MMM Sermons: "School Thy Feelings, O My Brother"

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by Saint Mark (bio)

image via Brendan Clary

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints call them "talks," but most non-Christians call them sermons. This is a series of sermons that many Latter-day Saints love and believe. I hope these sermons promote and perfect your faith as they do mine. Read previous MMM Sermons here or watch this specific sermon here.

I come from a family of anger. In fact, anger is a dominant characteristic on both sides of my family. My fifty year-old uncle on one side of the family frequently tells me of experiences where he is drawn into fisticuffs with another driver or a neighbor. His father would huck a shoe at him if he or his siblings crossed in front of the television while it was on, so it's understandable where my uncle gets his rage. On the other side, my father was a wife beater. On various occassions, he broke my mom's jaw and other bones when my mom would do something irritating like give a girlfriend a ride home from work and be home fifteen minutes late. Yes, I have experienced and know the waves of fiery anger that can consume natural men and women, their marriages, their children, their families, even their entire lives.

It hasn't been a cake walk, but I have disciplined myself over many years to fight this natural tendency (thanks to the Lord and His gospel) and now I am training my sons to discipline themselves and prevent the angry fire from consuming them.

I hadn't really heard an honest, frank discussion about anger until President Thomas S. Monson addressed it in the October 2009 General Conference. The shocking accounts and redemptive power of the Savior to help you and I overcome any and all faults contained in this sermon are awesome in the denotative sense of the word. Here are just a few:

Recently as I watched the news on television, I realized that many of the lead stories were similar in nature in that the tragedies reported all basically traced back to one emotion: anger. The father of an infant had been arrested for physical abuse of the baby. It was alleged that the baby’s crying had so infuriated him that he had broken one of the child’s limbs and several ribs. Alarming was the report of growing gang violence, with the number of gang-related killings having risen sharply. Another story that night involved the shooting of a woman by her estranged husband, who was reportedly in a jealous rage after finding her with another man. Then, of course, there was the usual coverage of wars and conflicts throughout the world.

I thought of the words of the Psalmist: “Cease from anger, and forsake wrath.”

How has anger affected your life and/or the lives of those around you?