately lead to hate and other actions. In a similar sense, I heard Dr. Jay Sekulow say one time that whenever he's in court he always remembers that the opposing counsel are not his enemies and there is no need to get angry with them. They are doing their job and advocating their issue just as he is. I thought that was a very good, practical piece of advice I can take with me into my legal career.

I would encourage you to keep these principles in mind when dealing with anger.

Foreign-Policy Blowback at Ft. Hood

I'm going to take a step into a highly-debatable topic by posting this article on U.S. Foreign Policy. Further, it directly relates to the events at Ft. Hood that transpired last week.

First off, I want to say that my whole heart goes out to the victims' families and everyone who is part of the Ft. Hood family. I spent some time on Saturday reading through the list of victims and the particular news site had short bios for each one of them. I shed some tears and said a prayer for the situation. The events were horrid, unimaginable, sickening, and "incomprehensible" as Pres. Obama described.

I know the Army officials as well as the President and many other leaders who are involved in the investigation are asking many questions. In general, the main question is "Why?".

This article by Jacob G. Hornberger suggests a reason. I will post the link for your reading as well as an excerpt.

Amidst all the debate over whether the Ft. Hood killer is a terrorist, murderer, enemy combatant, traitor, sleeper agent, or insane person, there is one glaring fact staring America in the face: what happened at Ft. Hood is more blowback from U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even at this early stage of the investigation, the evidence is virtually conclusive that the accused killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Hood by deep anger and rage arising from the things that the U.S. government has been doing to people in the Middle East for many years.

...

And I’m going to repeat our predictions of what Americans should expect should the U.S. government continue its pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan: Americans should prepare themselves to reap the full bounty of what their government’s foreign policy is sowing. An evil seed will produce an evil tree that will bear evil fruit. As the anger and rage arising from the U.S. government’s foreign policy periodically boils over, everyone should prepare himself for more acts of terrorism, murder, treason, war, insanity or whatever other label you wish to put on the retaliatory killing, not to mention the monetary disaster that looms ahead from all of the out-of-control spending to finance this imperialist and interventionist madness.

Also, if you remember Ron Paul said similar things at the SC Presidential Debate in 2007 (around 1:30 mark).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD7dnFDdwu0

Success

I was reading through facebook updates today and a good friend of mine posed this question: how do you define success? At first I did not think much of it because he always poses these rhetorical questions as his status updates, but then I started thinking...

Though that is a loaded question with multiple right answers for me at least, I have a few answers.

1. Joy. I like to be and I try to be a joyful person. Joy is simply a deeper, more fulfilling type of happiness in my opinion. If we are not joyful in our lives then I believe we will struggle through our daily tasks and life will be much more miserable. I try to find joy in all that I do, be it school, work, being a husband or being a dad.

2. Contentment. Being content runs parallel along with being joyful, but they are different. Often times, I think people are so content in their jobs, family life, or church and they get caught in a rut; they are not progressing nor subsiding. However, this is not to say that we should continually be discontent, but rather we should be content and concurrently try to improve upon our current situations. Again, contentment is a deeper type of feeling.

3. Love. If I feel loved and am loving, then I feel as though I'm being successful. I'm speaking about my personal faith and my family first and foremost. But further, I believe that people need to feel loved in their workplace and in other endeavors. Humans have a general need to be loved. God made Adam and Eve to be companions, this was not a coincidence. Obviously, there are quite a few different types of love: friendship, brotherly love, intimate love, and simply liking a particular thing - but all these forms have a place in our lives. I believe they all work together to satisfy our need for love.

4. Money. I saved this for last because the world would put this first. Making money (and a lot of it) does show some form of success, but this is not always the case. There are many rich people in this world that have inherited wealth; does this mean they are successful? Stat of the day - almost 2/3 of the world's billionaires are self-made. This is an insane stat. In other words, you don't have to inherit wealth to be wealthy. Hard work does in fact pay off. I love reading the stories of self-made millionaires/billionaires, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, H.J. Heinz, Tiger Woods, Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg and many others. But, I digress... I have a desire to make enough money to 1) support my family and 2) save for my children and grandchildren, and 3) give to others. If I'm making enough money in my vocation to do that then I will feel like I'm successful - at least in this realm.

In sum, success is a nebulous word which invites a complicated definition. Your definition of success may be different, but these are some principles that I use to help me define my success (and I may be missing a few things).

Choosing Your Attitude

Prof. Lentz shared an awesome, yet very simple devotion today in Wills. It was essentially the idea that as humans, we have the choice to have a positive attitude or to have a negative attitude. Obviously, there is a continuum that flows between the most positive attitude and the least, but we should fit somewhere in the positive range. Prof. Lentz noted how as attorneys, we need to have a positive attitude in life. This involves being a joy to be around, being a people-person, being optimistic, being kind, and being encouraging. He also noted how H.J. Heinz had a practice of hiring people and promoting people in his company for smiling a lot. Though this may seem odd to the typical company head, Heinz thought it was a huge asset to have attractive personalities in his workplace. To Heinz, a positive attitude would carry a person a long way.

I really like this thought because I believe that too many people are choosing to have negative attitudes; these attitudes are normally focused on, and a result of, their circumstances. Sure, people go through difficult situations where it's very hard to keep a positive attitude, but there should be an overarching positive attitude in your life. Not only is this more healthy for you individually, but it's more attractive to other people.

So think about your own attitude. Choose to have a positive attitude and don't fall into the trap of thinking that you "can't" have a positive attitude because life is too tough, or that's not how God made you. Having a positive attitude is a choice.

Predator or Prey

It's a fact that animals can be divided into two groups, predators and prey. Predators have eyes that are on the front of their faces and prey have eyes that are on the side of their faces. Examples of predators: lions and other cats, dogs, owls, eagles. Examples of prey: gazelle, horses, cows.

You might be thinking...well humans are predators since we have eyes on the front of our face and that's true. Obviously, it's been seen through history how we've always hunted and killed for food, namely meat. Predators hunt and prey tries to avoid being hunted. Rebecca and I like horses (Rebecca more than me) and horses are prey animals; they are always scared. It takes a while for a horse to let go of its fear of humans especially, for them to gain trust. Horses first instinct when they are afraid is to run because that is the only way they know to escape a predator.

So what is the significant of this? In a spiritual sense, we need to act like predators, but also we need act like prey. We need to be on the offensive in our spiritual lives in striving to be better and to be more like Jesus; this is obviously a huge component of the New Testament. On the flip-side, we need to flee from sin and get as far as we can away from it. For instance, 1 Cor. 6:18 says to flee from sexual immorality and 2 Tim. 2:22 says to flee from the evil desires of our youth and pursue righteousness.

Hopefully, this illustration of how God made animals in nature can be a reminder to some basic ways to improve our spiritual lives.

Landscaping

As I was driving into work on Monday morning, I was refreshed as the sun was shining on the wet dew of the grass and the streets were busy with the typical monday morning traffic. Sure, it was a typical Monday, but it was also the first day that the sunlight was visible in 4 or 5 days here in Va Beach. I was not keeping up with the weather last week, but apparently two nor'easters came through spreading light mist and rain over the region. I'm definitely appreciative of the rain that God provides but after a few days it starts to drag me down into a somber state that only fresh sunlight can remedy. I don't understand how the weather affects my attitude that much, but it really does to a certain extent of course.

But, then I began to see the grounds crew at our apartment complex and also the CBN grounds crew tending to the grass and the flower beds early in the morning, around 8ish. I thought to myself, these men and women are getting a head start on their landscaping work because they hadn't been able to do for a while. I thought about how our spiritual lives are like this. Sometimes, we need some rain in our lives to provide living water to our souls and to wash away some pains or hurt we're going through. God uses this time of rain for our benefit. But, after the rain is over and the sun beams through the clouds, then we can get back to work. We may need to do some spiritual landscaping in our heart and minds. We may need to pull away the weeds from the soft soil and plant some fresh flowers in our hearts....and we can't wait. We must get to it as soon as we can after the rain or else we'll get behind again.

So, I hope you can take advantage of the rain in your life, and then also realize that after the rain, it may be time to do some landscaping in your soul to get you back on track.

A Bible verse that comes to mind is Romans 12:2 which says that we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. I consider this illustration I provided as a way to continually try to renew our minds.

Respectfulness at Regent

There is something to be said about being in a law school class where the discussion is about a very intense topic and a class of 70 or so students can respect one another when many different opinions are being expressed.

I cannot speak for any other law school but I am definitely appreciative of the student body (and the professors) for how hot topics are handled in the class.

As one of my professors said the other day, we're going to be dealing with these hot topics as lawyers one day and if we can't talk discuss them in a classroom setting, how are we going to know how to deal with them in the future. I believe that is simply part of being a lawyer, is having to deal with important issues, hot topics, and intense situations.

It's much easier to discuss these things in class when everyone is understanding, open-minded, and respectful; I appreciate that greatly.