Angry Christians, Faithful Christians

The Christian tradition has always had an awkward relationship with the human passion of anger. At times, throughout the church's history, prominent authorities have held that resorting to anger is once and always a sin. The desert fathers, in particular, held this view, for instance Cassian said, "Intense emotion of anger for whatever reason blinds the eye of the heart." On Cassian's view, there were no exceptions to the passion of anger, it was always a sin. An earlier desert father, Evagrius, held a similar view, but allowed for individuals to be angry at their own sin, however all other anger disrupted the holy task of prayer, and was therefore a sin. Yet, other authorities in church history have held a view that rightly ordered anger can serve a good end, and thereby should not be rejected entirely. The medieval, Christian thinker, Thomas Aquinas, made a distinction between the passion of anger and its manifestation as either a vice in the form of wrath or a virtue in the form of righteous indignation. For Aquinas what was essential to shaping the passion of anger for good was the expression of charity, or love, in conjunction with the expression of anger. But love here should not be read as an ambiguous feeling or concept, for Aquinas, charity, or love, was understood clearly as seeking a friendship or relationship with God. Thus, as we step back we see that, according to Aquinas, where anger was directed by reason and charity, it served a meaningful role in the Christian life.

I believe that Aquinas' account of the passion of anger fits far better with Scripture than a view that attempts to reduce anger to a sin in all or nearly all cases. I am not saying that we all need to cultivate feelings of anger, instead I mean something far more specific, I mean that there is a place, even a need for righteous indignation within the Christian church today. That is, there is a need and a place for anger to express itself insofar as it holds God in view as its object or goal, where anger and love are entwined together.

To give an example of what I imagine here, take the person who encounters the situation of a specific person who is terribly impoverished or abandoned by all relatives or friends. The person that witnesses the crises of this other person cries out against the situation, mourning and aching, they say "this is not the way it is supposed to be," but then, not stopping at mourning, they begin to reflect or perhaps even talk with this person, and they come to understand the intricate blend of individual choices and institutional pressures, things controllable and uncontrollable, that have led to where this person is right now. At this point, mourning turns into indignation, not at the individual, but at the larger communities and society that we are all a part of, that have or has created and sustained the structure of systems and institutions that perpetrate injustice, and directly or indirectly lead to the tragic situations of countless people throughout the world. But this indignation is not a free floating, ambiguous feeling without any grounding, instead it is an indignation that is rooted in the mourning that recognizes that things are not right, which is rooted first in the love or charity that seeks God and the way He intended His good creation. It is by this genealogy of God directed love that indignation is not merely indignation, but is righteous indignation. However, where charity or love facilitates this process of being moved to a form of good anger, it also completes it, or perfects it. The righteously indignant person next moves to respond in a deliberate and definite manner to the needs of this other person through acts of compassion and kindness because of their love for God and this person, their neighbor.

Undoubtedly this example raises questions about what it means to help another person, how God communicates with humans and what He communicates exactly, what is controllable versus uncontrollable, and the list goes on, but if I may, I would like to bracket those questions for the moment. Instead my point here is to show that anger, as expressed as righteous indignation, can be a good thing, even a very good thing. Moreover, I would assert that it is not merely just one good tool from which to draw on amidst life's experiences, but rather, insofar as it is bound up with charity, or love, that cornerstone of Christian faith, it is an essential and necessary movement of the faithful Christian. On this view, Christians must daily set themselves against the pressures of apathy and maintenance of the status quo. Instead, we must be prepared to be righteously indignant, and open to all the confusion, questions, guilt, and feelings of being ill at ease that they may bring. But it is not enough to just be prepared, we must in fact, be righteously indignant at times, because the world is not as it should be, and there are people that are hurting and in pain because of it, and we have played a role in perpetrating such injustices, and we have a role to play in correcting those injustices.

One of the formative communities that I am a part of at this point in my life is Calvin College, a collection and combination of specific people, buildings, ideas, and practices. So for a moment I will address myself to this community. Calvin College is an institution that subscribes to principles and tenets of the Christian faith, and many of the people that are members of the Calvin community are sincere Christian believers. In this context, we have reason to fear the silence. I do not mean the prayerful or meditative silence, but rather the silence that comes with complacency, apathy, and maintenance of the status quo. If we listen or look around us and do not hear or see the rumblings and shaking fists of righteous indignation, there is reason to question ourselves. So my question, how is the community of Calvin College acting out righteous indignation informed and perfected by love?

To return, make no mistake, there is a manifestation of anger that is absolutely evil, that intends pain and suffering as its end, which is malevolent at heart, and is far removed from rightly ordered love. This is what we could call wrath, and is a type of anger that should be rebuked and decried as a terrible wrong and sin. However, to see only this side of anger, and thereby reject the root passion of anger altogether is to lose the redemptive side of anger, wherein anger as righteous indignation is entwined with love, and moves us to serve God more faithfully by working to accomplish His vision for a world without pain and suffering, poverty and hunger, violence and bloodshed. While rejecting wrath, we should hold fast to righteous indignation, because there is power in it to serve God and seek His vision for a good world.