Let Love Guide Us in the New Year: Love Is Not Short-Tempered And Does Not Remember the Wrongs Done Against It

Honeysuckle symbolizes the bonds of love.

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul identifies two more qualities or characteristics which are absent from the kind of love that disciples of Jesus are instructed to show to others and one another. It is not short-tempered, getting angry easily, often not for good reason. It does not remember the wrongs done against it.

When we evidence this kind of love, we do not become annoyed or angered very easily. We are not easily upset or offended, easily angered, or made unhappy. People do not have to tip toe around us out of fear that we might become upset or angry. We are not thin-skinned, easily hurt by criticism or easily made unhappy. We do not become too excited or easily upset.

We do not feel angry because we have been forced to accept something that we do not like. We do not stay angry and displeased for long periods of time. We quickly get over any feelings of anger that we may have toward someone.

We do not collect what Transactional Analysis (TA) calls “anger stamps.” Anger stamps are feelings of anger and resentment that we accrue from various transactions with other people over a period of time and then cash in on for something big such as homicide.

We may settle for something less than murdering the person at whom we are angry, but we get rid of them in some way.

We may accumulate enough anger at our brother-in-law that we cash in on a sudden fit of anger in which we eject him from our house. We may dump a friend, break up with our partner or spouse. We may file a complaint against a coworker with the boss and cast a cloud of suspicion over them, which may be lead to their termination.

In the meantime, we may express our anger toward them in various ways. We may give them the silent treatment. We may gossip about them. We may spread malicious rumors about them, rumors intended to harm them or upset them. We may take swipes at them in an attempt to annoy or hurt them. We may become cold and bristly when we are around them. We may do other things to make their lives miserable.

Why do people act this way? They are not bad people any more than rest of us are bad people. They do not have permission to express their anger directly at the person with whom they are angry. They may not have permission to recognize that they are angry.

When they were little, any expression of angry feelings or other feelings elicited a strong negative response from whomever was caring for them. The message they got was their angry feelings and their other feelings were not acceptable. As a consequence, they may have difficulty in recognizing and expressing these feelings.

If they do experience them, it is scary. It may trigger anxiety and worst of all anger! Their response to the person who is triggering these feelings is to avoid them.

If they cannot avoid them, they create distance between themselves and the person who triggers the feelings or they get rid that person in some way.

This is not the only thing that people do with anger stamps. They may accumulate enough of them to feel justified in blowing up at somebody, harboring a grudge against the person, and doing harm to the person or punishing the person for something bad that the person did to them or they imagined the person did to them.

When Paul writes about keeping a record of wrongs done against us, he is talking about keeping an anger stamp collection—a record of slights, insults, hurts, and other words and actions that left us feeling angry or annoyed. This includes failures to say something or do something.

As we shall see in the next article, Paul may have another record in mind, one in which we keep track of the wrongdoings and sins of others, taking a perverse delight in their failings.

What he does not appear to be writing about is the tendency to brutally examine ourselves when something goes wrong in a friendship or relationship, blaming ourselves for what happened and agonizing for a long time over what we may have done to cause it. This tendency adds to the pain and emotional distress that we experience as a result of a break in a friendship or relationship.

Most of the credit for the explanation of the meaning of the words and phrases used in this article belongs to the Cambridge English Dictionary. Its clear, simple explanations of their meanings have proven useful in explaining Paul’s description of the kind of love God would have us show others and one another.