Mental Murder – 4/21/24

Samuel Butler wrote his most famous novel, The Way of All Flesh, between 1873 and 1884, although it wasn’t published ’till after he died in 1902.

The main characters are Ernest, who is the eldest son. Theobald, who is the very stern father who just happens to be a minister. Why are all the jerks ministers? Maybe that’s telling me something. Notice the names are significant. Theobald lived in Battersby. He was critical, punishing, extremely stern. He was married to Christina, a compliant mother who happened to be an enabler. She was a daughter of a clergyman from Crampsford, which communicates restriction, intolerance.

The story traces Ernest’s journey outward to Cambridge University, then unwillingly into the ministry, and then downward as he loses his faith. He commits a crime and does jail time. His salvation comes through his enlightened aunt, Alethia (just happens to be the Greek word for truth). She happens to be the only open-minded relative. She dies and leaves Ernest a significant inheritance. Ernest eventually returns home. He is reconciled with his mother on her deathbed, but he is never reconciled with his father.

Ernest despised his father, and his father knew it. In the end, when Theobald died, Overton (who is the narrator) imagines that he might not have truly died because he died so peacefully in his sleep. The narrator, Overton, questions whether if you die peacefully in your sleep, you haven’t really experienced death because you didn’t know you were dying or dead. So, he suggests—and this is probably the one interesting part of the book—maybe he only half died, just like he only half lived. So, here at the end, Overton is questioning whether Theobald actually lived.

But then he questions his own conclusion when he writes,

“This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him [Theobald], and the general verdict is often the truest. Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his father’s memory.”

His father was greatly loved and greatly respected. So, the reader is left wondering, was Ernest’s view of his father distorted by his bitterness? Or was his father an angel in public and a demon at home? We don’t know. What is clear is that Butler’s novel is about his own life and his own horrible relationship with his father.

Malcolm Muggeridge, in his biography of Samuel Butler, writes,

“There is hate in every reference Butler makes to his childhood.”

He hated his mother, father, sisters.

“His family, it seemed to him, were banded together in a conspiracy to make him unhappy, to hurt and deform him, to deprive him of those things for which his soul longed. Hatred accumulated all through his childhood, and for the rest of his life he had to carry it about with him. A great load of hate weighing him down.”

Muggeridge goes on,

“[Butler] built a world around his father, hated the world he had built, then, horrified, realized that he lived in it, and must go on living in it to the end of his life.”

Doctor Anthony Daniels writes, “The Way of All Flesh is perhaps the most devastating and relentless literary assault by a son upon a father ever written.”

I recommend a lot of books. This is not one of them. Unless, of course, you’re going through a season of life where you feel a bit euphoric, like way too much happiness to handle. Read this. It’ll bring you down, so let’s pray before we jump back into Matthew 5.

Father, the subject of anger is so important. Some of us are carrying around a great load of hate, and it is suffocating. It is crushing us and it feels wrong to even talk about not having it. Some of us are haunted by hurt, and we fluctuate between being angry at others and angry at ourselves. Some of us experienced surges of irresistible rage. I’m not even sure where that comes from. Some of us simmer— a cold, bitter, constant ill will. All of us need you. All of us need help. Thank you, God, that you have called us together this beautiful rainy morning to come into your presence as your family and say, “Lord, please speak to us now.” Do what you desire to do in our hearts. Let us hear what you have to say to us, and thank you that you say it not to crush us but to set us free. We thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

In Matthew 5, Jesus does two things: he tells us who we are (1-16), and he tells us how we live (17 through the end of the chapter). This is what it’s like to be in my kingdom, he is saying. This is the identity, and these are the activities of those who live in my kingdom.

Last week we began the second part, how we live, and Jesus taught us that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He did not come to lower the standard of righteousness. Like, in the past, God was serious about sin, and now he’s good with anything. Jesus is saying, no, no. I’m calling you to a kind of righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Their righteousness tended toward an externalism: if you clean it up on the outside. If you perform right, you’re righteous, you’re right with God, you’re right with one another. Jesus says, let’s go deeper than that, and he gives us six case studies to help us visualize what that looks like, so we can understand what it means to live a righteousness that exceeds this externalism, this religiosity.

The first is this case study on anger. Isn’t that interesting that he starts with anger? Let’s see if we can summarize what we’re going to learn in a sentence: making room for resentment and speaking words of contempt are morally equivalent to murder and result in increasing personal, social, and spiritual consequences.

Jesus reveals this in Matthew 5:21,

“You have heard that it was said of those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Jesus here is not contradicting the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. He is completing it. He is exposing superficial interpretations of it and expressing the true meaning. Before we look at that in detail, let’s step back and ask the question, what is anger?

We can look at anger in a lot of different ways, but one way to think of it is it is your moral guard dog. In other words, it’s a little different than conscience, but it functions in a similar way. When the territory of my personal morality, whether it’s true or false, is violated by someone or something, my guard dog of anger will respond. And there is righteous and unrighteous.

Righteous anger, obviously, is expressed most beautifully by God, who is the angriest person in the universe. Romans 1:18,

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”

A lot of us struggle with that because when we hear a statement like that, we immediately paste on God versions of the anger we’ve experienced, and it’s not pretty. We shouldn’t do that because God is righteously against all that is unrighteous and unjust. For God to cease to be angry towards sin would be for God to cease to be God. If he said, I’m just good with everything that’s going on that’s bad, he would not be God. But be careful. Don’t assume that his anger is like our anger. He is also the most loving person in the universe.

We can be righteously angry. Have you been righteously angry? This is a tough one because when I look back at the times where I feel like I was righteously angry, it was rare and brief. In other words, I think of righteous anger for us as human beings like a fumbled football. If you ever watch a football game, when the ball is fumbled, there is a swarm of large bodies crushing that ball. So, it is when we are righteously angry. It is like a fumbled football in that there is a swarm of untrue and unkind imaginations that quickly seek to crush it.

That is one of the reasons the Bible commands us to, Ephesians 4:26,

“Be angry and do not sin.”

How do I keep my righteous anger from turning into something unrighteous? Deal with it quickly.

“do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

The longer righteous anger is suspended, it has a greater tendency to become unrighteous. This is why James 1:20 says,

“the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

Righteous anger.

The anger we’re more familiar with could be called unrighteous anger. There are two versions of this: the obvious and the subtle. The obvious is rage, volcanic outbursts, screaming, violence, intimidation, having a short fuse, temper tantrums. All of this kind of anger could be called hot-blooded anger. It’s really obvious. It’s really destructive. But then there is cold-blooded anger that is more subtle, like resentment, irritation, annoyance, exasperation, nursing a grudge, ill will, cynicism, some forms of sarcasm, grumpiness, sulking, self-pity, critical spirit. All of these can be forms of a subtle version of anger, and it’s not as obvious or as obviously destructive. What Jesus is getting at is it is likewise lethal. The word he uses, there are two major Greek words: thumós, which is the explosive kind of anger, and orgḗ, which is the more subtle. That’s the one Jesus is using here.

Jesus emphasizes two big points about anger. Number one, the cumulative destruction of anger. Cumulative as in growing in size and effect. Remember, Jesus is helping us see the connection between murder and anger, and he’s moving from externalism into the heart. He gives us three examples to help us.

Number one, resentment leads to judgment. Verse 22,

“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”

The word judgment there is referring to the local Sanhedrin, most likely. This was a group of 3 to 25, depending on the size of the town. The local Sanhedrin adjudicated legal cases and helped resolve disputes. What Jesus is saying is this kind of resentment leads to personal or local consequences.

Number two, insults lead to the council.

“whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council,”

verse 22, second half. The word he uses there, “insults,” is the word “raca,” which is the Greek translation of the Aramaic word meaning “calling someone a worthless person,” speaking with contempt or disdain. The word for council here is not the local, but the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. This was the highest court, 71 members. The point Jesus is making is that this kind of contempt rarely remains localized. The effects spread. It has social or regional consequences. Like Proverbs 29:22 says,

“A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression.”

Rage in a marriage or in a family results in rage in the next generation and rage in the home, in the community, in the schools, in the businesses, in the churches. It goes viral, Jesus is saying.

For example, one of the most significant consequences of Samuel Butler’s book, The Way of All Flesh, and his resentment toward his father was its social implications. He vehemently opposed anything he felt his father stood for, like marriage, family, church. Any social norm he viewed as oppressive. Remember, this is 150 years ago. You’re thinking, as I’m describing, that sounds like a post I just saw. No, no, he was way before his time. As Doctor Anthony Daniels writes,

“This book [he’s referring to The Way of All Flesh] is, or at least could be, a manifesto for virtually all the social pathology [all the social disorder or disease] that I have seen in my medical practice in a British slum at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. Every intellectual presupposition”

If we had a few hours, we could walk through the book and its intellectual presuppositions that were gobbled up by the higher class.

“Every intellectual presupposition that has gone to the creation of misery in the midst of plenty is not only contained, but trumpeted, in The Way of All Flesh.”

What Daniels is arguing is similar to what Jesus is saying: resentment that tends to feel personal tends to spread and begins to have social implications.

Third example: disdain leads to hell. Jesus says at the end of verse 22,

“whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

A fool is calling someone a morally hopeless person. The form of it that’s used here is “moros.” There’s another form, “moron.” Doesn’t take a lot of imagination. I wonder what English word came from that. It has the idea of “worthy of condemnation,” maybe even unredeemable. Jesus is saying if you’re labeling people as morally hopeless, you are putting yourself at risk of the hell of fire.

The historical background behind this expression, “the hell of fire,” is fascinating. It’s the word Gehenna, which is referring to the Valley of Hinnom, which is southwest of Jerusalem. Originally, it was a valley of human sacrifice. In 2 Chronicles 28:3, King Ahaz burned his sons as an offering to bail in this valley. 2 Chronicles 33:6, Manasa did the same thing. The valley had a place called “topheth” in it, which literally meant a “place of burning” that eventually became a place of judgment on Judah for their sin and eventually became a picture of an eternal judgment. That’s what Jesus is referring to here. When you label people unredeemable, it has eternal, existential, consequences.

What is Jesus’s point? I think there are some extremes here. One is somebody who has a very prohibitive conscience might be tempted to think, “Oh no, if I call somebody a fool, I’m going out.” Or, on the other extreme, “As long as I don’t use the word ‘raca’ I’m good to go.” Like, I can call him anything, just not raca or moron. Then I’m okay. No. This point is clear:

Making room for resentment and speaking words of contempt are morally equivalent to murder and result in increasing personal, social, and spiritual consequences.

In our culture, characterized by contempt and canceling, Jesus’ words seem super extreme. Like, what are you talking about? I’m going to hell because I don’t like somebody? That’s not what he’s saying. If I know that I deserve to be in hell right now. Peter Hubbard, if I got what I deserved, right now, I would be burning in hell. My sin, my selfishness, my greed—in the presence of a holy God—deserves to be judged. But I’m not in hell right now. As a matter of fact, I am just like swimming around in the favor of God. His smile is on me. He’s washed all my sins away. I’m completely forgiven, only because of Jesus. Not because of anything in me. I’m no different than anyone else. It’s all grace. Someone who has experienced that kind of grace can’t look at someone else and say, you’re a different kind of person than me. You’re an unsavable kind of person. Unredeemable kind of person.

Do you see what Jesus is getting at? He’s saying you can’t experience God’s grace and then condemn other people who need the same grace you need. That’s what he’s getting at. He’s not saying you can’t look at someone else who’s done something horrible and harmful and say it’s wrong. It’s not saying that. He’s not wanting us to be morally neutral. When we’ve experienced God’s grace and we know what we deserved, it changes the way we look at others. It has to. If I’m a person characterized by rage and resentment, my greatest need is what? I may need an anger management course. I may need that. But my greatest need is I need to see who I am and what God has done for me. When I experience that, I am going to want to pass that along. That’s what Jesus is getting at. The cumulative destruction of anger.

Second point Jesus makes regarding anger is the critical resolution of anger. What do I do if I have something against my neighbor or him against me? Jesus suggests two things. First, see the connection between anger and worship. Verse 23,

“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.”

What Jesus is describing is the day of atonement. You’ve prepared your lamb or another offering. You’ve traveled all the way to Jerusalem. You’ve climbed a lot of stairs. You’ve prepared. You’re coming. You’re ready to make your offering. You’re ready to confess your sin. And then you remember, “Oh, yeah. Never made that right with my employer, who I shafted.” Jesus is saying, you could think a couple of things at this moment. You can think, well, how about I make this offering to balance it out? I shaft him, I do something for God, and we’re even. That’s the way religion thinks. Jesus says no. Put the offering down. Go make it right with your brother. We don’t worship God to try to balance it out. We’re not thinking, I know I screamed at her a lot, and I’ve been really unkind, so I’m going to throw a little extra in the offering plate and she’ll be good with that. She’s not going to be good with that. Go make things right, and then come and worship.

This is one of the hardest things to do, isn’t it? Have you had to do that? I’ve been on my way to prepare or preach a message, and I’ve had to make a phone call. That is super difficult. Or go meet with someone and ask for forgiveness. A lot of people get into this “ball’s in their court” debate, so Jesus comes at it from a couple different ways.

Who makes the first move? Here in Matthew 5:23, “your brother has something against you,” so you’ve sinned against your brother, “…go.” But in Matthew 18:5, we’re going to see

“your brother sins against you,”

what should you do?

“go.”

What if someone has wronged you and you’ve gone, or you’ve tried to go, and you’re not able to resolve it? Look at Mark 11:25.

“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

What he’s talking about there is not an actual reconciliation of two individuals because the one person hasn’t even repented. What he is saying is your heart does not need to be full of resentment. You can—in the presence of God by the power of Jesus—release that person, forgive that person. Even if you’re not able, at this moment, to make things fully reconciled, you don’t have to live as an angry person. See the connection between anger and worship.

Number two, seek reconciliation as soon as possible. Jesus wraps up the first example and then launches into a second example. You’ll see it in 5:24b,

“First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

As Barclay points out, there were certain crimes in the Greco-Roman world where you could literally grab the criminal by the neck and drag them to jail, and they could be in prison that night. Barclay gives a couple examples. Like if you have a booth at the market and somebody heists a bunch of food from your booth and you’re able to track him down, you can actually take him to court right then, and he could be in jail that night.

Or he gives another example of ancient Greece, if you’re bathing in public pools, scantily clad, and leave your clothes on the side of the pool and someone steals your clothes— I’m not sure how you track them down, but legally you’re allowed to, so maybe you have some fast relatives. But the point Jesus is making is if you snooze, you lose. You can see that in the Greek. If you take your time making this right, you might end up in debtor’s prison before you know what happened.

His larger point is resentment is like raw hamburger in your car, in the parking lot, on a hot July day. It’s a true story. One of our extended family members had gone to the store and bought groceries. Somehow, the burger slipped down in between the seats and stayed there for several weeks. It was rancid. I love the way you just responded. Let’s try that with “resentment is bad.” Yes! It did sound the same. That’s what Jesus is getting at. He wants us to have that feeling about our resentment.

Here’s the challenge in our culture: we live in an odd day where resolving resentment is often viewed as undesirable, even immoral, if not dangerous. One of the reasons I gave the Butler example is through his writings, he began a trend to try to make anger fashionable. Doctor Daniels tells the story of a Russian friend of his who emigrated to the States and then ended up living in England. He was part of the elite society and would attend parties. For an extended period of time, his practice was to introduce himself, “Hi, I’m Alex. I hate my parents. Do you?” People were surprised by the introduction every time, but in all the times he did it, not one person said, “As a matter of fact, I love my parents,” or “I had a happy childhood.” They all were surprised and then respond, “As a matter of fact, I do. Now that you mention it, I hate my parents.” Think about that. Why is that?

I’m not minimizing the fact that some people grow up in horrific home situations. Not minimizing that at all. I’m talking about more of a cultural trend. Originally, it was in elite circles where it became so fashionable to be characterized by resentment that if you grew up in a so-called happy home, you were viewed as a shallow adult. If you aren’t wearing your woundedness, then you’re a hollow, shallow person. To be forgiving is often viewed as naive, unsophisticated, easily taken advantage of. To be angry is viewed as powerful, complex, sophisticated, not to be trifled with. So, you can see why the words of Jesus are so controversial in our culture and the way of Jesus so avoided. Jesus says, seek reconciliation as soon as possible because what was fashionable decades ago in the elite circles has now hit the streets and is fairly normal.

A couple of provisos. The urgency of reconciliation does not mean four things. It does not mean that all harm can immediately be resolved or wounds immediately healed. That is not the case. If you’ve survived childhood sexual abuse, hearing, “Hey, get over it. Forgive and forget!” That is not a helpful message. I get that. That’s not what we’re saying here. There are wounds that are so deep where we may need help, even understanding what happened. But having said that, this point is still real. There should be some urgency to move through that. Not to paste over but to move through.

The urgency of reconciliation does not mean, secondly, that all consequences are necessarily removed. Romans 12 does not negate Romans 13. Romans 12: live in harmony, don’t avenge, forgive. Romans 12 is like this expansion of what Jesus is teaching here in Matthew 5. Romans 12: forgive. Romans 13: God has called the government and given the government a sword to avenge the wrongdoing. So, if somebody murders somebody and the victim’s family forgives them, does that mean they should never have jail time? No. I remember meeting with a man years ago who confessed a sexual crime he had committed. He cried out to God for forgiveness, confessed to the people who had been affected, and then we went downtown, and he turned himself in. If we’re genuinely repentant, our goal is not to evade consequences. It’s like, Lord, I want to make this right on every level. Master manipulators will use passages in the Bible on forgiveness to try to coerce you into “forgive and forget. Let’s just move on and pretend it never happened.” And it will happen again and again and again because forgiveness becomes a weapon.

Third, the urgency of reconciliation does not mean that all trust is automatically renewed. If I steal money from you and repent and ask your forgiveness, and you forgive me, that doesn’t mean you’re going to hire me as your bookkeeper.

Fourth, the urgency of reconciliation does not mean that all relationships can be fully restored. Years ago, Ed Welch said,

“Angry people don’t know they’re angry; they know they’re right.”

Their moral guard dog is barking rightness. Often, we, as angry people, can be insecure. We can feel like everybody’s out to get us, so we have to put on this front of anger, or we will be taken advantage of, so our insecurity leads to a “don’t mess with me” attitude. Some people don’t even feel alive if they’re not angry because the adrenaline rush of anger is what they’re hooked up to keep them going. If you’re going to someone like that, you can go humbly, you can go patiently, and it will always be wrong. Like, you came: “you shouldn’t have come. You’re bothering me.” You didn’t come: “you’re abandoning me.” There are times where you’re like, “I don’t know what to do to make this right.”

This is one of the reasons Jesus says, in a couple chapters (we’ll be here at the end of the summer, Lord willing), Matthew 7:6,

“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”

The point of this is not to quote this to the person you’re having a disagreement with and label them as “swine.” Jesus’ point is, just as pigs can’t properly assess the value of pearls, there are people who cannot or will not properly assess the value of what you’re trying to do. Like, whatever you do, they’re going to interpret that as, “You’re attacking me. You’re belittling. You’re disrespecting me.” It’s like, I don’t know what to do. Jesus says you can’t try to manipulate a manipulator. Back off, and when we get to Matthew 7 (the very next section), he’ll talk about ask, seek, knock, pray. But the Kingdom of Christ is not characterized by coercion. There are times—and this is one of the most heartbreaking things—there are times that no matter how much you reach out to someone, they do not want to be reached out to and you have to be willing to step back and be patient. The verse that helps me so much here is Romans 12:18,

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

That is a concession that there are some people who will not live peaceably, but I want to make sure it’s not because of me. Because

“blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Jesus is saying, my people should be peacemakers, peaceable, and doing everything we can do, recognizing the fact that you’re not God. You can’t save people. You can’t change people. But you can be patient and forgiving.

This week, I was meeting with a couple, and we were talking about this regarding marriage. We’ve talked about this regarding marriage in the past, but it struck me how relevant this is to Jesus’ words. Do you remember the circle of kindness? If you look within the circle, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

That’s what Jesus is talking about. We experience the kingdom of God within the circle of kindness. But we tend to go to the corners of unkindness. If you look at the top left, we denounce. What is that? That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about, when you attack the person, not the problem. We defend. That, unfortunately, is my favorite corner (excusing, blaming). Bottom right, we demean. We express disgust and eye-rolling. Depart, bottom left. We disengage. We withdraw. “I don’t have time for you.” “You’re not worth my time.” You can see the top two tend toward fight. The bottom two tend toward flight.

One of the reasons we developed this was because when you’re in a disagreement with your spouse, in a conflict with a brother or sister, your mind is racing— the angry person doesn’t feel angry, he feels right, and it’s hard to think of anything else. The simplicity of this really helps me: stay in the circle, Peter. We can differ with one another. We can have really hard conversations with one another. We can stand on opposite ends of an issue from one another and still stay in the circle. We don’t have to flush convictions. We don’t have to compromise who we are. We can stay in the circle.

If you ponder that, each of us has a favorite corner we tend to go to, if not two. Once you’re aware of that, you will actually feel yourself moving toward that corner when you’re having a disagreement. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. By God’s Spirit, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. How do I do that, Lord? As God did for you in Christ. That’s the power. So, I want us to take a moment. Let’s process this for a moment, and then I’ll pray. But ask the Spirit to search your hearts. For some of us, we’re just going to have to give situations over. For others of us, we need to be ready to go if we need to make something right. Whatever the Spirit is calling you to, let’s respond to him.

Father, thank you for speaking to us, for getting deep within us and not wanting to change us just on the external. You know we struggle with anger, and it comes in so many different forms. So, Spirit of God, speak your love, your forgiveness into our hearts so that we have grace and mercy to share. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.