When Anger Consumes Us, There Is No Justice
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VICES&VIRTUES KARL CLIFTON-SODERSTROM The Vice That Resists Redemption When anger consumes us, there is no justice. n December of 1955, Rosa Parks, allowed myself to become angry and feels like righteousness. It often feels Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph indignant....‘You must not harbor like justice itself. IAbernathy, and the citizens of anger,’ I admonished myself. ‘You But it isn’t, and the practically Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted the must be willing to suffer the anger wise person understands the crucial city’s bus lines to protest the rampant of the opponent, and yet not return difference between a virtue and its segregation and oppression of blacks anger.’” perversion into a vice. In this month’s in the city. In his autobiographical Throughout his ministry for installment on the seven deadly account of the events, Stride Toward justice, King would speak again and sins and the seven holy virtues, we Freedom, King describes those crucial again about his struggles with anger: examine our final pairing: anger and first days of the boycott, when the “The discontent is so deep, the anger justice. tensions of hope and apprehension so ingrained, the despair, the restless- permeated the deliberations of the ness so wide, that something has to he Christian tradition has been protestors and city officials alike. On be brought into being to serve as a rather divided about anger December 18, less than two weeks channel through which these deep Tsince the very beginning. In after the boycott began, King went emotional feelings, these deep angry biblical accounts it is not always easy to the city council to speak on behalf feelings, can be funneled....I see this to get a clear picture of anger as a of the black delegation, hopeful that campaign [of nonviolent resistance] as vice when we are reminded to fear the an early solution might be reached. a way to transmute the inchoate rage wrath of God in one passage and to Upon entering the meeting, however, of the ghetto into a constructive and resist anger in another. In his recent he quickly noticed that among the city creative channel.” book on the vice, titled Anger, Robert officials were members of the racist King’s saintly courage amidst Thurman notes that in the Old Testa- White Citizens Council. King spoke hatred raises a question for us. In a ment, “the angriest person around out, only to be publicly defamed world where injustice too often gets seems to be God himself.” From the by the council itself. The white city the upper hand, where the little rain curses God sets upon Adam, Eve, and council pulled out of the negotiations, that falls on the fields of the just gets Cain, to cleansing the corrupt earth and the hope for an early solution so easily diverted to the already rich with a flood, to hardening Pharaoh’s was dashed. The boycott would last top soils of the unjust, why shouldn’t heart, to killing the Egyptian first- another year. those who are oppressed lash out in borns, God gets angry at humans King returned home that night with anger against their oppressors? How again and again. And yet we also read a “heavy heart. I was weighted down else do the abused and disenfran- throughout the Scriptures—in the by a terrible sense of guilt, remember chised resist the powerful, except with Psalms, Proverbs, in Paul’s letters, and that on two or three occasions I had power? Anger feels like power. Anger from Christ himself—exhortations 16 | The Covenant Companion …as a vice, anger is a disordered disposition, cultivated over time through habit, which resists the work of justice itself because it becomes consumed with vengeance. against anger. the time of prayer....When you are let us first identify what we actually Despite this difficulty, anger has praying as you should, such things mean by anger. been on the list of seven deadly sins will come over you that you may Broadly speaking, we can note since its inception among the monastic think it utterly just to resort to anger, three kinds of anger: anger as an emo- desert fathers. As peaceful as a monk’s but there is absolutely no such thing tion, anger as a vice occasioned by a life might appear, the temptation to as just anger against your neighbor.” particular event or person, and anger cultivate anger in the soul was a very One is tempted to respond, as the culmination of all other vices. real threat to those early ascetics. “Really? Absolutely no such thing as Each has its own relation to the virtue The fourth-century Christian monk just anger? Now that seems outright of justice. Evagrius advises, “Everything you wrongheaded, and without compas- As a mere emotion, or passion as do to avenge yourself against your sion for the significant sufferings of Karl Clifton-Soderstrom is an assistant profes- brother who has wronged you will some in this world.” Before writing the sor of philosophy and the director of general become a stumbling block to you in early Christian fathers off, however, education at North Park University in Chicago. March 2010 | 17 theologians would name it, anger vice, anger is a disordered disposition, upon the wrongdoer. Such anger entails the agitation aroused occa- cultivated over time through habit, crowds the soul and takes up so much sionally by the insults, slights, and which resists the work of justice itself space in the inner life that goodness injustices we experience. Such emo- because it becomes consumed with and justice cannot work their right tions wax and wane according to the vengeance. This can happen in two course. The fourth-century monk and particularities of personalities and the ways. First, vicious anger resists justice ascetic Cassian describes this kind of severity of the offenses endured. Aris- by being angry for the right reason but anger as a blindness: “For any reason totle, the pagan Greek father of virtue in the wrong way. Justice, simply put, whatsoever the movement of wrath ethics whose categories were bap- is the righting of wrongs, the resto- may boil over and blind the eyes of tized into Christian thinking through ration of righteousness among the the heart, obstructing the vision of medieval theologians, notes that anger people of God. Vengeance might seem [another’s sin] with the deadly beam as an emotion is neither a virtue nor like the means to right a wrong, but of a more vehement illness [our own a vice. A virtue or vice is a settled not so in the Christian tradition. In sin] and not allowing the sun of right- disposition toward our emotional life order to get clear on this, we need to eousness to be seen.” that encourages (in the case of virtue) see the meaning of justice as a virtue As a virtue that shapes the human heart against vice, justice works in the Justice, simply put, is the righting of wrongs, the opposite direction from vicious anger. restoration of righteousness among the people of God. For a richer perspective on this, I recommend reading Croatian theolo- or discourages (in the case of vice) of the people of God that only makes gian Miroslav Volf’s remembrance of praiseworthy actions. The virtuous sense in the context of the ongo- his interrogations by the Communist person would be expected to experi- ing work of grace and redemption regime in Yugoslavia in the mid- ence anger in the face of injustice, but through Christ. As a vice, then, anger 1980s. His account of the violence he she would be oriented toward it in the resists the redemptive and restorative endured in these interrogations, and appropriate way, in response to the work of Christ. his subsequent theological analysis of appropriate offense, to an appropriate Consider again our opening illus- what it means to remember injus- degree, for the appropriate amount of tration, which recounts the justified tice rightly can be found in his book time. In the Christian moral tradition, anger of African Americans who The End of Memory: Remembering anger as an emotion is precisely the were deeply wronged. Imagine other Rightly in a Violent World. Far from appropriate response to injustice and scenarios of injustice: a Jew in 1938 minimizing the injustice he suf- entails the recognition that someone Germany, an Anabaptist in the six- fered at his interrogator’s hand, Volf has been wronged. teenth century, a woman in an abusive nevertheless asks, “What effect does Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung in marriage, a person who has been remembering Christ’s Passion have on her book Glittering Vices thus notes wrongfully defamed or imprisoned. how we as wronged people remember that Christ models the full range of Given the depth of the offense, is there wrongdoers and our relationship to sinless emotions, from sorrow to any limit on the anger that should be them?” anger to elation. Apathy is no virtue poured out against the oppressor? Volf claims that the Passion of but neither is rage. In this regard, we While I can never presume to Christ requires us to recognize that might say that while some are guilty speak for one who has endured such the grace of God is poured out upon for becoming enraged at trivial slights, depths of suffering or borne the direct the wronged and the wrongdoer others are guilty of indifference in the weight of such injustice, I can look to alike. “Christ died for the ungodly,” face of tremendous injustices. the meaning of justice offered by the Paul preaches in Romans 5:6.