"Wide Nostrils and Long Noses"

"Wide Nostrils and Long Noses"
Assorted Proverbs


The coach of a Little League team called one of his players over to him and said he would like to explain some of the principles of sportsmanship.  “We don’t believe in temper tantrums, screaming at the umpires, using bad language, or sulking when we lose.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The boy nodded, yes.
“All right, then,” said the coach.  “Do you think you can explain it to your mother jumping around over there in the stands?”

Seth Grant of Hamilton, Ohio, was driving along in his car when it caught fire.  He happened to have a six pack of pepsi in his car and used it to extinguish the blaze.  Surprisingly, the car started up again, but two miles down the road it died, and he couldn’t get it started again.  So infuriated at his car, he took out a rifle from the trunk and opened fire on his car.  He was then arrested for using a firearm on a public road.  Asked why he did it, Grant simply said, “I guess I just got mad.”

Thomas Jefferson is credited with first saying, “When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, count to a hundred.”  Mark Twain changed that saying a bit when he said, “When angry, count to ten; when very angry, swear.”

Anger and how we handle it is one of those basic problems of being human.  It’s been with us since the Garden of Eden.  When Cain’s offering was given the thumbs down by God and brother Abel got the thumbs up for his offering, the story teller says that, “Cain lost his temper and went into a sulk.”
God’s reply to Cain was a warning about anger:  “Why this tantrum?  Why this sulking?...Sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you, you’ve got to master it” (Genesis 4:5-7).

So anger first shows up with Cain.  But what’s interesting to me about this story is that anger isn’t how it started.  It started out as petty jealousy.  The anger fueled the jealousy.  It seems that anger isn’t something unto itself.  Leo Madow, in his book, Anger, wrote, “Anger is energy.  It cannot be destroyed.  It has to be converted.”

I think he’s right.  Anger is an energy, that, mixed with other negative qualities (like jealousy in Cain’s case) give force and power and a kind of self-substantiation to those negative qualities.

Here’s one way I was thinking about it.  Think of a fire.  If there was a fire in one of the rooms of your home, you can close the door, keep the oxygen supply to the fire low, so it stays contained.  The fire--some negative human quality--may be burning in your life, but it’s somewhat contained and controlled if kept closed in.  But anger is like oxygen.  You open the door and let the oxygen in, and the blaze flares up suddenly and terrifyingly.  Quickly, things get out of control.  People get hurt.  Things get destroyed.

Do you remember the shooting at the McDonald’s in San Diego a few years ago.  A man opened fire inside the restaurant with an automatic gun in each hand.  He killed everyone in the McDonald’s, over twenty people, men, women, and children.  Finally a police marksman took down the shooter.  Why did the man kill so many people in a seemingly random act of violence?  When interviewed later, his wife and neighbors said, “He was always angry.”  His wife said it probably went back to the time when his mother abandoned him as a child.  Every sense of rejection became fed by the energy of anger until it exploded in fury.  So it wasn’t just anger; it started with rejection.  The rejection was fed by the energy of anger.  Everything went bad when the two were mixed.

Many of the characters in the Bible showed anger for some reason or another, at some time in their lives.  Anger seems to be part of the human fabric, and the Bible is not shy at describing angry humanity.  Jonah shakes his fist at God because God is so gracious to the repentant people in Ninevah.

King Saul, the first King of Israel, was given to fits of temper.  Young David was brought in to calm the king with some guitar music.  Even so, the music wasn’t enough.  Saul’s jealousy and paranoia, fueled by the energy of anger caused him to try and pin David to the wall with a spear.

Jacob blew up at Rachel because she couldn’t have children.  His fear that he wouldn’t have a male heir, fueled by the oxygen of his anger, blew his rage out of control.

In the first chapter of the book of Esther, King Ahasuerus summoned Queen Vashti.  She refused to come to him and dance for him and his drunken friends.  He became afraid that her disobedience would set an example to all the other women about disrespect.  Anger fueled his fear and sense of disrespect, so he had her thrown out of the palace to beg, and another queen was chosen to take her place.

But, there are other times when anger seems to be approved of in the Bible.  Moses, who descends from the mountain with the Ten Commandments in hand, discovers Aaron and the people have built a golden calf and are worshipping it.  He gets furious, and in his rage, breaks the 10 Commandment stones into pieces.

And speaking of pieces, probably one of the most striking--and certainly one of the most blood-chilling--examples of human anger in the Bible involved Samuel the prophet.  Apparently, in the Lord’s service, Samuel had captured Agag, the King of the Amalekites.  There, before the Lord and everyone, Samuel, in a fit of “holy” anger, chopped Agag to pieces.

Jesus, who gets upset when he sees the merchants turning the temple into religious marketplace, allows anger to fuel him as he throws everyone out of the temple.  At another time he gets angry at people’s hardness and lack of grace when he healed a man with a withered hand (Mark 3:5).

So, there’s some tension in the Bible concerning the place and acceptability of anger.  As we browse through the verses of wisdom read earlier from Proverbs, it doesn’t take us long to understand that anger, wrath, hasty words, and hot tempers are energies we need to keep under control or avoid.

A couple of these proverbs advise us to be slow in our anger.  This is an interesting term in the Hebrew language and culture.  For the ancient Hebrews, it was felt that the seat and controller of hot emotions, especially anger, was the nose or nostrils.  When you picture someone getting angry, you think of someone’s nostrils wide and blaring.  Thus, in Hebrew, to be angry, literally means to be of wide nostrils.

In cartoons, when one of the characters is angry, often smoke is picture coming out their nose or ears.  For the Hebrew people, to be quick-tempered or angry literally meant to be short of nose, or wide-nostrilled.  And the opposite, to be slow to anger meant literally to be long of nose.  A modern day equivalent term might be, “short fuse” and “long fuse.”

Just look at the imagery that’s used to describe the difference between a short fused, short nosed, angry person, and a long fused, long-nosed, non-angry person.  An angry person is described in these proverbs as people who stockpile stupidity, have temper-fire, fight, muscle their way through life, misuse political power, have a leak in the dam that would soon burst, have sharp tongues, and produce only heat.

On the opposite side, people not fueled by anger are described as deeply understanding, gentle in their response, keeping the peace, do things in moderation, have self-control, stop the leaks, say little, remain calm, hold their tongue, forgive and forget, and keep their cool.

These proverbs about controlling anger are so wise and so obvious.  Yet they are apparently also so hard to follow because the intensity of the emotional fuel.  These images help us picture the severity of when the fuel of anger gets the best of us.  Like the image of anger as a small crack in the dam.  If not taken care of, and kept in check, the whole dam breaks and there is a great catastrophe.

I’m guessing we all have some image of what we would be like if we allowed our anger to flow freely, or have someone else’s anger flow freely upon us.

There’s the story told of a traveler who got on a train in New York City.  Immediately he went to the porter and said, “Look, I want to get off in Washington, D.C.  Once I’m asleep, it’s very difficult for me to wake up.  Here is five dollars.  When I’m waking up, I have a short fuse; so, please, no matter what I say, don’t be offended.  Just wake me up and put me off the train in Washington.”

Hours later, he awakened as the train pulled into the station at Richmond, Virginia, 100 miles past Washington.  The man was furious.  He found the porter and ripped him up one side and down the other for his incompetence.  “What happened,” the conductor asked the porter.  “I’ve never seen anyone that angry.”
To which the porter replied, “That’s nothing.  You should have seen the fellow I put off at Washington.”

For some, anger seems to over-ride everything else.  Nothing else matters.  Anger has a way of taking over, and until it’s dealt with, all else takes a back seat.  Work becomes less productive.  Relationships are treated curtly and mechanically.  Whatever has made us angry demands our undivided attention, and usually gets it.

Let’s take a look at several of these proverbs about anger, and combine what they teach with some psychological truths about why we get angry.  Proverbs 15:1 states,
A gentle response defuses anger;
But a sharp tongue kindles a temper-fire.

One of the things that happens when we add the oxygen of anger to some fire in our lives, the fire explodes and others get burned.  Anger seeks to pass your pain on to others.  It’s the old “kick the dog” syndrome.  You have a bad day at work; you come home, let anger have its way, and you yell at your spouse; he or she passes the pain of being yelled at on to the kids and punishes them; the kids let anger have its way, and they kick the dog.  The dog bites the cat.  The cat wonders, “What did I do?”

Some pain, some grievance, some injustice is done.  The energy of anger is given some air, and all of a sudden you feel like you have to make someone pay.  Only, the anger hides the fact that it’s your pain and emotional deficits you are making someone else pay for.  Your anger only points out your own pain.  Your own pain only points out your own emotional deficits.  Anger brings all that to the surface, and you and everyone else around you gets a good look at it.  Then, instead of dealing with that pain and deficit to become a better person, you only, through anger, attempt to pass it around.

Proverbs 17:14 is a similar kind of wise saying.
The start of a quarrel is like a leak in a dam;
so stop it before it bursts.

This proverb is the Cain and Abel story.  A simple jealousy; what started out as a simple quarrel, was just a leak in the dam.  How easy it would have been to repair the breach at that point.  But anger was allowed to act as a jackhammer, and what was a little crack turned out to be a bursting dam.

What I think this proverb is saying is that anger can and should serve as a signal.  Anger, like a leak, is a sign that some deeper threat needs attention.  Erik Erikson, one of the world’s foremost psychologists, who studied how we human beings develop emotionally, spent some time studying anger.  Particularly he tried to figure out how anger effects the other parts of our emotional development.  What he discovered was that not learning to handle anger properly is caused by not knowing how to handle other important emotions, particularly kindness, empathy, and affection.

In other words, the writers of the proverbs knew something before Erikson knew it:  that anger is a sign and signal that other, deeper matters need our attention.  If you have an anger problem, the crack in the dam may be pointing to the areas of kindness, empathy and affection.  Kindness has to do with how you treat others with respect and grace.  Empathy has to do with understanding and connecting with the feelings of another person.  Affection has to do with how you express love.  If you are having trouble in one of those three areas, chances are good that you will also allow anger to fuel your inadequacies, poisoning your relationships.  Anger doesn’t have to do with someone else; someone else is not making you angry.  The anger is pointing to a crack in your dam.  Take care of it, before the crack becomes a break and the break becomes a disaster.  And one disaster doesn’t become one disaster after another.


Then there’s Proverbs 14:29,
Slowness to anger makes for deep understanding;
A quick-tempered person stockpiles stupidity.

A couple of the other proverbs have this theme, so it must be an important one.  The theme has to do with the fact that anger just doesn’t affect the person or the immediate situation.  Anger just seems to layer stupidity (stupid actions, stupid words) upon stupidity.  For some reason it’s hard to learn from our anger.  We have this sense of our noble self that everyone is supposed to be noticing and worshipping.  You’d think the consequences of our anger would teach us humility.  Instead, anger fuels this sense that you are entitled to receive instant respect from others, and they should bow to your angry superiority.  Instead, that sense of entitlement only leads you into deeper levels of stupidity and embarrassment.

I used to read Parents Magazine when my kids were growing up.  I figured I needed all the help I could get.  There was an article in one issue in which parents wrote in their most humiliating moments.

One father wrote in about his moment.  He was driving home from the office somewhat earlier than usual.  He came to a stop light with one other car in front of him.  A sign with large letters designated the car in front of him as a student driver.

The light changed green, but the drivers education car was slow in responding.  It lurched forward a few feet, then stopped.  Again it lurched, and again it stalled.  The young woman driver appeared to be confused.  The man in the car behind wanted that inept student to get out of the way.  He became furious with each stall out, and two green lights come and gone.  He laid on the horn.  He flipped off the driver, and motioned furiously for her to get out of his way.

The instructor was calmly giving her instructions, as the man in the car behind finally passed the drivers ed. car, screaming with a red face through his open window as he went by.  And as he went by, his eyes met the poor girls eyes, full of tears, as she was trying to pull aside and let him by.  They were the eyes and face of his own daughter.

When you feel that kind of entitlement, that the world owes you something, that everyone needs to get out of your way because of your sense of self-importance, and you mix in the charged air of anger, look out; stupidity is on the way.  The fire is about to explode on you.  And so is pain and a total loss of respect, which is what you thought you were entitled to in the first place.  Anger takes all that way.

There is so much I could say about anger.  There is so much in the Proverbs about anger.  And all of those proverbs highlight the fact that we humans are infectious.  We are carriers of all kinds of emotions that can be flamed by long noses or wide nostrils.

The other truth of all these proverbs is that anger is a choice.  We choose to be of wide nostrils or of long noses.  We don’t have to get angry; we don’t have to open our mouths; we don’t have to display our stupidity; but we do.  It’s a choice.  We can choose to be understanding, peace keepers, moderate, self-controlled, leak fixers, calm, and cool.  Or, we can choose...