I approached my old football coach one day at church and asked him, “What was with all that anger at football practice back in our day?” My coach said, “We as coaches knew that angry football teams played the games better than non-angry teams, so we tried to create anger at practice.”
Some of the coach’s favorite drills to create anger were seemingly endless up downs and lots of time in various Oklahoma tackling drills. Sometimes during those tackling drills the coach would tell the ball carrier to go at 50% speed and tell the tackler to go at 100% speed, too supposedly work on his form and wrap up while tackling. That drill alone created lots of anger.
Coach told me that during his nine years as the head coach, he then would try to transfer that anger towards the coaches and teammates to the opposing team we would play on Friday nights. He said it worked every year except one. That one year the team had so much anger that they never transferred it to their opponents on Friday nights. He said we used to scrimmage on Tuesday and/or Wednesday night back in the day and the best football that team ever played was during those scrimmages at practice. The coach got a gleam in his eyes and smile on his face as he said, “There was some serious hitting going on during those scrimmages and the only ones who got to enjoy it was us coaches!”
Have you ever read Psalm 109? Psalms are prayers to God and the writer starts out actually praying for his enemies, but then changes his tone. He then lets human hatred take over and asks God to do terrible things to his enemies. The following are just some of his thoughts about his enemies:
May his days be few.
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children wander about and beg.
May the creditor seize all he has and etc.
If you notice, as you read, the writer asks for help from God to defend him. He does not take this hatred and go do evil to his enemy himself. He leaves the judgment up to God.
There is a time and place for everything in this life and prayer is a good place for our hatred.