Rev. Reed Lee Pedersen's
Midweek Lenten Reflection Week 4
Seven Deadly Sins: Anger/Wrath One of the Seven Deadly Sins Pope Gregory pointed to was anger. Anger can also be lumped together with hatred, wrath/rage, violence, yelling, and offensive behavior. It does seem that a lot of our world is on a short fuse and easily angered. People seem to keep rubbing people the wrong way. Facebook and Twitter seem to provide gasoline to fuel the mass fire even more. So what is this anger? What does it do to us? How are we called to fight it? Please take time to answer the questions below. Discuss them with a friend or loved one. Once you have discussed, scroll down further to see my reflection and answer to the questions.
1. How would you define anger and/or wrath? Is it a feeling, emotion, or both? What is the difference? Anger can be an emotion characterized by animosity towards someone or it can be something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. In this sense, anger is both an emotion and a feeling. A fundamental difference between feelings and emotions is that feelings are experienced consciously, while emotions manifest either consciously or subconsciously.[i] Put simply, emotions are what happen first and we don’t always know why. Feelings are a reaction to an emotion. Either way, when we emote or feel anger we lose a sense of self-control. That is when anger becomes a deadly sin. 2. What makes you tick (angry)? The list for what makes me tick could go on for a while. Some of the things that make me mad are inconsiderate people and being belittled. Interesting enough, as follows the theme of every deadly sin, we are genetically hardwired to experience aggression and anger. Our reptilian brain, where we get our most primal attributes, has the ability for wrath. It’s a survival instinct built into our bodies to fight if need be. While this ability for anger and aggression can save our lives, most of us are not in life or death situations. Therefore, it mostly contributes to misuse towards our fellow humans, world, and situations when we are frustrated about things not going our way. 3. Would you consider yourself hot-tempered? Why or why not? I do consider myself to have a short temper. To be honest, I think I have always had it. I do not know if it is genetic or learned, but what I do know is that I have a low tolerance for frustration. That’s really what it means to be hot tempered. Someone who “flies off the handle” consistently has a lower tolerance for things not going as they intend or think it should. 4. Can “righteous anger” really exist?Can anger be good? Certainly! Anger spurred on by injustice can certainly be a righteous anger. This is an anger driven by something good, righting a wrong. 5. Doesn’t it seem like God gets angry a lot in the Bible (especially the Old Testament)? God gets very angry countless times. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit…God gets angry and banishes them from Eden. Cain kills his brother, Abel…God get angry and rebukes Cain. The whole world, except for Noah and his family, becomes overly wretched and sinful…God gets angry and brings about a flood to destroy everything. The Israelites lack the faith and fortitude to go to the Promised Land after they are freed from Egypt…God gets angry and forces them to wander 40 years in the dessert. Jesus got angry, too. The people hard turned the temple into a place of commerce…Jesus got angry and kicked everyone out for making the temple into a “den of robbers”. Do you see the pattern? The anger that comes about is righteous anger. The action may seem harsh in our day and age, but it is always spurned upon God after the people were doing the wrong thing. 6. How can we tell the difference between righteous and unrighteous anger? As humans we do not have the divine capability to achieve 100% righteous anger. We have people who are always fighting for the greater good, but sometimes the anger and loss of self-control takes over and makes the anger and actions not so righteous. We can especially take righteous anger too far when the mob mentality kicks in. When acting in anger please ask yourself, “Why am I angry? Is my reaction causing harm rather than good?” Imagine this scenario. Someone is bullying your loved one. (1) Out of righteous anger you go to stand up for them and let that person know what they did was not okay. (2) You go on to cuss that person out, maybe even lay hands on them to beat them up, so that they can feel the same pain your loved one felt. While point (1) started out with righteous anger, point (2) became vengeance instead of justice. 7. How can anger/wrath get in the way of our relationship with God? We are called to love God by loving our neighbors (Luke 10:27). Anger gets in the way of loving others. It doesn’t allow us to see the person we are angry at as another beloved child of God, just as loved as we are. When we lose self-control through anger we lose our ability to really think and know. Someone consumed by anger, vengeance, rage, or violence no longer has time to love their neighbor as Jesus loved us. They no longer have time to love God. This doesn’t mean that we can fully get rid of anger. It means that when we let ourselves be consumed by anger we make it our idol. 8. What virtue should we cling onto when we encounter our anger or the anger of another person? Ellen DeGeneres has a tag line, “Be kind to one another.” Kindness is the virtue that combats anger. Kindness is more concerned about the other person. Kindness is less concerned with the “I” and more concerned about the “you” and “we”. We see this in James 1:19-20, “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” When we are hurt and experience anger towards someone it is important to remind ourselves that Jesus died for that person and called us to love that person. Jesus deemed them worth loving and it is your job to see why. Also, acts of kindness cannot only provide good for the world but feel good, too. Martin Luther always liked to say that there is nothing better to combat the devil than to do good things for others. St. Paul also pointed to this in Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” In conclusion, anger is a part of life and it is a part of us. It can do good for the world, but only when it is guided by kindness. When we learn to take a step back, speak out our anger in a non-derogatory way, take a deep breath, and/or see the bigger picture we will know that we are in control. And when we are in control we know that we can love God and God’s people to our fullest! [i] https://counseling.online.wfu.edu/blog/difference-feelings-emotions/
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AuthorPastor Reed is a first call pastor at Augustana Lutheran Church in Andover, Illinois. Archives
July 2019
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