The obvious symptoms of sudden anger are often red face, swollen neck veins, clenched fists, and a stumbling for words. The angry person’s vision may also be blurred, because anger clouds the visual centers of the brain.

Dr. Walter Cannon, pioneer researcher in psychosomatic medicine at Harvard University describes the symptoms more precisely:

“Respiration deepens; the heart beats more rapidly; the arterial pressure rises; the blood is shifted from the stomach and intestines to the heart, central nervous system, and the muscles; the processes of the alimentary canal cease; sugar is freed from the reserves in the liver; the spleen contracts and discharges its contents of concentrated corpuscles, and adrenalin is secreted.”

He was coming from his teacher’s house, and he was feeling uplifted at the thought of his own scholarship and erudition and goodness. A very ill-favoured passer-by gave him a greeting. The Rabbi did not return the greeting, but said, ‘You Raca! How ugly you are! Are all the men of your town as ugly as you?’ ‘That’, said the passer-by, ‘I do not know. Go and tell the Maker who created me how ugly is the creature he has made.’ So, there the sin of contempt was rebuked.

Sinclair Ferguson summarizes this text of Scripture well: “Jesus is not telling us to ‘hang out our dirty linen in public,’ but rather to deal urgently and fully with all breakdowns in fellowship before they lead to spiritual assassination”