Thank you and welcome back. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business and I’m also the author of this book, biblical Wisdom for Business Leaders 30 Sayings from Proverbs and I’m teaching my way, way through this book. I covered 30 Proverbs that occur in chapter 22, starting at verse 17 through chapter 24, verse 34, which is really the end of chapter 24. And so I’m doing a video on each saying. And so it’ll take me a little bit of time to get through all 30 videos, but I’m looking forward to doing it.
I really enjoyed writing the book. I’m even looking forward more to doing these videos and spending this time with you and helping you as a business owner and a business leader understand all that the Bible has to say about owning a business, running a business and being a business leader. So before we get started however, I’d like for you to head over to Bible and Business.com and take a look at my website. You can also contact me on Twitter handle at biblebusiness. I also have a Facebook page and a LinkedIn page and of course you’re always welcome to email me, Bill@bibleindbusiness.com.
A number of people do this. They kind of get a hold of me and they say my business is not doing well or I’m facing this ethical situation, what do you think? And I always enjoy those conversations. So you’re always welcome to get a hold of me and by email and just say, hey Bill, here’s what’s going on in my business and I would really enjoy having a dialogue with you about that. Also, you’ll notice that my voice is a bit raspy.
It’s raspy because I’m coming off a pretty significant cold or flu, something upper respiratory and it really had me down for the count for a couple of weeks there, but coming back off of it and getting back in the saddle and getting ready to go again. So here’s the verse, proverbs 22, verses 24 and 25, this is our text for today. And the Sage writes this do not make friends with a hot-tempered person and do not associate with one easily angered or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared. So this proverb focuses on the negative consequences of associating with one who is easily angered. It’s the absorption method, right?
I’m associating. So I’m going to absorb from you. It’s that absorption method of learning that the sage has in view. I just got done doing another video for this Bible and Business YouTube channel, but for another playlist on mentoring. And mentoring really is teaching through action.
And the student, when they watch what the mentor does, they absorb. Yeah, there is some verbal teaching that goes on there, but in mentoring and in coaching, you really absorb how the other person lives their life and what their characteristics are and that kind of thing. It’s the absorption method of learning that the Sage has in view here, because really more is caught than taught, and we see that here. Do not associate with one easily angered or you may learn their ways. In other words, you’re going to learn through your association.
It’s not like they’re going to hand you a book and say, here’s how to be angry. Seven ways to be angry today. They’re not going to do that, but what they will do is act it out, live it out, and you will absorb it, and then you’ll learn their ways. So I just want to make a point here also that a life lived in anger can lead to a lifetime of sorrow that is going to be difficult to erase. Now, obviously, people who have quick tempers, right, people who blow up and get angry easily is part of what’s in view here in this saying from the Sage.
But I also believe that the sage also has in view what I call the intentional use of anger, okay? So we need to understand that anger can be controlled, it can be passive, it can be hostile, and it can also be revealed. Our anger can be revealed through humor, through frustration, sarcasm, and so forth. So the intentional use of anger can very much be learned through association. And I think our country has learned how to be angry not because they have spent a lot of time with someone who blows up, who’s calm for a while, then they blow up, and then they’re calm, and then they blow up.
I don’t think that’s where our country has gotten its anger. I think our country has gotten very angry because of a number of different roles in our society use anger intentionally to achieve their own ends. So, for example, comics who make a living being sarcastic is a form of anger because sarcasm is really anger plus cynicism couched in humorous ways, right? You’re going to say, well, being humorous isn’t being angry. Oh, it certainly can be.
It certainly can be. Don’t think for a moment that some humor is not really steeped in anger. There are bullies who ridicule and demean and humiliate others. There’s usually a lot of anger in someone who’s abusive like a bully. Political candidates for decades, real I’m 62 at the time of this recording.
My entire life, almost political candidates have used anger to gin up their bases, to consolidate their bases, to be against something. And a number of political candidates use anger in order to achieve their ends. Cultural influencers can teach their followers to be angry over real or perceived injustices. Leaders who become angry when anyone else dares to question their decisions, that can sometimes be an intentional thing. You’re questioning me, so I’m going to intentionally become angry just to push you off, to get you away from me, to get you to stop questioning me.
We’ve seen in sports, really for decades, coaches get angry and yell at their players and there’s really no reason for it. Good coaching doesn’t need anger. It just doesn’t. Good coaching is like good mentoring and good coaching really the best coaches in professional sports, high school sports, college sports are not angry people. They really aren’t.
Anyone who intentionally murders or abuses another animal or person is angry. There are professors who teach Godless philosophies and they’ll often become angry when the subject of God comes up. I have a family member who is like that. He’s been a professor his whole life and very atheistic. And when the subject of God comes up, he becomes angry.
There are producers of movies who cause their audience to become angry, especially if it’s a documentary and they’re trying to get across a particular social or political point. And obviously leaders of nations who are willing to use their military to invade other countries ruthlessly kill civilians in pursuit of domination, those are angry people. They may not walk around with a scowl on their face or punching their fists and walls and things like that but they’re very angry people. They might actually also be. They obviously are very driven, high ambition, very arrogant, that kind of thing.
But anger is usually a part of that mix there. So when you stop to take a look at these intentional uses of anger, perhaps you can begin to see how our culture is steeped in anger. And that’s really not a very good thing at all because the effects of anger are significant. In business, anger is a distancing emotion. In fact, not just in business but in life.
Anger is a distancing emotion. Yes, it’s a way to control others, but it’s also a way to distance others. It’s a way for to say to others I don’t want you around. We’re going to do things my way and I’m just going to be an angry horse’s platoon here for others to go, well, I don’t need this in my life. Time for me to move on.
It’s a distancing emotion. Now, there are some studies who think that anger leads to creativity and increased productivity. Perhaps it does, but usually the opposite is true. It blots out reason and it blurs good judgment. It decreases productivity and it decreases morale.
When I was counseling families and they would have teenagers, I would tell the families, look, when emotions runs high, sense runs low, right? If you want everything to be sensible then you got to keep your emotions in check. So when emotions run high, sense runs low. When anger is high that angry person is usually not very sensible. They’re not logical.
They’re not thinking with their heads. They’re thinking with their emotions. And that’s usually not a good place for leaders to be. Certainly not a good place for husbands and wives to be with each other or with their children. It’s just not a good place for politicians to be.
It’s not a good place for anybody to be. And so you just need to know that anger is a distancing emotion and it usually decreases productivity and morale in the workplace. And I will tell you this, top talent doesn’t stick around. If you’re an angry business owner, I will suspect that you have a revolving door in your business. Or the people who stay are those who do mediocre work and they never challenge you on anything.
They just get a paycheck and they go home and they don’t really care about your business all that much. So top talent, the people that you really want on your team, the people you really want to hire, they don’t stick around if you’re angry, they leave. They just they just go away. And one of the things I look for when I’m consulting with businesses is this a revolving door. And if it is, why?
And it almost always has something to do with dysfunction in the owner or one of the leaders. Angry employees in the workplace are more likely to engage in unethical behavior. There are studies that demonstrate this. Those on the receiving end of anger can develop grudges against the one who becomes easily angered. I think we’ve all been there at one time or another where someone yelled at us and it was difficult not to hold a grudge against them.
People who work with angry bosses are angry owners. If they stay, they keep their heads down. Like I said, they avoid the angry person. But your top talent is going to look for other employment because there’s not a lot of jobs that are worth enduring the nagging anger of a colleague or a boss. And look, I know that everybody lauded Steve Jobs.
Everybody worshiped the ground that he walked on, but he was a very, very angry guy and very opinionated and very arrogant. And that was the reason why he couldn’t work at Apple, his own company, for a while, because people just didn’t want to be around him. They didn’t want him there. He was injuring and hurting productivity, and so the board farmed him out. Anger and ministry is equally as destructive.
There are pastors who manage their churches through anger and high control and micromanagement. Their public lives are well choreographed, but their private lives can be a real mess. I once asked an associate pastor of a rather large church if it was possible for pastors of these really large churches with thousands of members to be the senior pastor. Without being a horse’s patoot, I wasn’t kidding. A lot of these angers, a lot of these pastors of large churches, they rule through authoritarian anger.
And it really is not Christlike. It’s really not what Christ desires in our past. It’s not healthy and it’s not what God desires. So this kind of anger in the senior pastor, it may unite and grow the church for a period of time, but there’s usually a trail of human debris that follows that pastor everywhere he goes. So while there’s a lot of people getting on the ministry bus, no one seems to care that there’s a growing pile of dead bodies behind the bus.
And I get that illustration from the Christianity Today podcast on the rise and fall of Mars Hill and how anger and control really damaged and injured a lot of people at that church. And those people are still damaged and injured today and it’s just not a good situation. Anger and Boards look, the big picture here is this when the angry leader is producing results, their boards will look the other way because they don’t want to sacrifice the results and they make a trade off decision to say, you know what? We’re not going to worry about this guy’s boorish behavior behind closed doors because of the great results he’s getting us. But I want you to know that God doesn’t make those kind of tradeoff decisions.
He doesn’t have some spiritual calculator that excuses anger because of the immense value that some leader is adding to his kingdom. And so I don’t think we should engage in those trade off decisions either. As Christian business owners, how we achieve our results as Christian leaders, how we achieve our results is just as important as the results themselves. Others view of God is continuously formed by what we accomplished and how we treated the people along the way. So how we get our results is just as important as the results themselves.
If you get those results through anger and a lot of human debris in your wake, I’m sorry, the results don’t matter. You’ve got to pay attention to how you got there. So how do we apply this saying? Very quickly following the sages wisdom is probably going to mean making some difficult decisions for some who are watching this video or listening to this podcast. You may need to leave a partnership.
If you’re constantly interacting with a partner who is prone to anger, you may need to sever ties with a profitable customer who is never happy and is a constant thorn in your side and is always being angry with you, you may need to choose a different vendor. If you find that they are easily angered by your customer service needs or by your pricing needs, you may need to leave a successful pastor who has built a large church with impressive facilities and is a very gifted communicator in the pulpit and yet who is really a high controlling angry guy behind closed doors. You may need to make the difficult choice of going to another church so that you don’t continue to support the dysfunction in that pastor. Frankly, you may need to stop watching a comic or a comedian or some other entertainment that has anger baked into it. There are things that we need to do as Christians, both Christian business owners, Christian business leaders, but just as Christians, in order to make sure that we are not absorbing anger from our culture or from anyone else in our Purview.
Christians in business should not be characterized by anger, nor should we befriend or develop close relationships with those who are prone to angry or fury. If we do, we’re going to learn their ways and damage our witness for Christ. This instruction applies to our hiring practices, vendor and partner management, and customer acquisitions. Stay away from angry people in business and in ministry. Now, our next episode, we’re going to look at the next thing, which I have titled Do Not Pledge Another’s Debts.
It comes from Proverbs 22, verses 26 and 27, and it talks about not putting up security for another’s debts. So, until we meet again, I want to thank you for coming today and I will look forward to seeing you again. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at 500 and Business, and I hope you go out and make it a great day. Thanks for joining me. Take care.