No One Can Make Us Angry

This seems appropriate for the week of the Utah-BYU football game:

At the October 2009 General Conference, President Thomas S. Monson quoted Lawrence Douglas Wilder as saying that "Anger does not solve anything; it builds nothing."

President Monson went on to say, "We’ve all felt anger. It can come when things don’t turn out the way we want. It might be a reaction to something which is said of us or to us. We may experience it when people don’t behave the way we want them to behave. Perhaps it comes when we have to wait for something longer than we expected. We might feel angry when others can’t see things from our perspective. There seem to be countless possible reasons for anger."


Finding reasons for anger appears to become a simple matter when participating in or just watching sports.  But the Apostle Paul asked, "Can ye be angry, and not sin? let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26 of the Joseph Smith Translation).  And in eleventh chapter of 3 Nephi we read:


“There shall be no disputations among you. … For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away” (verses 28-30).

President Monson then warned that "To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan. No one can make us angry. It is our choice. If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry. I testify that such is possible."


After relating the story of two men who lived in a one room cabin that had been divided in half by a chalk line, which neither crossed as they passed 62 years without speaking a word to each other, President Monson counseled, "May we make a conscious decision, each time such a decision must be made, to refrain from anger and to leave unsaid the harsh and hurtful things we may be tempted to say."


Source:


https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2009/10/school-thy-feelings-o-my-brother?lang=eng