Ranting the Deadly Sins

My friend LaMon Brown reminded me of this quote from a book i read many times and loved over the years, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC by Frederick Buechener.

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Perhaps it bears reflection as we continue devouring one another with our mutual condescension and distrust. Our leaders in America today look like us: they play to our outrage because it seems to work. Except it doesn’t. There is no room in continuous rage for discussion, understanding, listening, calming ourselves or self-understanding. The immediacy of social media is the most striking feature that is most unlike anything in my upbringing. You didn’t have millions of people potentially responding to you. And why should you?

Somehow anger, like gossip, is not longer seen as a negative force in life. It has its purpose, but the ancient traditions understood that rage, like fire, could consume, and had to be contained. The important question to ask myself is, “Why has this made me so angry?” If I cannot answer I should wait to speak until I can.