"Brad had the confidence and the ability to sift through things and make decisions...the right decisions. He wanted to help others do the same thing in their lives. That wasn't always easy or possible." (Carol Hall)
There was a story run in the newspapers awhile back about a bus driver who roared through a pool of water on a street in Caracas, Venezuela, and splashed muddy water all over a police-man. The policeman became so angry he pulled out his gun and fired six shots into the side of the bus, then jumped aboard and beat up the driver.
Another news story told of a man being sued for divorce by his wife who demanded half of all his assets. In great anger he sold a car worth ten thousand dollars for fifty dollars and gave twenty-five dollars to his wife. Later the courts discovered he was systematically proceeding through all his assets in the same way. These stories were reported as human-interest fillers because they are so real and reflect humanities' never-ending struggle with the Third Deadly Sin--Anger (and its cousins, vengeance, revenge, hate and violence).
Anger is a difficult sin because, like pride, it has a flip side. It can be used for good and it can be used for bad. By itself, anger is a pure and natural emotion, a reflex, an involuntary response to situations, threats and dangers.
Anger is often the reason things get done in this sinful world. It enables us to stand the many frustrations that erupt in our lives. It can fuel our determination to get something done, undo some great injustice, take a stand against evil and help us persevere in tasks despite discouragement, or involve others in caring response to injustice.
Because it is so human and natural an emotion, the Bible has lots to say about anger. There are many references in Hebrew Scripture where anger is an emotion attributed to God. It's righteous anger, of course, couched in love. God's way of challenging his people to not act destructively and to walk in love.
Jesus became angry a number of times in his ministry. We especially remember the story of his cleaning of the temple, overturning the tables of money changers. But he also got hopping mad at the evil practices, moral obstinacy and rigid leaders of his time, regularly "chewing out" the Pharisees and Scribes and Apostles. Even his favorite disciple, Peter, felt the sting of righteous anger ("get behind me, Satan") prompting Peter to tell the truth and take a stand. Jesus' anger was Love in action.
In this world of tyranny, injustice, rampant poverty and violence, we must get hopping mad--truly angry enough to speak out in Love and act in Justice. Indeed, righteous anger was, I believe, a part of the events in Los Angeles this week. Many felt the sting of injustice at the conclusion of the Rodney King trail.
And yet, natural righteous anger has its flip side, for this natural emotion can and often does become a deadly sin.
Part of the problem has to do with control (our use and misuse of anger), for when a threat is removed, an injustice undone, anger should subside. As Paul put it, do not let your anger lead you to sin, do not let the sunset find you still nursing it (Eph. 4). But we do, as was so evident throughout this week.
Another problem with anger is that we humans have memories and egos and so, as our opening stories point out, we are capable of nursing great grievances and resentments long after an event is closed and the threat is over. Any small event may trip us into enormous angry responses. It's the last straw response. It happens in families as it does on the streets of Los Angeles, when we fly off the handle for what seems no reason at all. As one writer puts it so fittingly, anger is just one letter short of D-anger, which quickly becomes SIN.
What are the many faces of sinful anger? A few choice insights from the wisdom of the past to help us get in touch.
The sin of anger has been called a stronger word--WRATH. It is another example of perverted love--Love of Justice perverted into desire for revenge and injury. It is one of the three cold sins (along with envy and pride), and the most dangerous because uncontrolled anger is like a machine gun, for as we saw last week, when we spray the landscape with anger, the odds are we will hit someone, somewhere.
The riots in Los Angeles (a city ironically named City of Angels) reflect the corporate nature of human anger out of control--burning, killing, looting. Policemen take out their pent-up frustrations through inappropriate, angry responses; people who are oppressed and suppressed and pushed eventually spill out into streets in vengeance as their anger overflows and spills out of their hearts in vengeance and revenge.
Poverty and oppression breed fear, which turns to anger, which turns to rage and engenders outrage in all of us, who react in fear and frustration.
Unfortunately, the Deadly Sin of Anger is always a two-edged sword. When wielded inappropriately, it cuts both ways, all are cut, all bleed.
My hope is that the terrible tragedy of the past week pushes all of us to reflect not only on the nature of corporate anger of the streets but on our own propensity to allow our anger its sinful ways in our personal lives.
As philosopher Aristotle put it so well, anybody can become angry. That is easy, but to become angry with the right person to the right degree, and at the right time for the right purpose and in the right way--that is not so easy. The problem with pent-up anger is that it does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to the one on which it is poured.
In the modern TV comedy, The Golden Girls, that irascible mother, Sophie, counsels her daughter, Dorothy, about her anger. "Anger," she says, "is like getting a piece of Shredded Wheat stuck under your dentures. If you leave it there, you'll have a sore mouth and have to eat Jell-O for a week."
Although some of us have deep-seated anger which must be dealt with therapeutically, most of us feel and express inappropriate anger in our everyday frustrations with life. I get angry for the silliest reasons, mostly when life doesn't go my way:
When we miss an easy tennis shot or slice a golf ball into the rough.
When a red light fails to change when I want it to.
When I have to wait at a crowded restaurant.
When the line at the supermarket or Post Office is too long.
Well, the list is a long one, isn't it? Theologian Dorothy Sayers says that we are capable of great intolerance in the simplest areas of life: Intolerance--a word from the Latin in tolero which means "not able to bear." Thus our human mind fueled by unrighteous indignation is a fertile field in which gets sown great moral indignation, grievances which we are capable of holding onto for a lifetime.
Theologian Frederick Buechner best sums up its deadly effects:
"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel, both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."
Clearly, this is what is happening on the streets of Los Angeles, and this may be our strongest venture into sin so far. Now let's pause and remember that each deadly sin is balanced by a Godly virtue, which when appropriated and practiced with God's loving grace, leads us onto a path of righteous living.
The sin of Anger is usually balanced by the virtues of patience and meekness. But I rather like the virtue proposed by Lance Webb: Magnaminity, a Latin word which means "great mindedness."
Magnaminity means the ability to possess our own strong convictions, yet allow other people to have convictions which differ and even contradict ours. Synonyms which I find helpful are nobility, patience, humility, tolerance and class.
Now with this all-too-brief excursion into the Deadly Sin of Anger, I'll close with a few pointers about dealing with and controlling anger and especially focusing on our feelings about the violence of last week.
First: Good psychology says it is helpful to acknowledge and express our anger in helpful and acceptable ways. Therapy may be necessary for some. Others can use the old Native American method of digging a hole, shouting everything we need to get off our chest into that hole, then cover it up and walk away. Find some way to deal with your anger. Somehow or other we must learn to control it appropriately.
Secondly: When we are caught up in raging corporate anger over the rioting of this past week, we must step back from our passions and sense of outrage and take hold of the larger picture. My tendency is to get caught up in the unfairness of it all and fantasize my own vengeful ways of retaliation. That's not helpful or healthy. I discovered while listening to radio and television reports that within the horrors of burning and looting were great acts of heroism and right acting, points of light in the darkness which help me keep balance.
We watched in horror as some hooligans pulled a man from his gravel truck and left him dying on the street, but later we read about four other people who came to that scene to protect and save the fallen victim. At one point, when fires were raging, one group of firemen was attacked by gangs who captured one firefighter at knife point and demanded they stop putting out fires. In moments, neighbors surrounded that gang with machetes and forced the gang members out of their neighborhood. It is important to see in all scary and angry situations that good people are there risking their lives to stop the terror. Hope always exists with despair; watch for it and keep your balance.
Thirdly: It is important for us to reach out and make contact with those we think scare us. One black woman spoke in tears during a radio interview about her own feelings of shame and guilt, thinking that as a black, she would personally and forever bear the guilt, the burden of the riots. The interviewer very simply reached out and touched that woman by saying, "I understand."
It was amazing how the black woman was able to accept that touch of love and let go of some of her burden, as they both shared feelings. My hope is that out of all the flames, fear and frustration we will learn how much we need each other and establish some human contact. Black must reach out to white, white to black, Hispanic to oriental....
This crisis can help us redeem our inbred racism if we but face up to inner feelings and let go of unreasonable fears.
Finally: Remember it is very hard, indeed impossible, for humans to save themselves from themselves. Ultimately, magnaminity comes through God's grace. We must turn over to God our fears, pain and sin, so I ask you to pray with me this week. Pray for the heroes in the streets of life. Pray for ourselves to be given a bit more magnaminity. Pray for healing of a very fragile city. Mostly, pray for justice to flow like a river in the lives and hearts of all leaders, lawmakers and law enforcers everywhere. It's time! Amen.
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