“He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, But, he who is impulsive exalts folly.” Proverbs 14:29
The story is told of a battle between the rival Italian city-states of Bologna and Modena known as the Battle of Zappolino in 1325 AD. An interesting tidbit about this battle is that, according to reports, it was sparked by a Modenese soldier stealing an oaken bucket from a well in Bologna and taking it back to their city as a trophy. Because of deeply rooted political rivalries and remarkably impulsive tempers, roughly 2,000 soldiers died in this one-day battle over a wooden bucket used to draw water from a well. While some question the account, it illustrates the imperative that we must refrain from impulsive attitudes in our lives. How much unnecessary human suffering has been inflicted by a single decision made in haste?
How many marriages have been damaged, often irreparably by a short tempered, impulsive overreaction? It may be as simple as harsh words that undermine the trust in the home. How often has such dissension created distance in a marriage, eventually leading to cold separation or even infidelity and the like (1 Corinthians 7:1ff)? Or how many parent-child relationships have been stymied by hasty tempers from one or the other, perhaps both?
Or what about all the violence we see in the news cycle seemingly every day? Most of the incidents are not premeditated, but they are the result of poor emotional control leading to exaggerated reactions to situations. I once witnessed the origins of a road rage incident near Chattanooga, Tennessee that ultimately ended in a homicide. After one man angrily honked his horn and made obscene gestures with his hand in response to a simple driving error, the other blew up, chased him down, and eventually shot him dead in his car.
My niece’s uncle on her father’s side was murdered over a portable video game his son leant to another kid at school when he went with his son to ask the other boy’s father for his game back. A simple argument over a $50 video game led to a murder in front of each of two elementary school boys. Who knows the lifelong impact this event had on those boys and everyone around these two men?
You and I both could probably name scores of similar incidents where wrong attitudes about trivial things led to tragic, irreversible, and deeply consequential harm. To the reasonable mind, both these incidents are unbelievably nonsensical. To think that two men died, two men went to prison, and four families were forever deeply wounded and scarred over such things is hard to fathom. Yet, this is the sad world in which we live.
Now, these are extreme examples, but it illustrates a biblical principle that we must embrace and train our children to make part of the fabric of our lives. The men involved in those incidents started as the same clean slates all of us did, yet somehow, they grew to be so impulsive, so hasty, that they threw everything away in a fit of rage over truly insignificant things. Like when Cain slew Abel, the problem is a lack of self-control when facing frustrations.
Paul spoke of the necessity of checking anger as part of the new man in Christ (Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32). In this, we see some necessary elements to maintain impulse control. First, we must determine we will not let anger prompt us to sin (Ephesians 4:26). Second, we must not brood on things and give place to the devil (Ephesians 4:26-27; cf. James 4:6-10). Third, we must replace harsh attitudes with the kindness of the Christ (Ephesians 4:31-5:2; 1 Peter 2:1ff). Jesus cut the process of escalation off at the root in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:21-26). He took the law’s condemnation of murder back to its source, commanding His people to drive anger out of the heart (Mark 7:21). Do not allow your temper to move towards hasty, harsh, detrimental deeds.
None of these are suggestions. These are the Lord’s demands for His people. With our eternal destiny hanging in the balance, we cannot afford to overlook these things. Our families, churches, schools, workplaces, public spaces, etc. are all depending on us being the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16; Philippians 2:14-16).