It's Your Fault I Lost My Temper

In a bizarre report from the Star-Ledger, a New Jersey woman has been accused ot purposely antagonizing drivers to tailgate her. What exactly is the crime? Being criminally annoying? Does that mean if I succumb to road rage and tailgate someone, I can file a report against the driver who drove ten miles below the speed limit in the fast line, citing that their bad driving caused me to succumb to criminal road rage? I find this somewhat disconcerting in how we assess blame when conflicts boil over into acts of anger.

I'm not necessarily saying that the accused is without fault. According to the article, Karen Born had filed 22 police reports and it's possible that she was a little nuts. What does concern me is that at face value, charging the lady with the crime is tantamount to my son Daniel hitting my preschool daughter Sophia and saying, "She made me mad," and then me punishing my daughter for antagonizing my son, while letting Daniel off scot-free.

Heck, it's not confined to kids. When adults fight (not that my wife and I ever fight, of course), don't we pull out the same lame excuse? "Why do you have so nasty about it?" "Because you're not listening to me!" And of course the more horrible version of it can be seen in domestic abuse or child abuse, when a husband beats a wife or child because "she was nagging me" or "the kid was driving me crazy". The whole phenomena is based upon the false premise that you are not responsible for your own actions. Or put another way, you can hold others accountable for "making you" do the wrong thing.

So in any conflict, I try to eliminate that construct from any argument or conflict that I'm either arbitrating or in the middle of. Take away all notions of, "You made me lose my temper" or "You made me do it." Nobody has the power to compel retribution, revenge or anger provided that there's due self-control. And certainly nobody compels physical violence. You also see this in the inner-city notion of "respect". When someone doesn't feel that they've been "disrespected", the seemingly acceptable way to deal with it is through violence instead of simply walking away. This has to change.

As difficult as it is to honor the biblical mandate to turn the other cheek, it's clear to me that the accountability around acting in anger lies in ourselves. The shifting of that accountability isn't just bad for the soul, it's potentially bad for society.