Anger is an effective drug. Uncontrolled negative emotion creates massive surge of energy and the addict is consumed by its power. He feels no pain as he presses deeper and deeper into his false reality. With a dark sense of fulfillment, he masks guilt with the pleasure derived from his unrestrained expression of anger. He is dimly aware of the havoc his rage causes but easily justifies himself.
Rage is destructive but the ‘rage-oholic’ can’t stop himself, especially when he claims divine authority. He is driven by a force greater than himself to coerce others by the strength of his personality. Nothing can stop him. Nothing; that is, except the Lord.
Paul, at the height of his fury, met Christ and everything changed. He was driven by a self-righteous anger and described in the Luke's account of the early church as “being furiously enraged.” For Paul, it took an extraordinary encounter with Jesus Christ before he could see himself for what he was… out of control.
“So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth… And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities,” (Acts 26.9, 11).
