March 2, 2024: Wrath

Good afternoon. Today is part 3 of the seven deadly sins series, which I am doing for every Saturday in Lent.

Wrath and anger, though they appear similar, are two distinct things. Anger is typically a fleeting reaction to some stimulus. It can be anger toward another person, or it can be anger toward an inanimate object or a situation, such as one losing one’s temper when one’s car won’t start. There is such a thing as chronic anger, though, which is a serious problem that goes beyond the kind of episodic, triggered anger that is a universal experience. By contrast, wrath is an abiding sensation, directed at another person, and is characterized by resentment and a desire for retribution. Wrath can metastasize into hate.

It is wrath, not anger, that is considered to be one of the deadly sins, but this give the false impression that run-of-the-mill anger is benign. We can commit the naturalistic fallacy, that since anger is “natural”, it must be a good thing. All sins are natural, and indeed, if we take a proper understanding that nature is what is, then the naturalistic fallacy holds that all things are good, which is clearly not a useful formulation (as an environmental policy analyst, abuse of the term “natural” is a particular peeve of mine). Episodic anger can lead us into destructive behavior, and it can be destructive for our health.

How does one deal with anger, and particularly, how does one respond when one is the victim of injustice? Obviously, frustrating stimuli occur all the time. People wrong us constant as well, especially if we are on the look out for injustice. There are plenty of minor things, such as when a person cuts in front of us in line or brags about their status at work. Many of us have been the victim of serious injustices. The worst thing I can imagine is having a love one murdered, and I find that sympathy to the wrath that a person must feel in such a circumstance is a natural (there’s that word again) response.

Still, Jesus in the Gospels is quite clear about this. In Matthew 5:44, He states, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” and in Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,” and there are dozens of further examples in the link. Even in His final day on Earth, Jesus prays of his tormenters (Luke 23:34), “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I also take inspiration from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that many of us read in school and perhaps did not fully appreciate at the time. In the book, Frankl recounts his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, including the murder of his wife and much of his family. After the war, the experience informed his practice of logotherapy, the practice of the search for life’s meaning as a central motivational force.

Thus, as intense and suffocating as the feeling of wrath may be, we are not doomed to be bound by it, no matter how grave the injustices that one faces.

I’ve mentioned before Bob Schucts’ treatment of the seven deadly wounds, and it is important, as we face the brokenness in our lives, to look deeply and understand the wounds from which it ultimately stems. Of course, everyone needs to do this for themselves, but a few general observations can be made.

Most sin ultimately stems from putting one’s faith into something transient, and it is thus triggered when that something is lost or threatened. While anger has a surface trigger, we know that there is often an underlying, perhaps completely unrelated, factor that is responsible. A person who is worried about a situation at work, for instance, might become irritable and lose their temper at a rude driver, whereas under normal circumstances they would not react to the situation. The rude driver would thus be only the proximate cause of the anger. The deeper cause might be fear of losing one’s job and financial security, or envy that a coworker who has been at the company a shorter time has been promoted faster. It requires prayer and reflection to identify the deeper cause and open the possibility for healing.

Another kind of fear, that failing to show anger will be seen as a sign of weakness and an invitation for abuse, often underlies wrath. This is particular tragic in generational cycles of abuse, in which children experience abuse from parents, learn that this is the way to relate to other people, and become abusive when they themselves become parents.

Yet another hazard is that the observation of evil may remind of our own weaknesses. As it should. All gifts, including that of virtue, are indeed gifts, the result of grace rather than something that a person earned. We might pray, “there but for the grace of God go I” when we witness poverty and suffering, but can we pray that when we witness evil actions? In Luke 22:31-62, Jesus warns that Peter will deny Jesus three times before sunrise. Peter does not believe Him, until exactly this happens. It is foolish pride that makes us think, “I would never do something like this”.

As with other deadly sins, as I discussed last week regarding envy and two weeks ago with pride, wrath has collective aspects along with individual aspects. Most of us are accustomed to thinking of sin and morality in individualistic terms, overlooking the collective aspects and our role in them.

Let’s start with media, something that I am conscious of now that I am doing a media fast. See also this humorous cartoon of social media and the deadly sins. Twitter (X) is particularly notorious for wrath. Whenever I am away from Twitter for a time and come back, the first thing I notice is how angry the tone is. Half of the tweets are about the perceived misdeeds of some individual or group. Partisan blogs and television stations are just as bad.

Many (though not all) political actors use the same tactic. Understand the template carefully and look for it. In fundraising appeals, the National Rifle Association tells their followers of conspiracies that “the liberals will take your guns away”. YIMBY Action, a group that I was once active with and am no longer, in part for this very reason, have their weekly outrages of greedy (avarice is coming up in two weeks, BTW) boomer NIMBYs who are enriching themselves at the expense of younger generations. Really, I could go on and on about this.

The problem is, however noble the underlying cause might seem at first glance, wrath is an unhealthy, sinful pattern of thought, and organizations that appeal to evil impulses ultimately end up doing evil in the world, regardless of their initial intentions. Think especially of fanatics, of all sorts of religious and philosophical orientations, who think that violence and terrorism are the right tools to advance their cause. The responsibility of the individual is to recognize when someone is appealing to outrage, rather than to reason and human compassion, and to reject it.

Politics can be a noble venture, and I would say a moral duty in the kind of free, democratic society that most readers of this blog enjoy. For some positive cases, I want to highlight three organizations—the anti-poverty lobbying group RESULTS, the anti-hunger lobbying group Bread for the World, and carbon fee and dividend advocates Citizens Climate Lobby—that are examples of politics being done in a positive manner because they appeal to reason and positive values, not outrage.

What about “righteous anger”? This is anger expressed toward a genuine moral grievance. The only instance I can think of where Jesus appears to lose His temper is when He overturns the money changers’ tables, as recounted in Matthew 21:12-13. A genuine desire to confront injustice in the world—of which there is an enormous amount—is a noble impulse, but one should be careful. It is too easy for “righteous” to become a loophole for negative impulses.

Wrath can move beyond what is directed toward an individual and instead be directed toward a group. This is where we get racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, religious bigotry, classism, and chauvinistic nationalism. The most prevalent form of group-based wrath in the United States today centers around political ideology. For example, while acceptance toward interracial and interfaith marriages has grown in recent decades, acceptance toward interpolitical marriages is declining. Perhaps because there isn’t a snappy term, prejudice along political lines is much more readily accepted than other forms of prejudice, or perhaps not even recognized as such.

Group-based prejudice can be organized further into what the strategist Carl von Clausewitz described as “by other means”. I have great admiration for a principled pacifist stance on war, but I don’t regard it as always being a realistic position, especially if it requires overlooking grave atrocities. I am more persuaded by the Just War Theory of Thomas Aquinas, even though I am well aware of the hazard that “just” can be elastic if one is not careful. This entails not only the right, but the duty for nations to maintain adequate defense and be prepared to use that defense when called for. But we must also remember that, while war might sometimes be a necessary evil, it is an evil nonetheless, and not even a just war should be glorified.

I want to conclude with a look at the problem of evil. This is a topic that I hope to address more thoroughly in the future when I am better prepared to do so. In theological terms, the problem of evil is the apparent contradiction between three core beliefs: God is all-powerful (omnipotent) and all-good (omniscient); God loves humanity and His creation (omnibenevolent); and evil exists. The Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church ascribe (and I admit to oversimplifying here for the sake of exposition) evil to the consequences of sin, and original sin in particular, and not something that is created by God directly. Theodicy is a theological discipline that addresses the problem of evi.

The problem of evil is not just an academic question, and all of us have or will, at some point in our lives, face horrendous tragedy. When that happens, regardless of all the writings of theologians, the event will prompt a strong impulse toward anger at God and at the apparent injustice of Creation. Many a faith has been shattered by tragedy.

As a practicing Catholic, one of my biggest frustrations is how ready so many Catholics are to give flippant answers to the problem of evil. Not only do they think that, in God’s master plan, all things work out for the best somehow—a view that based more in Gottfried Leibniz’s philosophy than in the Bible—but they presume to know details of what that master plan is. They can be like Job’s friends in the Book of Job, who sound more like they are trying to reassure themselves than offer a real answer. In that book, Job is a righteous individual who suffers a series of terrible misfortunes. After crying out for an answer to his suffering, God answers in chapter 38 (Job 38: 2-7 shown below),

“Who is this that obscures my plans
    with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
    or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels shouted for joy?

In other words, we don’t know and we can’t know. Unsatisfying as this answer may be, for all the work of theologians over the millennia, I think it is the best we have.