This is Faith in Play #101: Temper, for April 2026.
I was reading an article in Hector Miraz’ Faith and Fandom: Level Three which was largely about The Incredible Hulk. If by any absurd chance you don’t know, The Hulk is the alter ego of a scientist (originally Bruce Banner) who developed a sort of Jekyl-and-Hyde existence in which his anger causes him to become a nearly mindless monster set on destruction. One of my favorite lines, delivered calmly by Bill Bixby in the Bruce Banner role, is, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
What struck me about the article was the aspect that we all have this alternate self, this monster inside. I’m generally a calm, even-tempered individual, but sometimes I get pushed past some limit, and I lose my temper, shouting at whomever has so pressed me. I’m not much for physical violence, but have been pushed that far occaisionally. I think we all have our tipping point, our breaking point, our limit at which we lose it.
Yet oddly, my characters don’t. They’re always level-headed, even-tempered, calm. In fact, most of the characters run by most of the players in most of my games are similarly free from violent outbursts. No one “hulks out”, goes berserk–at least, not without choosing to do so. This strikes me as unrealistic.
The fruit of the Spirit is…self-control. It isn’t really normal for people to be self-controlled apart from God. This is a characteristic brought into our lives by divine intervention, not by human nature. Whatever our native temperament, we all have that breaking point.
And some of us are more fragile than others. The New Testament uses a word that literally translates to long-tempered, and it is exactly the opposite of short-tempered. That is, most people are likely to “Fly Off the Handle” at rather slight provocation, but those who are led by the Spirit endure more provoking without becoming upset (and indeed, this is one of the other words used to describe the fruit of the Spirit, usually rendered patience or in older translations long-suffering).
I’m inclined to think that player characters, my own included, ought to be less self-controlled, more prone to angry outbursts when pushed. I’m not sure that there ought to be a mechanic for it, but I think it ought to be part of play. After all, it’s part of life, realistically, even for those of us who are usually cool-headed and gentle.
For more on the fruit of the Spirit, see the author’s book About the Fruit.
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Next article: Teamwork.