Anger is the only poison we swallow while praying it kills someone else.
The saints called it rust on the soul. The Stoics called it temporary madness. Scripture calls the man who cannot master it a city without walls.
The modern world worships outrage as though it were a virtue. We confuse fury with courage, indignation with wisdom, emotional arousal with moral clarity.
For The Merchants of Attention, anger pays. Anger Inc. has become one of our largest multinational conglomerates. Anger clickbait gets attention. Attention means sales, donations and support.
Perhaps we’re addicted to anger. Anger gives us the illusion of feeling powerful when we are in truth feeling powerLESS. It comforts us because it provides a sense of certainty when life is uncertain. It is a familiar frenemy.
Because anger is intoxicating. It makes ordinary people feel heroic. It whispers that vengeance is justice, that contempt is discernment. It fills us with a sense of false moral virtue.
It lies.
God is slow to anger, not incapable of it. Righteous anger is disciplined.
Anger corrodes the soul the way salt water devours steel. Left alone, it quietly hollows a man out until only the rust remains.
St Thomas Aquinas said properly ordered anger is the soul’s response to injustice, but disordered anger seeks Vengeance, not justice.
The deepest irony is that we cling to our anger because we think it makes us invulnerable.
In reality, every resentment is another chain around our own ankle.
Because the first thing anger burns is truth.
The second is peace.
The third is love.
The last thing it reaches is its intended target.
Join us as we discuss the epidemic of anger and strategies to manage it.
