If you are angry…
Take a look at his face, a close look at pure, undiluted rage and fury. Although it’s tempting to feel superior and judgmental at such complete loss of self-control, I can’t. I’ve been there, precisely where that enraged man is. And it seems as if many of our fellow citizens live in a state of perpetual anger.
Anger.
Not infrequently, I think about it. And therefore write about it.
Consider the last time you got supremely ticked off,just like in the photo above. Can you recall such an incident? And maybe the associated behaviors like slamming doors, shouting, etc. that accompanied your rage? Most likely when you were alone.
Isn’t there a hesitation? A moment of huh? Before the tsunami of rage is released?
Did I really hear that?
Did she really do that?
That hesitation is the analysis done by those of us with reason: humans. Someone or something has betrayed us…somewhere along, we’ve learned the art of suppressing the sorrow, guilt or shame and learned to switch on anger. We decide that we have been treated unjustly and in more and more cases, persuade judges, juries and governments to pay for that injustice.
Anger has become, in a sense, a national commodity. And is being institutionalized.
Okay, a learned reaction, so what?
The simple answer is-we can unlearn it. Not only can, but must…
Why?
Jesus is crystal clear. He makes no references to fairness or reparations.
“But I tell you, if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be judged. If you say bad things to a brother or sister, you will be judged by the council. And if you call someone a fool, you will be in danger of the fire of hell.“ So when you offer your gift to God at the altar, and you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar. Go and make peace with that person, and then come and offer your gift.
“If your enemy is taking you to court, become friends quickly, before you go to court. Otherwise, your enemy might turn you over to the judge, and the judge might give you to a guard to put you in jail. I tell you the truth, you will not leave there until you have paid everything you owe.
The youngest child of a mother who seemed slightly to very discontented for the majority of her time on this planet, I began my acquaintance with anger at an early age.
But it was an article by the OMI priest Ron Rolheiser that helped me grasp some of what was going on with my Mom. And maybe with many of us as we age.
“This is hard for me to talk about, and even just to admit, but lately I’m finding myself filling constantly with anger. It is hard to describe exactly because it is not so much that certain things trigger it, but that I find myself growing bitter. I’m resentful at my husband and family because they take me so much for granted and I am angry at the world, I guess, for the same reason. Also, and I don’t understand this at all, I have resentments towards God. I can’t word this exactly, but I’m angry at God – angry about some things in my life, angry because life is so unfair at times, and angry that everything is so hopelessly the way it is. I don’t understand this, I never was an angry person when I was younger and now I’m filling with anger. How is it that now, that I am older, I am getting more immature?”
Rolheiser quotes a woman’s confession told him in the last few minutes before Mass began. Different from the usual list of sins, the memory of her words stuck. Her long ago words take the priest to a story told by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis in his autobiography. Kazantzakis wrote about guidance sought from a spiritual master, an old monk named Father Makarios.
“Do you still wrestle with the devil, Father Makarios?”
I asked him. “Not any longer, my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength. … I wrestle with God.”
“With God!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “And you hope to win?”
“I hope to lose, my child. My bones remain with me still, and they continue to resist.” (Report to Greco, p.222)”
The anger is not new. It’s lived by our side our entire life. When we were young, perhaps it served us well. Maybe it provided energy to complete a degree or manage life as a single Mom. Or maybe it merely made us unhappy, critical and mostly joyless, like my Mom.
As the years accumulate, the important work of age crystallizes:
We must deal with the realities of the losses, the unlived dreams, make peace with the rapidly diminishing time left. And make a crucial decision: How do we spend the time we have left? The words of Father Rolheiser provoke, challenge and penetrate.
“…..Like the older brother of the prodigal son, we are now acutely aware that someone less deserving than ourselves gets to dance and eat the fatted calf.
But this must be understood for what it is, not a sign of regression, but a critical new moment in the spiritual life. As we age and become ever more aware of our wounds, our wasted potential, and the unfairness of life, we come face to face with the final spiritual hurdle, the challenge to become mellow and gracious in spirit. The spiritual task of midlife and old age is that of wrestling with God, namely, of standing inside all of the ways in which life has disappointed and betrayed us and, in spite of that, there, understand what God means with the words: “My child, everything I have is yours, but we must be happy!”
Let it be without sin
Americs’s obsessiion with equality is based on Jefferson’s Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
But it’s evident that the founder didn’t mean the equality that our nation seems to be pursuing at all costs; wholly ignoring the dignity of work and the dangers of idleness.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he did not mean that all men were equal in all respects. In other places he wrote with conviction about the existence of a natural aristocracy among men, based upon virtue and talent. Yet, many today quote Jefferson as though he intended to state that all men ought to be made as equal as possible. This is to speak of equality of condition, a position rejected by Jefferson and all political thinkers in the Age of the American Revolution. It was rejected because even a cursory examination of human nature reveals ineradicable differences among men.
There’s an ugly and vicious underside to the recent surge of Democratic Socialism and anti-semitism.
It’s real name is envy. Envy is worse than jealousy we recall, because it isn’t just that “I want what you have,” it’s that “I don’t want you to have it at all.”
Author Anne Henderschott well understands the ancient satanic root of envy: our first murder.
As the envy-driven horrors of Rwanda and Nazi Germany demonstrate, pledging to disrupt the envied lives of a despised “other” can be a ticket to victory for a political candidate savvy enough to convince voters that he has their best interests at heart. More than twenty-five years ago, Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, pronounced in his book The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology that we “live in an age of envy.” Pointing out that “people don’t so much want more money for themselves as they want to take it away from those with more,” Bandow suggested that although “greed is bad enough, eating away at a person’s soul, envy is far worse because it destroys not only individuals, but also communities, poisoning relations…
Politics in Bandow’s “age of envy” has resulted in a desire not to produce more for oneself, but to take as much as possible from others. Bandow was prescient about the growth of government and the envy that has driven it. He would not be surprised that the secular atheist ideology that has grown over the past two decades distorts our understanding of reality. Those distortions work to hide the true goal of politics under atheism, which is, of course, power. Once God is banished, we become creatures not of God but of society politics, and we then have the choice either to rule or to be ruled. The stakes can be no higher because, for the secular atheist, man is the highest thing, and so power among men is the highest good. That is why everything is now political and why people lose their minds over elections…
The real concern in this growing age of envy is that as individuals move away from organized religion, they begin to search elsewhere for meaning in life. Some turn to relationships, or to work, or to politics. In some important ways, this has contributed to the current culture of envy because once the realm of the metaphysical is rejected, individuals become creatures not of God but of society and politics. This is why everything is now political. It is also why people become anxious and consumed with political campaigns and the outcomes of elections.
A cynic, it’s said, is someone who has given up, but not shut up! He’s also someone who has confused one of the seven deadly sins, wrath, with virtue.
Our Most Common Sin
In Praise of Inequality
2 thoughts on “If You Are Angry, Let it Be Without Sin”
Thanks so much Mary. A blessed Sunday to you and your family.
Hi there, thanks for the read and comment- Blessings to you and all.