Righteous Anger!

An interesting discussion with a group of friends last night had me thinking. Our conversation was centred upon anger – that state of being that leaves none exempt. Beside a lively discussion on anger, the outcome and a healthy response, something else was brought up that encouraged serious thought. The thought - provoker was what we call righteous anger and we are often given license to practise it. Righteous anger can be defined as that state of being when one is chagrined because of wicked thoughts, vile deeds and fiendish attitudes.

I have often heard people quoting as an example of righteous anger Christ at the-cleansing-of-the-temple episode, where He drives out money-changers and merchants from the temple premises. He did that because these greedy men had no trouble destroying the sanctity of this place of worship. Quite thoughtlessly they relegated God to a position of insignificance if not non-existence with their trade and commerce. In quite a dramatic fashion Jesus turns over their tables, one of the gospel accounts records that he even made a whip of cords which he used to drive these men and their merchandise out.

In the very context of our day and age there is an unsettling abundance of wrong. Bonded laborers in a remote village; a spindly legged boy bearing the burden of supporting his poverty stricken household working in an unsafe environment for a paltry sum of money; these are but just a couple of examples of the injustices that have so ravaged our world. Our chagrined response to these galling situations could well be righteous anger. Considering that there is this genre of anger for which we have been given an allowance, can we also respond the way Jesus did? The answer to that question is an emphatic “No!” for the simple reason He is God incarnate and we are merely carnal.

Jesus Christ when he walked this earth was fully human while still being entirely divine. It is the divinity of Christ that is made manifest here. His anger was directed against the offense. Even at our best our anger (righteous or otherwise) stems from the deep reservoir called self and me. Our humanity blinds us or must I say prevents us from being able to distinguish between the offense and the offender. At some thin line our loathing for the wrong gets translated into our repugnance for the wrongdoer; something that the Christ would never have done even in the angry turning of the tables.

Our humanity curbs us from possessing righteous anger in its unalloyed and purest form. That being said, what do we do about all that is going awry in our world? We can’t turn a blind eye. We are called to action, prayerful action; But it would do us well to check out anger at the door before we act. I am not of the opinion that we aren’t to be angry, because we can. However we can be ineffective if we bring anger to the table because anger in our effort to redress can be more detrimental than helpful. We are called to stand for the truth and speak the truth but our challenge lies in doing it in love.