Wow am I behind on my Deadly Sins. For those of you that have been tuning in for a while you will recall that I’ve been attending a Sunday school class on the seven deadly sins since the beginning of the year. I’ve missed three of them owing to the fact that I’m in Dallas only every other weekend. As a result I’ve fallen far behind in my write ups on them. On February the 17th our class was on Wrath. If you’ve been following this series on the deadly sins you’ll recall that they get increasingly deadly as they progress toward Pride. Wrath holds 3rd position.
Early in the class series when the deadly sins were discussed broadly people fessed up to which one was their worst – the one they were most likely to succumb to on any given day. Mary said hers was Wrath, which would not be apparent when you meet her. It’s mine also. I was well into adulthood until I finally realized that my easily provoked temper was not in any way valuable, useful or virtuous. Part of that came with age and maturity, part as a result of the patience that comes only with parenthood, part from the general trial-and-error experience of life. I have slowly succeeded in my struggle to contain and dissipate my anger, and I’m a much happier person as a result. So my interest in Wrath is a little more personal that that of the other deadly sins.
Aquinas thought that anger – if very carefully controlled – could be put to positive use. Augustine would have none of that, insisting that it was always dangerous. Although theologians may remain split on this one as they are on many things, Mary was quick to point out that most agree that there is no such thing as “righteous anger.” As a recovering Angry Man, I have to agree with Augustine and the majority opinion. Though I see where Aquinas was coming from – anger perhaps bringing to bear action where it is appropriate – I think that anger is so destructive and risky that even accommodating it for this reason is fraught with peril. Action may indeed result where anger lurks, but it’s very likely that the action itself will be an ill-considered response, and that a cooler head would work with more wisdom. I think of it in the same way that George Washington compared government to fire when he said:
“Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master.”
Substitute “anger” for “government” in the statement above and you understand why I disagree with Aquinas. While he believed that reason could divert anger to useful purpose, I would argue that reason and anger are essentially opposites. I don’t believe that the mind can entertain both equally at once, and that anger is far better at killing reason than reason is at taming anger. Aquinas’ accommodation of anger must be very appealing however. The idea of righteous anger is a popular one. One of Mary’s questions from class was why we thought that anger is a sin which we tend to defend more than others. I’m not sure that we adequately addressed the question, but I feel certain that we humans too often walk around believing that anger is justified.
Interestingly enough, another of our founding fathers said something about anger which is noteworthy. Contained in Benjamin Franklin’s endless storehouse of aphorisms is this gem:
“What’s begun in anger ends in shame.”
I couldn’t agree more. Note the particulars of this very concise statement. What is begun in anger ends in shame. Not what passes through anger, but what starts there. Throughout all of my experience in life this has ever been the case. Acts carried out with a premeditated anger as their genesis have always ended badly and reflected poorly on me or whoever else I observed making this mistake. Never once did something admirable result in my experience. My guess is that this has something to do with Pride, the deadliest sin and the subject of another Sunday.
The subject was a rich one. Mary asked more than one question which was tough to provide a satisfactory answer for. My favorite of these was wondering why we tend to provide more excuses or accommodation to the sin of Wrath than we do to other sins. I suspect that this also has something to do with Pride, but we did not develop the discussion that day. Other questions regarded God and anger, particularly the God of the Old Testament, and most poignantly the scene of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple at Jerusalem. These are subjects worthy of extended discussion I think. One thing is for sure – I doubt that Jesus woke up one morning hell bent on showing those money changers a thing or two. I suspect his anger caught Him by surprise that day, much as it does many of us on many days. Fully human and fully divine indeed.
I don’t know about you guys, but most of my anger is generally direct at one or more individuals when it gets the best of me. For that reason yet another quote that I first wrote about on New Year’s Day sprung to mind when we talked in class about how to best manage our anger. It is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
I won’t recall all of my thoughts on that again in this post, but I continue to hold that quote as being pretty special. I could go on and on writing about Wrath, it’s pitfalls, and my happiness at being delivered from it as a constant condition. Maybe I’ll continue with that another time.
