Anger and Unwanted Sexual Behavior

James Craig , spiritual coach and Awaken coordinator . We're here for the next . Well , I'll be hosting a mini series for the next three weeks on the topic of anger . We actually think this is a pretty appropriate timing because family gatherings are coming up . For some of us , anger is often simmering under the surface . The election just happened .

I mean there's just a lot of things that can bring anger into the context of family gathering . So , as Thanksgiving and Christmas come up , we want to talk about anger and we want to talk about the surprising connection between anger and unwanted sexual behavior .

So , josh , when you think about this idea of anger , I don't know , it doesn't feel very intuitive to me . I found it to be true . It doesn't feel intuitive , though . This idea that anger is one of the deepest connected kind of drivers of unwanted sexual behavior , of habitual sexual brokenness .

Does that resonate with you or clients you've worked with over the years ?

And no , it does not feel intuitive to me and I don't think it feels intuitive to most of the men and women who come to regeneration for help . And I'd say , just personally , my relationship with anger growing up was very ambivalent , like I did not like anger .

We talk more about that later , I think as a Christian , I felt very ambivalent about anger in the sense of you know , do good Christians get angry ? What does it look like when good Christians get angry ? So there's a whole like , even apart from the sexual behavior , there's all sorts of like , discomfort , struggle with this anger in general .

Then , when you throw it into the , into the mix of wait a minute , this has something to do with driving my unwanted sexual behavior . This is part of the reason that I keep going back to whatever my unwanted sexual behavior is . Now I'm in a quandary because what does that mean and where do I even start ?

So , yeah , I'm with you as far as it not feeling very intuitive , but I'm with you in the sense of like , yes , it absolutely is , and as we understand what Jay's teaching and as we dug into this , like it makes a lot of sense .

He researched over 4,000 men and women , or around 4,000 men and women , and what drives them to their sexual sin or their unwanted sexual behavior . And outside of shame , maybe shame . I bet shame . What he would say is number one . But anger is the most significant driver that he found in connection to unwanted sexual behavior .

He says at one point this is another quote he says that lust is important to address . We all we're listening to this podcast . We're dealing with unwanted sexual behavior . Lust is pretty obvious . I'm here because I'm lusting , but Jay says it's like a car battery . Lust is pretty obvious . I'm here because I'm lusting , but Jay says it's like a car battery .

It starts the engine , but we actually need anger to fuel our drive through unwanted sexual behavior . So lust is like the starter of an engine , but anger is the fuel . Anger is the gasoline that keeps it going . Here's the problem , though , that I see , josh , the problem is that anger can be hard to find . Some anger is very obvious .

Some anger is like , okay , dad's blowing up again or I'm yelling at so and so that's pretty obvious . But for most people coming to regen that might not be their biggest thing like hey , I'm blowing up all the time , kind of anger . It's actually something more hidden . So why , why do you think anger is so hard to find for most of us ?

And and lust and sexual desire and sexual pleasure , these are so powerful that it can be easy just to just to imagine or believe that that's all that's present with our unwanted sexual behavior . So anger is , is hidden in that , in the process .

For us , like we just you know , for that reason we're not recognized that it's a part of the addictive cycle or our addictive patterns sexually .

I think the other is that , like in my story , both in my home growing up and in my understanding at least , of Christianity in my understanding at least of Christianity I wasn't supposed to get angry , like good people don't get angry . And I don't mean that I never saw people angry growing up , I did , but it was never . We never viewed it .

Even when my parents were angry , like I never . I never heard from them or learn from them that anger can be good , like like anger in my house was , and I think they would agree with this it was either off or turned way up and when it was turned way up it was hurtful , like it would be . You know it would come out of the blue .

It felt like it would . It would snap at people , it hurt people's feelings , it would push people away and so for a kid growing up in that like I , I wanted to hide anger .

Even those who kind of acknowledge they've got an anger problem , like one of the reasons it can feel like it comes out of the blue is because when someone starts to feel angry , they hide it . So I think there's this misnomer that anger is , is necessarily a bad thing or is something that is , should be . You know , just calm down , you know , just .

You know Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers . Okay , we're going to be peacemakers , we're gonna be nice , we're gonna be kind , like we even imagine Jesus , I think mostly kind , even tempered , peaceful , like we don't imagine Jesus angry much , although the gospel certainly give us reason to to recognize that he in fact did get angry and did express anger .

So but what do you think ? What's in your experience personally with others , like , why would you say anger gets hidden or is hard to find ?

But he says in the original Greek there's , there's this connotation of Jesus got angry , and Keller's saying Jesus was angry at death .

And I think I'm the older child , I think I really sought to be the peacemaker in certain ways , and I would often take anger and not express it in a healthy or holy way .

I would push it inward and what I have come to believe is that , in line with what Jay Stringer is saying , in Unwanted it was almost like so much compression on the anger that it started coming out sideways through my unwanted sexual behavior , and so there's something about just learning that this is not a safe emotion .

It's almost like we've only seen it either stuffed or exploding and so we don't know what does it look like for it to be expressed in a good way , literally . In this section Jay says that healthy anger is about justice and restoration , seeking what is right and restoring .

I've also heard it said anger is fundamentally about protection and destruction and everything related to that . You know nature , things like that . But then we're supposed to destroy that which is destroying people or other things .

So we're supposed to destroy the kingdom of darkness and I know that word destroy just sounds so intense for our very nice Western culture that we live in .

But to not recognize that there's actually things worth destroying is to not realize , like there's seriousness to sin , there's seriousness to our fallen nature , and so I think that there's actually this fundamental thing of like anger is not purely bad . So in your mind , how do we sort through some of that ?

Like , how do we sort through righteous anger versus sinful anger and the kind of anger that Jay's talking about that leads to unwanted sexual behavior ?

And I think about , like World War II , maybe a good example , like what Hitler was doing it was right to be angry at the violence of the Nazis , it was right to be angry at the concentration camps and all his abuses , and it but anger by itself . So so anger drove , I think , the allies towards and including drove the U ? S into the war .

It was a part of why the U ? S came to fight . But it drove the allies to to do what they did with great courage , great valor , great honor , to destroy the what Hitler was doing and a great cost . And that's , that's a part of the good valor , beauty , of the justice and restoration anger desires .

The problem , I think , it comes when we we get kind of sloppy with the destruction .

Part of that , or maybe one of two things , one is , is that when we turn the kind of justice towards that , a bit of that sense of like'm not supposed to be angry , you know like , and so we we kind of get twisted up in our justice piece and then we we do kind of like I mean , many of us have even heard this like somebody gets angry and somebody else

in the room says , look , just calm down , like properly dealing with anger . That's not , that's not the way to do it . You don't just calm down .

I mean if , if by that you mean like just breathe and like get rid of the emotion , the intensity of the anger , because that's not really resolving the desire for justice and restoration , it's just trying to remove the intensity of of , you know , the , the danger of anger , if you will .

And the other side , like the other approach , is just kind of just letting it out . You know , just get it out , just get your anger out , which doesn't work . I mean it does work , but it doesn't .

It doesn't make the anger go down , it like just inflames it and it and just letting it out can be is what some of us have experienced , where where we get so hurt by anger and I think one of the reasons that we hide it ourselves , cause we don't want to just let it out because we know we're going to hurt somebody , we don't want to ruin relationships ,

and yada , yada , yada . So all that to say , like the , the , the anger rightly directed during world war II , for example , was a good thing to stop Hitler , but it wasn't enough to bring about full justice and restoration . We we needed more than that .

I mean one example that I think is even the allies ended up turning their backs on Poland and Poland then was invaded by Russia , who was one of the allies . So I mean it was . It was just this . It wasn't enough to bring the full gambit Like we need to pay , kind of attuned to in our anger .

We need to attune to where are we desiring justice , where are we desiring restoration ? It's not just about feeling and expressing the anger , it is about like getting under .

So if you think about anger as a second level , emotion , the first level is something , something that's seeking restoration and justice , and so getting underneath the anger to find out like what , what is my anger really ? What is the good my anger is really wanting to do here ? Does that make sense ?

And so there's something that , like God , has wired into us and it does say God gets angry , not probably as most human anger looks more often than not , but God gets angry because he cares about the protection of his beloved . He cares about the widow , the orphan , the foreigner , the poor . He cares about children .

He says very harsh things to people who , would you know , significantly harm children . And so there's something about this like and I almost want to speak to the men and women who are wrestling with unwanted sexual behavior I wonder in your own life what your anger might be trying to say should have been protected .

And even for those who are listening , who are trying to parent sexual sexuality like sexually disciple their kids , or have experienced betrayal trauma , anger is trying to send a certain kind of message . It doesn't mean again , we should stuff it or fully let it out in the way we maybe naturally think . There's probably somewhere in the middle .

We'll keep exploring that . But your anger is trying to say something should not have happened .

systems , which this can be a very blunt like or caveman-esque version of it , because I , again , I'm not trained in this , but one of the one of the themes in internal family systems is is getting in touch with the various parts of you and so , when anger rises up or we become aware of there's a part of me that feels really angry in this situation , assuming

that that part has some good intention and beginning to ask it what is your good intention toward me or towards this situation , rather than vilifying it and thinking , well , I'm not supposed to be angry at my mom or my dad , or they did the best they could , or I shouldn't be angry at my you know , my pastor , because he's a godly man , or or my spouse ,

because good husbands don't get angry at their wives , or or my kids , or whatever , like . What's ? What are you trying to do ? What's the like ? Asking anger , the part of you that's angry , what's the ? What's the good intention that you have towards me in this , in this space ?

It's been a it's been a powerful question to entertain for me , just as a place to begin , and that's what makes me . What you're sharing made me think of that I want . But I do want to ask you a question . I'm not because I'm not sure , before we go any further .

I'm not sure that we've done a great job of connecting the dots for people between unwanted sexual behavior and anger , like .

So I'm just thinking about the person who's listening , going like , hey , I'm , I'm tuned in because I'm I'm struggling with pornography , or I've been hooking up with other guys or other girls , or like where , what is I mean ? Maybe it would just be good for us to tease out a little bit or noodle on a little bit , like how is it ?

Why did their anger turn towards that or how is anger turning them in those directions ?

He literally says at one point desire which is kind of the essence of what lust can twist right the essential good is desire , and it can get twisted toward desiring things that God wouldn't want us to desire or whatever .

Desire , if not fully satisfied , often gives birth to anger , and so part of what I'm seeing as a connection is like the harm that has happened to us . There was a desire for wholeness and shalom and peace , and so that desire wasn't met , and that was actually a really good desire .

And then later on or in in other ways , like you know , I want second dessert .

Dad , I'm a five-year-old screaming for dessert before dinner , whatever it is that can create this temper , tantrum or this anger , because this thing that would actually be bad for the kid is being withheld , that desire , for you know , dessert before dinner is leading to anger , and so I think what Jay's trying to do here is show that , like desire and anger often

go very much together , and he goes so far as to say , on that same page , he says rarely do I meet men who are consciously aware of their eroticized anger . Instead , they see the drive for sex as a mashup of emotions such as loneliness , frustration and disappointment .

And what Jay's trying to point out is that often what we're doing with our anger because we haven't figured out how to deal with it well , because it's been bottled up and we just don't really know what to do with it we've actually . It has to go somewhere . It's like it's like , you know , the electrons creating a lightning bolt .

Like that , energy has to be released somewhere , and often where we're releasing it without realizing it , is on the men and women in pornography or on other people in our lives . We're not seeing them as the full person .

We're mad at this or that injustice from our past or whatever , and we're taking that out to whatever degree on the men or women in pornography . One of the interesting things and sad things about pornography is that it doesn't demonstrate . More often than not it doesn't demonstrate mutual , loving sexual relations .

It demonstrates something that is much more fueled by anger . More often than not , pornographers know how to like set things up or set the scene like there is . There's anger inherent in that , but there's also just the ways we're taking our unprocessed anger and releasing it there .

Less extreme is is our themes of of dominance and control over another person and then maybe less extreme , but still there is pornography itself is an expression of controlling another person , even if it's just I get to choose who I'm looking at and when I'm looking at them . Every relationship you don't . You don't get that kind of control .

If you're in a real healthy you brought up the healthy , loving relationship , there's a give and take , there's a . You don't get to treat somebody , you don't get to disregard somebody all day long . You're , you know your wife all day long and then that night say , hey , let's , you know , let's have sex like in a healthy relationship .

No , no , we , we actually need to connect . There needs to be like an intimacy connection , vulnerability . Pornography just shoves it all aside and it's like I get who I want when I want them and if you , if you don't fit what I want . Then I swipe right and I find something else Like so there's .

So even even on that like level if I'm not looking at violent pornography there's still a level of control which betrays the reality that underneath the lust there is some type of anger , there's some type of , you know , I , I want to be the one in charge and power , and I think Jay even mentions that's maybe even a place to begin at the end of the chapter

and then some of the work that we do in Unwanted and in coaching addresses , getting after someone's story and even beginning to invite them to examine without judgment , with curiosity and kindness , kind of you know , on the porch , like I think you're gonna talk about that later .

But what are the themes in the fantasy of pornography , and where are there themes of control or power over or anger , and what might those reveal about the real anger that you've got to deal with in your life that's happening inside of you ?

Even if we're repeating something really painful that's happened , there's a sense in which we're now gaining a type of control over that situation by entering into the fantasy and repeating or reversing that one's more obvious , like if something has happened to us and now we're seeking fantasies where we feel like the one in charge . We feel like so either way .

We're taking this thing that we don't know how to deal with this anger and we're putting it on to pornography . So , josh , maybe it would help too . Have you seen place in your own life like something , like a story or something that would help people connect the dots , maybe in their own stories , connecting unwanted sexual behavior and anger ?

So we'd move away from our home ,

move 2,000 miles across the country or 1500 miles across the country and live with my dad for a year . You can imagine , as a preteen just getting ready to start middle school , junior high , like just how scary that idea would be and how disheartening leaving friends , familiarity and starting a new school .

When we learned about it , we were at my dad's house , we learned this was going to happen and my two brothers both just got so pissed off , like , like outwardly , like we're sitting in the room with my , my dad , my step-mom and my younger half-sister , who I adored , and and both of them got angry .

One of them , you know , like stormed off I'm not going to do it . The other one , you know , yelled something to and , and , you know , stayed in the room but was still like just furious . I remember I was a pretty sensitive kid and I remember sitting there and I had this , this deep conflict inside of me . On the one side , I .

What was most present to me was this , this feeling of like oh crap . Like I mean , I was just terrified , petrified at this idea and I was also like thinking about my brothers and going like how , how could you say that stuff out loud ? That's , you know , our dad loves us and he has wanted us to go live with him .

This is going to feel so hurtful to him . My , our half sister sitting here , she's excited about the idea of getting more time with us and you're just yelling like they're going to take it personally . So I was feeling all that and I was also envious and kind of impressed that my brothers could be so explicit about what they were feeling .

So I was all like tangled up . I was the classic like stuff your your feelings , stuff your emotions because it's going to hurt somebody . But it was right for them to get angry and it was , and and because we needed some kind of justice and we needed some kind of restoration .

It doesn't mean that that what my parents wanted to do was necessarily bad , but it does mean that that we needed some shepherding and some deep care . Through that , and my brothers in their own , you know young way we're , we're , we're letting people know that like , this isn't , this is not good , this hurts .

Interestingly enough , and this is where I can't connect the dots in the time we've got . But within the next six months is when my struggle with unwanted sexual behaviors , pornography , masturbation , began in earnest .

And then , in the next six months after that , or 12 months after that , those behaviors snowballed into some other things that became a regular part of my life for years and years and years and I never recognized but you think so again . What I was saying before about the on the on the minor end of things , pornography is control .

It is I get to control what happens to me , I get to control who I'm looking at , I get to control vulnerability in this situation and my , my jump into that stuff I think was a was a desperate grab , for that's what I needed . Does that ? Does that make sense ? Connect to your question .

You've talked , josh , in Awaken and other places about pressing our wounds into Jesus . And again there's that quote out there that says the pain that we don't transform , we transfer , or something along those lines . It said better than that , yeah .

And so there's this idea of like , okay , if I'm not figuring out how to place this into Jesus , who took on the sin of the world , who took on the anger , who took on the brokenness , if I'm not figuring out how to work this out with him and press it into his wounds , like it's going to come out somewhere else .

So I know we could talk for probably another hour on just exactly that . I want to give you the final word , josh , and ask you to pray for us in just a moment . But let me just read this final quote from chapter eight of Unwanted .

It says if you want to see your unwanted sexual behavior transformed , name anger and lust as the partners in crime that they are . Too often , people of faith have been loquacious in discussing purity , lust and even sexual addiction , but largely silent on the issue of anger and power , as it especially relates to male violence against women .

Our preoccupation with lust and our avoidance of anger may be central to why many of us have not been able to find freedom , and so in just a moment I'm going to allow Josh to close us out , but I do just want to highlight that another place of profound anger that has different circumstances and perhaps different outlets is in betrayal trauma .

If you are in an intimate relationship with a partner , with a spouse especially and there's this hidden life that you've been living and it's come out your spouse has very likely experienced what's called betrayal trauma , and so the anger that comes with that is extremely hard to process . So we've created as a team something called the Compass Prayer Journal .

You can find that on our website . This is just a 21-day prayer journal to begin helping those , in this case wives . We know husbands have experienced betrayal as well , but in this case , helping wives who have experienced betrayal walk through that with Jesus and impress some of this stuff into Jesus .

I just felt like this is an important place to highlight that , because the anger that comes with betrayal is so overwhelming and confusing . So , again , whether you've seen anger begin to connect to your unwanted sexual behavior , or whether you've experienced anger from betrayal , or even

anger trying to figure out how do I parent this kid who seems out of control , or whatever , we want to just begin or just continue to help equip you all to deal with anger , and we will be talking about anger in more depth and how to overcome it more in the next couple weeks .

I mean , I think so many of us are so grateful for his insights into this stuff , his research and his insights , like I just get you know , we just reviewing this part of the chapter in his book unwanted has been refreshing , for has been refreshing for me and , I know , for the rest of our team .

So if you haven't read that book or not familiar with his work , we encourage that . So , final word , I'd say this One is God gets angry and even as I say it , it's important to acknowledge the kinds of internal reactions that we have to that idea , which probably helped to reveal our own struggles with why we struggle to get angry .

Anger is a characteristic that originated in God and our capacity for anger is given to us by him as one of the ways we bear his image . You can understand , I think , as we think about anger as meant to aim our desire towards restoration and justice .

Unaddressed anger ends up destroying ourselves , our loved ones , the men and women caught in pornography , lost sex trafficking .

It is really worthwhile getting after addressing anger , and if you don't know how to do that , team's here the other places that you can do that , but such a key to helping to disconnect hidden anger , suppressed anger , repressed anger , stuffed anger from , from fueling the ongoing unwanted sexual behaviors in our lives .

So , yeah , let me let me pray for for us as we end . Father , I know that for me and probably many of our listeners , the idea that you get angry is kind of scary , honestly .

And so , lord , we recall to mind you , jesus on the cross , and if you , jesus , the one who took the misplaced anger of this world into your body , if you feel anger , lord , it must be good .

And so , lord , would you do the hard work , would you disconnect for us anger from what fuels our unwanted sexual behaviors , and would you uncover for us where we're angry .

And , lord , teach us how to manage , walk with handle , express , feel anger , as you do , healthy ways and holy ways , good ways , and give us grace , lord , where we are adolescent with our anger . Thank you for your love . We love you too . In the name of the Father , son and Holy Spirit , we pray Amen .