Tag Archives: Anger

Ep104 Hope

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Father Len helps us grapple with tough times in our lives and understand the virtue of hope. What is it? Where does it come from? Why it’s essential for peace and joy in our lives.

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Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Paula D’Arcy Theologian of Hope
  • “Gift of the Red Bird: The Story of a Divine Encounter” by Paula D’Arcy
  • Faith, hope and love are different aspects of one spiritual reality.
  • Hope is illogical. It’s not a matter of sitting down and rationalizing with people why they should have hope. If you have some rational reason for hope, that’s not hope. That’s logic.
  • Fear is logical. Depressed people are not irrational. They’re just excessively logical and obsessed with their current state of life.
  • “Notes from the Underground: The Original Unabridged and Complete Edition” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Wealth, comfort and safety don’t bring hope.
  • Poverty and abuse don’t take away hope.
  • Hope is a theological virtue. It comes from God alone, not the circumstances of your life.
  • Hope obliterates the idea that life should be easy.
  • Hope is uncertain, it believes in possibilities.
  • Hope takes work to participate in. It comes from this relationship with divine love and life.
  • The Book of Revelation reveals the struggles we have on earth and tells us how the story ends with a huge victory party in heaven.
  • “Optimism and pessimism are twins. Both are blind to possibilities and lock you in to your current state of life. Optimism believes you will always be happy and beautiful, with a full head of hair. Pessimism believes life will always be crap.” – Father Len
  • Hope is not optimism.
  • We live better in the United States than any human beings in history. We live in such incredible comfort. Yet, our young people have the highest rate of suicide and the highest use of prescription pharmaceutical drugs to deal with depression. If circumstances give hope, our children should be thriving.
  • “We live in a culture of hopelessness because we keep telling people, you need the right circumstances to be happy. Unless you’re a Kardashian, with tons of money and social media likes, unless the world treats you a certain way, you’re a victim.” – Father Len
  • Hopelessness suffocates hope.
  • “Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity” – Jamil Jivani
  • It’s a myth to tell people if they have the right circumstances, they’ll be happy, they’ll be hopeful.
  • A sense of meaning to your life is oxygen for hope.
  • You have to suffocate the things that kill hope. Suffocate anger. Suffocate victim mentality. Suffocate the propaganda that circumstances give you happiness.
  • Characteristics of people who have hope.
    • They can endure higher levels of pain.
    • They enjoy competition, win or lose.
    • They believe life is good, no matter their circumstances.
    • They can survive in humble circumstances.
    • They turn out happier.

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to More Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

  • Life Lessons from Jesus and the Church He Founded: http://LifeLessonsfromJesus.org
  • A Priest’s Life: https://idahovocations.com/resources/video-podcasts/

Ep101 It’s a Soul Problem

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Father Len explains how all the big problems in our nation are soul problems.

Support Wrestling with God Productions: https://www.GiveSendGo.com/WWGProductions

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to More Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Ep99 Dividers and Uniters

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Father Len grapples with the causes, effects and solutions to the anger and division present in our country, our churches, and our families.

Support Wrestling with God Productions: https://www.GiveSendGo.com/WWGProductions

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Dividers are often inspired and motivated by their own psychological needs.
  • Dividers are judgmental.
  • People with a deep desire for division make up their own rules and condemn others for not following their made-up rules.
  • In the Bible, the Pharisees made up hundreds and hundreds of rules. They condemn Jesus and others for not following the rules they made up. They love to proclaim how much more religious and holy they are than everyone else.
  • People who seek division are the enemies of Christ and true religion.
  • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
  • Father Len shares the story of a guy who lived much of his life as a divider though he was very religious. His sense of religion was very legalistic and judgmental, critical of everybody. Remarkably and unconsciously, at the age of 50, he experiences a remarkable deep conversion to his faith and becomes a disciple of love with a desire to unite everyone.
  • Some people accidentally and unconsciously end up working for division in a community out of their own sense of anger, insecurity, or pain.
  • Division or unity is a fundamental choice. At some point in life, we must decide between division and unity, hatred and love.
  • Father Len tells the story of a woman who experienced an awful childhood of rape and incest, yet she devotes her life to helping the wounded and broken of the world to reject shame, heal their souls and feel loved.
  • It’s not what happens to you in life that matters. It’s how you react to what happens that matters.
  • Saint Paul warned people to keep away from those who cause division and put obstacles in their way because they don’t serve the Lord.
  • Satan loves division. Satan loves to dress up as something good, but the only fruits he offers are not good, just more division.
  • Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam
  • Social capital is a sense of unity and solidarity, the need to take care of others and build up an entire community or nation.
  • The United States was built on and succeeded because of social capital.
  • Division is where injustice and hatred grow.
  • Higher social capital tracks with more justice, more societal success, and more happiness.
  • Societies that are more narcissistic, about me, me, me, are less happy and have more crime, corruption, and injustice.
  • Social capital is connected with holiness.
  • “Let’s move away from the current plague in our country and our church that we need to attack each other. We can build a great country and church with social solidarity. We can’t build anything putting each other down constantly.” – Father Len

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to More Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Ep90 Encore: Imagine a World without Jesus

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Father Len explains how the radical ideas Jesus introduced 2000 years ago and the church he established to spread those ideas have changed the world forever.

Make a financial donation here: https://www.GiveSendGo.com/WWGProductions

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • “You’re talking about the single event that probably influenced civilization as we know it now. It’s created our laws and behavior. The knowledge of good and evil. It’s influenced art and literature. It’s affected every possible aspect of anyone’s life, whether they know it or not. It’s absolutely everything. If it wasn’t, what would there be? – Mel Gibson, producer/director, The Passion of the Christ
  • The Gospel of Luke describes how Jesus changed morality and remapped society around meals.
  • In Jesus’s time there were meal codes about how you eat and who you eat with. Jews ate with Jews, never with Gentiles. Jews ate as a family. Men, women, and children together. Gentiles, the Romans and the Greeks, ate with people of their own class and caste system. Rich and poor never ate together. Men and women didn’t eat together. Men ate first and then women because men were considered superior to women.
  • Jesus broke all the meal codes of his time drawing people together by a much different morality. He offered radical hospitality to everyone. He welcomed men and women, rich and poor to sit at table with him.
  • The one person who changed the world the most was not a king or an inventor. The greatest mark on history was made by a traveling preacher named Jesus who established a church community and gave it the responsibility to redraw the world according to hospitality.
  • “I am an historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all of history. Is it any wonder that to this day, this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?” – HG Wells
  • Jesus broke all the rules on how to treat women. Prior to Jesus women were treated inhumanely. They were viewed as inferior to men and nothing more than property. In Jesus’s eyes, women and men are equally valuable. Jesus was friends and ministry partners with women. He treated them with dignity and respect.
  • The idea that all humans – men and women, rich and poor, rulers and peasants – are equally valuable and should be treated with dignity and respect was extremely rare before Christianity.
  • The church Jesus founded, the Catholic Church, started hospitals, universities, and food banks.
  • Jesus started an organized movement to care for the poor and the needy. Religion before Christianity, except for Judaism, wasn’t really concerned with morality or taking care of the poor.
  • The origins of science are rooted in Christian belief. All the early scientists were religious. They were inspired by their faith in Christ to do science. They all viewed science as a means of uncovering the traces of Christ’s handiwork in the universe.
  • The concepts of social justice, education, human rights, women’s rights, and freedom all fit into the idea of radical hospitality that Jesus introduced to the world.
  • Jesus has changed the personal lives of billions of people throughout the world by introducing the theology of the cross. Dying to yourself, dying to your ego, becoming a whole new person by living a life of sacrificial love.
  • Wisdom is path, not a door. The path of daily choices you make on how to live your life.
  • Wisdom is gained through daily small activities. Small choices that become the whole direction of your life.
  • The way of the cross is daily making moral choices, making small choices of virtue. Dying to your pettiness, anger, and selfishness.

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Ep72 Imagine a World without Jesus

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:33 — 28.0MB)

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Father Len explains how the radical ideas Jesus introduced 2000 years ago and the church he established to spread those ideas have changed the world forever.

Make a financial donation here: https://www.GiveSendGo.com/WWGProductions

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • “You’re talking about the single event that probably influenced civilization as we know it now. It’s created our laws and behavior. The knowledge of good and evil. It’s influenced art and literature. It’s affected every possible aspect of anyone’s life, whether they know it or not. It’s absolutely everything. If it wasn’t, what would there be? – Mel Gibson, producer/director, The Passion of the Christ
  • The Gospel of Luke describes how Jesus changed morality and remapped society around meals.
  • In Jesus’s time there were meal codes about how you eat and who you eat with. Jews ate with Jews, never with Gentiles. Jews ate as a family. Men, women, and children together. Gentiles, the Romans and the Greeks, ate with people of their own class and caste system. Rich and poor never ate together. Men and women didn’t eat together. Men ate first and then women because men were considered superior to women.
  • Jesus broke all the meal codes of his time drawing people together by a much different morality. He offered radical hospitality to everyone. He welcomed men and women, rich and poor to sit at table with him.
  • The one person who changed the world the most was not a king or an inventor. The greatest mark on history was made by a traveling preacher named Jesus who established a church community and gave it the responsibility to redraw the world according to hospitality.
  • “I am an historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all of history. Is it any wonder that to this day, this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?” – HG Wells
  • Jesus broke all the rules on how to treat women. Prior to Jesus women were treated inhumanely. They were viewed as inferior to men and nothing more than property. In Jesus’s eyes, women and men are equally valuable. Jesus was friends and ministry partners with women. He treated them with dignity and respect.
  • The idea that all humans – men and women, rich and poor, rulers and peasants – are equally valuable and should be treated with dignity and respect was extremely rare before Christianity.
  • The church Jesus founded, the Catholic Church, started hospitals, universities, and food banks.
  • Jesus started an organized movement to care for the poor and the needy. Religion before Christianity, except for Judaism, wasn’t really concerned with morality or taking care of the poor.
  • The origins of science are rooted in Christian belief. All the early scientists were religious. They were inspired by their faith in Christ to do science. They all viewed science as a means of uncovering the traces of Christ’s handiwork in the universe.
  • The concepts of social justice, education, human rights, women’s rights, and freedom all fit into the idea of radical hospitality that Jesus introduced to the world.
  • Jesus has changed the personal lives of billions of people throughout the world by introducing the theology of the cross. Dying to yourself, dying to your ego, becoming a whole new person by living a life of sacrificial love.
  • Wisdom is path, not a door. The path of daily choices you make on how to live your life.
  • Wisdom is gained through daily small activities. Small choices that become the whole direction of your life.
  • The way of the cross is daily making moral choices, making small choices of virtue. Dying to your pettiness, anger, and selfishness.

We welcome your questions and comments:

Links to Podcasts from Wrestling with God Productions

Ep62 The Dangers of Anger

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:20 — 24.1MB)

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Father Len reveals his 30 year battle with anger and explains why it’s like a cancer that can destroy you unless you learn how to respond to it.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len responds to an email from the mother of a 15-year-old daughter who became depressed and filled with rage over the death of George Floyd.
  • Father Len reveals that anger has been one of his most common sins throughout his life.
  • Research has shown that nothing rots your body like anger.
  • “Anger is rottenness to your bones.” – Proverbs
  • “Anger disintegrates community.” – Proverbs
  • “A hot tempered man stirs up dissension.” – Proverbs
  • Anger destroys wisdom and the ability to make wise choices.
  • “A patient man has great understanding, but a quick tempered man displays foolishness, even after he cools down.” – Proverbs
  • Anger is blinding. When you’re angry, you always think you’re completely right.
  • Anger distorts your view of situations, yourself, your view of the world, and your view of your family. It can make you really stupid.
  • “A hot tempered man must pay a penalty. If you rescue him, you’ll just have to do it again and again and again.” – Proverbs
  • Anger is very addictive. It’s like the cocaine of emotions.
  • Anger feeds on itself. Anger begets anger.
  • Anger often obscures truth and leads to denial.
  • COVID 19 has become an excuse for anger about almost everything.
  • When you’re angry, it’s very difficult to recognize that you may be the problem.
  • Sometimes anger is love in motion to a threat to someone you love.
  • “Be angry, but sin not.” – St. Paul
  • “He that is angry without cause, sins. He who is not angry when there is cause, sins.” – St. John Chrysostom
  • The best response to anger is prayer, self-examination, self-discipline, and sacrifice.
  • Unreasonable impatience is the hotbed of vices.
  • Anger tends to focus you on the problem and obscures the solution.
  • Studies have shown that compassionate people are better at defining boundaries of unacceptable behavior.
  • “Compassion is the strong man’s tool. Anger is the weak man’s tool.” – Father Len

Ep58 The Big Mysteries of Christianity

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:56 — 26.5MB)

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Father Len and Irish grapple with the mystery of the three big events that are the foundation of Christianity: God taking on human flesh and living among us, God being tortured and killed by us, and God’s miraculous resurrection from the dead.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explains why we should view these events as a whole, as one.
  • Father Len identifies three groups of Christians and their sensibilities: Christmas Christians, Good Friday Christians, and Easter Christians.
  • Christmas Christians love the idea of God becoming a human being and the practice of giving and receiving gifts as a way of showing appreciation for the gift of people in their lives.
  • God recognizes there’s a problem in creation and it’s us. We don’t realize that being a true human being means living a life of love. So God takes on human flesh to teach us the way of love.
  • Good Friday Christians see the brokenness in the world. They have a deep awareness of sin in the world. They recognize the fight between goodness and corruption and injustice, even in ourselves. They see and understand the need to “die” for what is right.
  • Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, believe that we can solve the problems of the world, on our own, with education and our intellect. Father Len explains why this is a big lie.
  • We have to be able to see sin and corruption in the world and realize that it’s not the world that needs to change, it’s us. We’re the ones that have to change.
  • Father Len uses the movie “The Help” to illustrate how Christ’s model for becoming a true human being and living a life of love actually works.
  • The struggle against injustice and oppression and dying to our ego purifies the soul. It gets us ready to enter the kingdom of God here and now.
  • Christ’s resurrection from the dead is not just a singular event. It represents a whole way of life that begins for us right here and now and is fulfilled in heaven when we die.
  • If Christ didn’t die, he couldn’t have been resurrected.
  • Resurrection for us is not returning back to our former life. That’s resuscitation. That’s continuing to live like zombies with half a conscience.
  • The resurrection for us is a whole new life. It’s Christ putting his life in our hearts. It’s freedom from all the shame and darkness in the world. It’s so extreme that in the early church those who were resurrected were called “new persons.”
  • Easter Christians live in the resurrection. Their hope is in them and beyond them. They live with love and joy inside them that can’t be taken away because they’ve died to anger and fear.
  • “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • All our sins begin on the inside, in our hearts.
  • Our modern culture tells us that the problems in the world are outside of us. Therapists believe this is the result of a generation raised with the idea that self-esteem is all important. A generation constantly told, “you’re smart, you’re good, you’re beautiful, you’re special, you’re a winner, you can’t be the problem.”
  • If you’re not participating in the resurrection, right here and now, why do you think that you’ll be participating in it in heaven? If you spend your whole life denying your own brokenness, not becoming something new, better, and connected, what makes you think that you will be ready for heaven?

Ep36 Anger and Fear Are Not the Answer to Loss and Disappointment

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Father Len offers perspective and advice to those who feel anger and fear after the recent national election or following any loss or disappointment in life.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len’s concerns about the effects of what he refers to as “post traumatic election syndrome” inspired this episode.
  • Father Len shares a personal experience from a trip to Colombia to put election induced anger, fear, and anxiety in perspective.
  • Father Len explains why joy, determination and patience, not anger, are the remedy for injustice.
  • Jesus implores us to responsibly control the emotions in our hearts, without excuse.
  • Anger clouds our hearts and minds.
  • When you’re angry is not the time to figure out how to respond to what’s causing your anger.
  • “When you’re angry or in a bad mood at work, just go home because you’re just gonna make everyone you work with miserable.” – Sage advice from Father Len’s former bookkeeper
  • History is not logical. One of the best things that ever happened to Christianity was the fall of Rome. It actually helped Christianity spread.
  • History’s greatest and most effective activists, like Martin Luther King Jr and Dorothy Day, turned their anger into steely determination based on prayer and peace.
  • Anger often turns people away from your cause.
  • We need to place our hopes in eternal truths:
    • Christ is our King, not a political group, political faction, or any nation.
    • Faith and love, not anger will unite our country.
  • Father Len’s tips for calming anger:
    • Breathe deeply through your nose.
    • Pray
    • Place the source of your anger in a world 10 years from now and try to imagine if it will really be the big deal or emergency you think it is now.
    • Stop or limit your “doom scrolling” (constantly checking the news for stories that will trigger your anger and anxiety)
    • Focus on an upcoming joyful event in your life.
  • Father Len introduces his “St. Jolly Project” to add more fun and joy to life.
  • It’s the little things in life that make a real difference. Like a song that suddenly puts you in a good mood.
  • Prayer to Fast from Incivility

Ep27 How to Forgive

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:45 — 39.1MB)

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Father Len shares the forgiveness method he uses along with his experiences learning to forgive.

Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom

  • Father Len confesses that he is “not great at forgiving,” but he’s working on it.
  • Forgiveness is a skill that can be learned just like all the other virtues.
  • Forgiving is like an exercise, the more you do it, the better you get.
  • If you learn to forgive small things, you build up the forgiveness muscle so that later you can forgive other things.
  • The LETGO forgiveness method Father Len uses has five steps:
    • L – Look deeply at what went wrong.
    • E – Apply Empathy
    • T – Tell a better story
    • G – Give forgiveness
    • O – One more day to remember choosing to forgive.
  • You may not be able to forgive immediately after an insult or injury because you need time to mourn.
  • Anger prevents forgiveness.
  • Prolonged anger can turn into bitterness.
  • Anger is a reaction to a feeling. You can train yourself to replace anger with forgiveness.
  • Forgetting the insult or injury is not the same as forgiveness.
  • If you don’t give yourself time to really feel the pain of the injury or insult, it can become easy to hide behind anger.
  • Quick compulsive forgiveness may actually be fake forgiveness and a form of denial of the insult or injury as well as a sign that you’re more comfortable being a doormat.
  • Empathy is thinking about what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes and awareness of their pain.
  • Stories change our opinions, not evidence.
  • Stories with a message of hope cause the greatest change.
  • Telling the same story to yourself over and over carves a deep rut in your memory. That can be good or bad.
  • We must learn how to forgive ourselves for stupid things we’ve done.
  • Praying that you’ll have a sincere desire for forgiveness, even if you don’t have the ability, God will answer that prayer.
  • Releasing an expectation that is causing you to suffer is a significant element in the forgiveness process.

Ep16 What is forgiveness and why do it?

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Father Len explains what forgiveness is and isn’t and the powerful positive effects it has on us and those around us.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • We live in an age of anger. It defines our politics, the way we drive, our Facebook posts, and even our religion.
  • A lot of religious people baptize anger and make excuses for it by calling it righteous.
  • Nowhere in the Bible does it mention God’s having righteous anger. There is no righteous anger. Anger is anger.
  • There is a joke about Irish Alzheimer’s. It’s when you forget everything, but those you’re mad at.
  • People often confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation.
  • Everything is forgivable, but not all things can be reconciled.
  • Forgiveness means you’re not going to be trapped in a prison of anger, bitterness, and resentment. It’s a source of freedom.
  • Attempts to reconcile with the sociopath can be problematic. An invitation to get hurt again and again.
  • Forgiveness that skips over justice and doesn’t hold the offender accountable is fake forgiveness. Its amnesty and submission to the wrong. It turns forgiveness into the way of the weak and not the strong.
  • Why should we forgive? First and foremost because God said so.
  • Father Len describes how forgiveness gave Nelson Mandela freedom.
  • Father Len tells the amazing story of a young actress whose career was ruined by Alfred Hitchcock, but she was able to forgive him and later attend his funeral free of anger, bitterness, and resentment.
  • Bitterness has a long-term effect on the brain. It makes you dumber.
  • Anger contributes to bad decision-making.
  • Wounded people wound others. If you hold on to anger and a really deep hurt, you’re likely to hurt other people.
  • Forgiveness silences the voice of the offender that keeps telling you you’re a victim and you have no dignity.
  • Forgiveness contributes to better health and a longer life.
  • Dr. Robert Enright’s “International Forgiveness Institute”
  • “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – CS Lewis
  • The book, “A 1000 Acres” by Jane Smiley is a great story about the power of forgiveness.
  • People who’ve been able to forgive a deep hurt have a much greater capacity to love.