Or should it be forgiveness versus retaliation?
The definitions of the terms used in this article are taken from the Cambridge English Dictionary. Anger is “a strong feeling that makes you want to hurt someone or be unpleasant because of something unfair or unkind that has happened; to make someone angry; the feeling people get when something unfair, painful, or bad happens.” Annoy is “to make someone angry; to make someone slightly angry or upset.” Annoyance is “the feeling or state of being annoyed’ something that makes you annoyed.”
Disapproval is “a feeling of having a negative opinion of someone or something; the expression or feeling that something done or said is wrong.” Discomfort is "the feeling of not being comfortable, either from a physical cause or from a situation, or something that causes this feeling." Dismay is “a feeling of unhappiness and disappointment; to make someone feel unhappy and disappointed; a feeling of shock and unhappiness.” Displeasure is “a feeling of being annoyed or angry.
Forgive is “to stop blaming or being mad at someone for something that person has done, or not punish them for something; to stop being angry with someone who has done something wrong.” Forgiveness is “the act of forgiving or the willingness to forgive.”
Gain is “to get something that is useful, that gives you an advantage, or that is in some way positive, especially over a period of time; an occasion when you get something useful or positive; to obtain something useful, advantageous, or positive; something useful or good that you get for yourself; to get something that is important or gives you an advantage, especially over a period of time.” Primary is “more important than anything else; main; happening first.” Secondary is “less important than related things; developed from something similar that existed earlier."
Retaliate is “to hurt someone or do something harmful to someone because they have done or said something harmful to you; to hurt someone or do something harmful to someone because that person has done or said something harmful to you.” Retaliation is “the act of hurting someone or doing something harmful to someone because they have done or said something harmful to you.”
The silent treatment is “the act of not speaking to someone, or speaking to them very little, because you are angry or upset about something they have done”
Some definitions may be redundant, but they have been repeated so that the reader has a clear idea about what I am writing.
The psychology of human behavior, why people act the way that they do, is a fascinating subject. One thing that I quickly learned as a social worker was that a situation often as not was not what it appeared to be on the surface. Appearances can be deceiving. A situation can be very different from how it seems or appears to be. For this reason, a social worker must keep an open mind when assessing a situation and not jump too quickly to conclusions. Too speedily-arrived-at conclusions can color our judgment and cause us to make mistakes in sizing up a situation. A social worker must always be open to new information that will shed more light on what is going on. Easier said that done but being objective is important. Our assessment of a situation must be “based on real facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings.” It must be fair and real.
When sizing up a situation, some questions we may ask are: “Who is doing what? What are they getting out of what they are doing? Who is getting the most out of the situation? Who else benefits? How?” When we ask these questions, we may come up with some very surprising answers.
Some people express their anger directly. If they are angry with someone, they will take that person aside, draw to the person’s attention what the person did, how it made them feel, and why. They may ask for an explanation of the person’s actions. If they are satisfied with the person’s response, they may decide to not be angry with that person anymore. They let go of their anger. From a psychological perspective and the perspective of Jesus’ teaching this is the healthiest way to express our anger at someone.
Other people express their anger indirectly. They learned at an early stage in their life that expressing anger directly elicited a strong negative reaction from the people in their environment. They learned to bottle up their anger and hide it. They have learned to express anger in a variety of ways that to the untrained observer may not appear to be an expression of anger. In this way they avoid blame, disapproval, and retaliation, things which they wish to prevent from happening. They may have created a social image of a pleasant, agreeable person for themselves. They do not want to harm this image. We all have a social image, and we may go to any length to protect it. A social image is the way we want people see us. It is not our true self. We hide our true self because we fear other people will not like us; they will form a negative opinion of us and reject us.
Among the ways that people express anger indirectly is sarcasm, making cutting remarks that are meant to hurt someone’s feelings; shunning, ignoring someone and not speaking to that person; the silent treatment, refusing to speak to someone and cutting off other forms of communication with them; stonewalling, abruptly walking off in the middle of a conversation; gossiping, talking about someone behind their back and spreading negative rumors about them; and troublemaking, intentionally causing problems for someone. They may do other things to hurt the person with whom they are angry.
Sarcasm, shunning, the silent treatment, and some other forms of indirect anger, psychologists tell us, when they are used to punish someone over a long period of time or are carried to an extreme are a form of emotional abuse.
Because people who express anger indirectly tend to bottle up their anger, the anger that they are expressing in these ways may be disproportionate to what triggered the anger. They may be expressing anger that unrelated to that trigger. A trigger is an event or situation which causes a strong emotional rection of fear, shock, anger, or worry in someone. It may make someone remember something bad that happened in the past.
On the other hand, the trigger may be something that is minor. A change in circumstances may have caused them to experience growing annoyance over the things that a family member, relation, coworker, friend, roommate, partner, or spouse did and said, things which they had previously tolerated or overlooked. They may have met someone whom they thought would make a more interesting friend or who would make a better roommate. They experience growing anger toward an existing friend or roommate to the point that anything which that friend or roommate says or does results in their acting-out of that anger toward the friend or roommate.
People who express their anger indirectly, as I previously noted, typically were discouraged from expressing anger directly during an early stage in their life. The specific ways that they express their anger indirectly may be how they themselves were treated at that stage. Or they may have witnessed someone treating other people in these ways. In any event they internalized the behavior and treat anyone with whom they are angry in the same ways. The indirect expression of anger provides secondary gains for the person who expresses anger in that way. These secondary gains reinforce their continued acting-out of anger in this manner.
People who express their anger indirectly will express their anger in several different way at the same time. The primary gain of their acting-out is to express displeasure at the object of their anger, and to cause them discomfort and dismay. Secondary gains are to influence other people’s opinion of the object of their anger, to draw negative attention in the form of disapproval to that person, to manipulate or control that person; to get sympathy from others, direct blame away from themselves, and to avoid damage to the social image. They may feel free not to give any thought to feelings of the object of their anger.
Here is the rub. They may not be aware of how they are behaving and how they benefit from it. People act out when they are unhappy or upset but they are often not conscious of what they are doing, particular if they have learned that any expression of anger is wrong, unacceptable. They may not connect their behavior in their minds with anger.
It is Christmas Day, and you have your parents, an aunt, and a cousin over for Christmas dinner. You are all about to sit down to eat and the doorbell rings. There on your doorstep is a coworker, a big grin on his face, holding a large, brightly-wrapped box. As soon as you open the door, he brushes past you and is inside your apartment. While you are on friendly terms with this guy at work, he is not a close friend. The next thing you know, he is sitting down to Christmas dinner with you and your family. When you finally get rid of him, your family wants to know who this guy is and what is his relationship is to you. You are thoroughly embarrassed. When you return to work after the holiday, you are steamed with the guy. But you are not the kind of person to grab him, pull him into an empty office and give him a piece of your mind. Instead, you do all you can to make his life miserable at your workplace. You hint to another woman worker that she might want to keep an eye on him. Soon, the word gets around your workplace and all the women are giving him the cold shoulder and even the men are looking at him sideways. The boss gets the wind of it and hauls the poor snook into his office. The boss rakes him over the coals, “I have been hearing some bad things about you, Thompkins, We don’t allow that sort thing in this company. This is your first and last warning.” You are the one who is grinning now. You have him under your complete control. All you have to do is say the word and he is gone! That’s how indirect anger works.
For Christians, however, retaliation in any form is not the path that we are supposed to take when someone does something that angers or upsets us. Jesus did not teach that we should not feel or express anger, but he did teach that we should not hold on to it and retaliate against those who angered or upset us. We are to forgive them. We are to let go of any anger and resentment and not hold what they did against them.
The hurtful things that other people do are not always intentional. People may overstep our personal boundaries because we did not tell them what our personal boundaries are. They may not be aware of our style of doing friendships and relationships and communicate with us in a way that is not sensitive to that style. They may give us more attention than we are comfortable with out of a desire to please us. We are all human beings and human beings make mistakes in their friendships and relationships.
Jesus, the Bible tells us knew people’s hearts. I believe that I can safely say that he is aware of our flaws and imperfections. When he gave his disciples the new commandment to love one another, he was telling them and us to love another despite our flaws and imperfections. One of the ways that we can learn to love another is to learn to better understand one another, to understand one another another’s feelings and to put ourselves in one another’s shoes. Learning to empathize with one another, to understand how someone else feels, is an important step toward forgiving one another’s faults.
It is my prayer that during the new year we will come to a better understanding of one another, we will forgive one another, and we will be restored to amicable relations, harmony, and fellowship with one another. It is also my prayer that with the help of God’s grace we will come to have friendlier and more affectionate relationships with one another, relationships that can withstand the stresses and strains of this life and will last our entire lives. In my mind the world would be a much better place if we lived how Jesus taught and showed us to live.
