Most of us have been raised under a social paradigm that anger is a negative emotion, and constitutes inappropriate behavior. We are told from infancy to "be nice" by parents, relatives, teachers and clergy, almost as if it were one of the Ten Commandments. It is not. We are unquestionably programmed by biblical phrases like "love thy neighbor as thyself", or the sayings of sages like "do unto others as you would have others do unto you". This is not wrong- for they are noble phrases and ideals worthy of imbibing.

Despite this well-intended programming, however, we are bombarded daily with images of the opposite. Unspeakable violence and grisly atrocities have become the stuff of video games and regular "entertainment". This is so particularly evident in Western societies that more traditional cultures look at us aghast and conclude we in the West are all utterly depraved. The fact that many of those same traditional societies commit equal horrors but refrain from displaying them as public entertainment begs the question that there seems to be a serious inconsistency between what we are verbally taught and how we actually behave, no matter what our cultural origins. It is imperative that we come to a better understanding of why this is so, how it happens, and what we can do about it.

As Bishop John Shelby Spong points out in a recent article on Understanding Religious Anger, one of the major promoters of this flagrant self-contradiction in behavior has been institutional religion. It is particularly true of the Abrahamic triad- and perhaps worst of all, true of institutional Christianity. It is more than ironic that a religion supposedly based on love and peace has a history of singularly angry and violent behavior toward all those who stray from its narrow definitions of how things should be. Bishop Spong rightly points out that a religion that claims to have the whole truth or the only truth is bound to produce such behavior. He is also right that the peculiarly Christian obsession with our allegedly "fallen" human nature and the universal suffering supposedly caused by "original sin" tends to turn a lot of unexpressed anger inward in self-loathing. But what Spong fails to explore are the deeper dynamics of the function of anger itself.

According to Genesis, God created humankind in God's own image and likeness, male and female. The enormous implications of this biblical claim are little understood. If true, however, we must assume that we thereby participate in God's essential qualities and characteristics, one of which is clearly the capacity for anger. Christian supercessionists illogically love to characterize the God of the Old Testament" as "wrathful", and the God of the New Testament as "loving". They inexplicably treat them as different gods in the same breath in which they proclaim the superiority of monotheism, and the unique status of Jesus as the Son and Equal of that supposedly universal Old Testament deity. Though there are hell-fire preachers who will quote with relish the story of Jesus going into the Temple with a whip, most mainline Christian preachers tend to emphasize a gentle Jesus and sidestep the issue of anger, positing it as a sin. This has done us a grave psychological and theological disservice.

Anger, after all, is an experience each of us has had in out lives- with varying degrees of frequency and intensity, perhaps, but enough that we all know what it feels and looks like. We have various cultural paradigms for what constitutes anger, even within the United States. Those of Northern European and Anglo-Saxon heritage generally have more reserved ways of expressing their anger than African Americans, Jews, or those of Mediterranean descent, for example. Some would deem raised voices "fighting", while to others, shouting is a normal form of exuberant self-expression, whereas a fight is determined by physical violence- hitting, throwing things, etc.

Those who marry outside their natal culture are often surprised to discover these differences, and are forced to reeducate themselves to expand their ability both to express their own upsets and to understand those of others in terms each can actually "hear" and understand. The same challenge faces nations in their efforts to interact constructively with each other, but is perhaps less often achieved because of the high frequency of the cultural ignorance of leaders and politicians. We cannot teach others collectively what we ourselves have not learned individually. Just as in a marital relationship, we need to begin with the basics and start from where we honestly are.

Psychologically, anger is generally a response to some sort of hurt or pain. Its expression is neither inherently appropriate nor inappropriate- for even justifiable anger can be expressed inappropriately. Both our ability to express and to hear the underlying message in anger is culturally conditioned. That's why it is sometimes harder to accurately understand the anger of someone from outside our own culture than from within it.

The expression of anger, ideally, is an emotional corrective to some harm done or experienced. It can be cathartic (which, given our generally repressive training, no doubt explains why we indulge it voyeuristically in films and television). Biblically the so-called "wrath of God", so often portrayed in the Old Testament, is intended by the deity's own words to be a corrective- frequently, but not exclusively, for the misbehavior of the "chosen people". It is never merely destructive, no matter how extreme it may sometimes seem, or against whom it is directed.

The same cannot, however, be said of our anger, for human anger all too often is used as a means to gain power over others rather than to redress our own wounds. To be sure, we claim to be correcting wrongs- the "wrong" of the disbelief of the "infidel", the "wrong" of the oppressor of our people (whoever they or we may be), the "wrong" of whoever in our perception has done us personal or collective wrong. Seldom do we see in private or public life- and even less in political life- a responsible communication of anger, matched by a deep and thorough listening between both parties concerned. And why is this so? Because we have been systematically trained NOT to communicate our anger verbally and responsibly. So it can only come out in the covert, passive-aggressive, or explosive forms that do infinitely more damage and compound the problem of the pain that anger is intended to correct. Instead of being cathartic, clearing the air in mutual understanding, it becomes toxic, breeding emotional dishonesty and a victim mentality that justifies reprisal and revenge.

Popular courses in "anger management" are a consumer society's feeble attempt at correcting this imbalance. Therapeutic forms of the same have ironically become mandatory fare in some courts as a remedial "punishment" in sentencing for civil and criminal misbehavior. Both of these solutions, however helpful they may actually be for some, are responses after the fact that avoid dealing with the root problem of uncontrolled and misunderstood anger. Every hotspot in the world seethes with collective angers that date back centuries- even millennia, compounded daily by personal offenses inflicted on one another. But the solution is not a behavioral or psychological one alone- at heart it demands a spiritual response and integration as well.

Whether posited as the Law of Karma, "As you sow, so shall you reap", "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", or "What goes around comes around", there is no question that all our choices have consequences. It is time we understood that we ourselves are the creators, not the victims, of those consequences. The time for cliches, posturing and blame should be past, but they are deeply engrained in us. It will not be overthrown without a protracted and concerted effort to reeducate ourselves to the creative and positive use of anger as a corrective, and the discernment to tell the difference between its beneficial and its destructive potential. That effort begins and ends with responsible, honest and clear communication- which requires not only speaking, but also deep listening to each other and to ourselves. If we are all created in the image and likeness of the Creator, then we have an inherent opportunity and capacity to actively live up to that image, both as individuals and as nations.


Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2006 by Faith In Diversity Institute