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HOW LONG SHOULD YOU HOLD A HAND GRENADE?

It’s probably one of the most wrenching books sitting on the shelf here at our Voice of Prophecy offices . . . and it bit us again during the prep time for this series of radio messages. Dead Man Walking, by Sister Helen Prejean, and you might recall that Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon were in an Oscar Award-winning film by the same title. It’s a powerful study of the death penalty here in America, and you can understand that this devout Catholic nun finds herself rather decidedly on one side of the war.

There are so many stories of heinous crimes in this book: mass murders, murders involving rape, murders involving torture. Young girls are suddenly gone from the little country houses they lived in all their lives; Mom and Dad wait and wait, while the police scour the countryside. A young man’s graduation robe hangs in the closet, unworn, unused. Senior prom photos on the kitchen table. And finally the horrible news comes in: “Mr. and Mrs. LeBlanc, I’m sorry . . . we found David’s body.”

Of course, what makes the anger of these parents even greater is that when they get to the courtroom, or when they go to Angola, the penitentiary, they see Sister Helen there with the man who killed their child! She’s there with Patrick Sonnier, praying with him, comforting him, fighting for a stay of execution. It almost seems like the Church, and by extension, God, is on the enemy side, aiding and abetting, helping to prolong their torture.

We’re beginning a three-week radio series here, and frankly, I don’t know if we’ll get even half a mile down the road in just fifteen Bible studies. I’VE GOT TO NURSE THIS GRUDGE BECAUSE IT’S SICK; that’s our title. And I imagine most of us have experienced some of this in our own lives. That gnawing, repeated, never-ending, haunting-your-dreams hatred of that certain someone. That person who hurt you. That person who has always profited at your expense. That person who has cheated his or her way to the head of the line, and always by taking the spot you should have had.

I don’t know if it’s comforting or not to discover that people in the Bible — even some of the Bible writers — were in this very same boat. Have you read some of the Psalms? Let me tell you . . . you get away from Psalm 23 and all the still waters and grassy-green meadows — some of the rest of King David’s writing happen in rip-roaring rapids and poison pastures instead. Philip Yancey, in his latest book about the Old Testament, entitled The Bible Jesus Read, says this:

“You don’t have to read far in Psalms,” he writes, “before encountering some troubling passages, furious outbursts hidden like landmines in the midst of soothing pastoral poetry. Some seem on the level of ‘I hope you get hit by a truck!’ schoolyard epithets. ‘Imprecatory psalms,’ these are called, or sometimes ‘vindictive psalms,’ or, more bluntly, ‘cursing psalms’ because of the curses they rain down on opponents.”

The dictionary tells us that an imprecation is a calling down of a curse on someone else’s head. It’s essentially a screaming rant-and-rave. “You stupid, ugly so-and-so . . . I hope your dog dies! I hope your house blows away in a hurricane! I hope your cable TV goes out during the Super Bowl!”
Do you think I’m kidding? Here’s Psalm 3:7:

“Arise, O Lord! Deliver me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.”

Most of this kind of writing actually goes along the vein of — “Lord, please, just shut them up. Somehow express, in a voice from heaven, that I’ve been right and they’ve been wrong. All I want is justice.”

Well, friend, we have several weeks here to grapple with these sob stories — our own and King David’s too. Today we just want to get one concept on the table, and it’s this: It is not wrong to get angry.

That’s it. It’s not a sin to have anger in your heart. Did you know that? Ephesians 4:26 says it very plainly:

“In your anger do not sin.”

It’s interesting that Paul is quoting here from guess what source? That’s right; the book of Psalms. In fact, that line — “In your anger do not sin” — is just five verses later than David’s sock-‘em-in-the-jaw diatribe. But the Word of God — Psalms 4 and Ephesians 4 — tells us that there is a time and a place when anger is not a wrong emotion.

That’s got to be comforting to some of the people in Sister Helen Prejean’s case studies, which she shares in Dead Man Walking. Now, she was fighting the death penalty for all she was worth. She was trying to rescue those men on Death Row. But she also came to realize the incredible pain, the overwhelming anger, being felt by the victims. She began to see the hurting folks on the other side of the river, the people who were desperately waiting for the state to throw the electric switch to end their misery. Their grudges were a crippling burden.

Listen to these anecdotes. A Jimmy Christian was told by the police, back in 1988, that his son had been killed. Did the cops ever get back to him? Did the authorities stay in touch? Not one word. He eventually heard “on the streets” that somebody had been arrested.

A man named Johnny Johnson came home from church one day . . . and found his wife dead. Her throat cut. The only thing the police did was to arrest him for the crime, even though his innocence was ironclad and obvious.

A Mildred Brewer actually saw her own daughter get shot one day, back in 1979. But instead of getting to ride in the ambulance to the hospital with her kid, police hauled her off to headquarters and wasted three hours grilling her. During those three hours, her daughter died. When the police finally arrested someone, the DA never even bothered to phone Mrs. Brewer and tell her.

And of course, these stories are multiplied over and over — some in agonizing detail. Parents would wait for long, horrifying years while the killers of their children played the system, filing one appeal after another. TV headlines mocked them night after night. It was a brutal ride — the emotional roller coaster.

It’s no wonder that Sister Helen and these grieving, angry, poverty-stricken victims, in their twelve-step meetings with names like “Survive,” came up with really the only slogan that made any sense: God makes a way out of no way.

In this marvelous booklet, How Can I Forgive?, by Vera Sinton — which is our free gift to each of you this week — she makes this point early on.

“Feeling anger when you have been hurt by someone is not wrong.” She then adds: “It is a normal reaction and the sign of a healthy personality.”

She suggests that, just as pain is an important signal to your body that something is dangerously wrong, anger is often an appropriate warning to you that something is amiss. But then she goes on to say the same thing the Bible says, which is this: initial anger is often a good thing, a necessary thing, even a righteous thing. Even Jesus had things happen to Him which caused — at that moment — good anger. But here’s part two of the diagnosis. Continued anger, nonstop anger, “grudge” anger . . . that’s a different thing. That is harmful And dangerous. And it puts you on a road that leads to sin.

We really ought to read the entire Bible verse, which is always a good idea, isn’t it? Here’s Ephesians 4:26 again, and please take note:

“‘In your anger do not sin.’” So far so good. But as we continue: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” And listen to this from verse 27: “And do not give the devil a foothold.”

I recall a cute line from the comedienne, Phyllis Diller, who was always duking it out with her moron husband, Fang. “Never go to bed mad,” she advises. “Stay up and fight!” But you know, in a sense, she’s right. It’s better to stay up and throw pillows for a while, to stay up and fight, than it is to harbor a grudge, to stay mad overnight, or over a month or a year or a lifetime.

Let me close with this last word about “imprecations,” and Philip Yancey shares this reference from a Miroslav Volf and the book, Exclusion and Embrace.

“For the followers of the crucified Messiah, the main message of the imprecatory Psalms” — that’s the sock-‘em-in-the-jaw kind, remember — “is this: rage belongs before God. This is no mere cathartic discharge of pent up aggression before the Almighty who ought to care. Much more significantly, by placing unattended rage before God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self face to face with a God who loves and does justice.”

That’s powerful, isn’t it? Maybe we could say that even good anger is like a hand grenade that gets unexpectedly tossed in your lap. That’s not your fault. That’s not wrong. But the fuse is ticking, isn’t it? Give it up quickly, before sundown tonight, to the divine demolition team.