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Upside of Anger

 

            To write about anger is not something I do easily.  Instead I know myself to be one who too often avoided getting angry, being angry or expressing.  For anyone who wants to be in control, anger is a tricky situation.  You may not be in control, the situation in which you find yourself may go into chaos and then what?  Many families have a tacit agreement that no one gets angry.  Of course, that seems really nice, but it is obviously unrealistic.  And so the anger is repressed or displaced in unfortunate ways.

            And so it was that I hit upon the theme of anger when I read Sister Joan Chittister’s recent editorial about anger.  Sister Joan is a globally-known Benedictine nun from Erie, PA.  She is older than I am, so she has been around for a few years!  For decades she has been a prophet within the Catholic Church and beyond.  She reminds me what Jesus might have been like.  Often her thoughts cause me to be a little uneasy, but I am sure hanging out with Jesus would have done the same thing to me.

            Chittister decides to reconsider the function of anger, when she realizes there are too many things going badly in our country and in so many of our lives.  It is easy to catalogue the ills of the nation.  We seem to be in a political mess.  There is so much divisiveness, yelling and failure to get on with major issues in our world.  We need to find a way to heal the plant and we are still polluting.  We need to find ways to save people---economically, socially and spiritually.  And in Chittister’s mind, there is too much silence.  Folks are too nice in the face of all these major problems.

            She pits silence over against anger.  I find her argument to be persuasive.  It seems to describe how I usually go about things.  Listen to her describe the way silence is working in current society.  She begins in a way that made me flinch.  It is as if she is describing me.  “After all, we were raised to be nice.  We taught our children to be nice.”  I can raise my hand to plead guilty.  She does not stop with description. 

            She continues.  “But today, "nice" is the conversational path to nowhere.  No opinions. No new ideas.  No conversation that was once scintillating, educational.  Now talk just trails off into nothingness.”  It is a nothingness that breeds meaninglessness.  And so many turn to their social media to participates in the emptiness of their technological rituals.  She won’t quit.   “’Nice’ talk agrees with everything, listens but pursues no point, develops no ideas, and presents no data to open new aspects of the subject.  It's ‘niceness’ guarantees to make hypocrites of us all.  We smile.  We say nothing to the contrary.  We add nothing to the wisdom or the honesty of the human race.”

            It is at this place she offers a better alternative: anger.  She says, “It seems to me, then, that we need a new category of virtues for times such as these.  We need the kind of virtues that enable us to do something about what's bothering us.”  So anger is going to be a virtue?  As one who has written a great deal about virtue, I realize she is dragging me into new territory.  I go with her into this new territory to learn more about anger and how it works.

            Unlike niceness, she counsels, “The truth is that anger pursues a concern, but anger also listens.  Listening is the only way two people can come together with respect for different ideas as well as with genuine openness to another human being.”  Hence anger has a two-pronged approach.  It pursues a concern, but it also listens.  I sense anger has a determination, but also a sensitivity. 

            She then offers an interesting image.  “Anger, in other words, is a Geiger counter.”  As a Geiger counter, “It finds the ticking time bombs of the heart.  It clarifies them.  It searches out their root ideas.  It seeks to add to the available data.  It deepens the approach to a subject. It brings depth.  It requires us to look at our own positions more critically.  Most of all, it can lead us to mutual understanding that can lead us to find another way to resolve a situation together.”  This is a lot of Joan Chittister, but she is on to something. 

            Seen this way, I understand the importance of getting angry and working for peace and justice and healing with a spirit of anger, so that we get someplace.  Someplace is better than simply being frustrated.  That’s where too many of us are in this day and time.  We need to get someplace---a new and different place.  Ultimately, we want to get to the kingdom.

            And that is where she leads us back to God.  Appropriately, she implicates the creative God of the universe, who also demonstrated some anger with the people when their ran off the tracks.  She calls it holy anger.  She observes, “Holy anger does not harden us in our position, it moves us to do something about resolving it.  Most of all, it makes it impossible for us to be superficial anymore.”  That is good news.

            That is spiritual hope.  I can appreciate the upside of anger.

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