Anger and Christianity (Book Notes: Anger)

Although the concept of 'seven deadly sins' no longer holds the same authority as it once did, the degree to which many of them have come to be viewed positively is remarkable. Even anger, one of the few which Jesus is recorded as specifically speaking out against, is treated as having positive value by Christians today.

In Anger: The Seven Deadly Sins, Robert A. F. Thurman writes:

Anger is not really thought of in the contemporary religious West as that serious a problem. It’s kind of like a natural phenomenon, like a storm or a bolt of lightning, and perhaps even rather respected as a male prerogative and a privilege of authority. Women’s anger is perhaps more frowned on behaviorally, thought of as shrewish and hysterical. Then there is righteous anger, against criminality and injustice, slackers and busybodies, luxury and destitution, which ranges from individuals to be punished to communities against whom there are crusades to be waged.

So some contemporary religious persons can strive to restrain anger as somehow morally and practically problematic, but somehow they also respect it, allow lots of uses for it, and consider it ultimately to be beyond full understanding and control, in the province of Nature or God. They love it in the form of capital punishment, draconian prison laws, and crusading wars on drugs, terrorism, illiteracy, and so forth.

It’s arguable that things probably haven’t changed all that much with regards to anger — although it’s one of the seven deadly sins, medieval Christianity appears to have placed some value in anger in the right contexts. If anything has changed then, it’s that the contexts for appropriate anger have broadened.

Then again, perhaps seeing anger as a “natural phenomenon,” outside of one’s legitimate area of self-control, is something that has changed. By treating anger as something that a person must simply accept and learn to use, they have abandoned some of the basis for being responsible for their actions and attitudes, not to mention their reactions to events around them.

This is a direct contradiction to Jesus’ statements which insist that certain attitudes or feelings are ethically the equivalent as actions based upon them. Instead of attempting to understand their reactions and learn to handle them better, people are taught to harness their anger and learn to channel is for the most effectiveness.

All of this would appear to be quite contrary to traditional Christian doctrines. Christians are supposed to be loving and peacemakers, not angry people who know how to channel their wrath. Vengeance is supposed to belong to God, not to individual humans. Why do contemporary Christians spend so much time worrying about whether others are engaged in supposedly banned activity (like homosexual relationships) and so little time worrying about whether they are violating prohibitions against things like anger, greed, gluttony, or pride?

 

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