The usefulness of anger
There’s so much to be angry about in the world; we should embrace our anger and channel it in ways that are emotionally healing and politically effective.
My delightful church is going through my book Jesus Takes A Side in our adult Sunday school class. This last week we talked about my chapter called “The Disciplines of Anger and Hope.” Here’s what I wrote then:
“Theologian Willie Jennings voiced the importance of all of us sharing in the righteous indignation of God in a podcast interview recording in response to the murder of George Floyd. Jennings described how friends had reached out to him to say that they ‘can’t imagine’ what he was feeling then. Jennings responded with, ‘Yes, you can.’ Because, as he said, ‘Anger is shareable.” This idea can empower those in dominant social positions, such as White folks, to hold the anger of the oppressed instead of succumbing to what Jennings calls ‘the sickness of whiteness’ that merely turns the powerful into gawkers and spectators of the pain of the marginalized.
“I was speaking recently to an Anabaptist pastor who suggested that anger, of any kind, was a sin. He said there was no such thing as ‘righteous anger’ in the Bible. He added, ‘Every time anger is mentioned, especially in the New Testament, it’s either mentioned with a grave warning or it’s just called flat-out sin.”’ But the Bible is full of moments of righteous anger, through the Old and New Testaments, and in Ephesians, as this pastor pointed out, the writer admonishes us to, ‘Be angry but do not sin’ (Ephesians 4:26).
Anger is not a sin, but what often follows—violence or hatred—is. In fact, as Jennings says, ‘Jesus stands between anger and hatred.’ Because we too often link anger with violence and hatred, we do not allow ourselves to see the source of that anger, out of fear of where it may lead us. We may seek to avoid anger as a way to guard ourselves against the pain of our oppressed siblings, or, for the oppressed, the pain within ourselves. But our empathy with the righteous indignation of God leads us to confront the source of evil that disturbs us. That confrontation produces justice and hope.”
Anger is thus a good and human emotion that we can’t avoid and we should learn to channel and express. Hiding away from it may result in depression or resentment, and learning to share it may actually increase our bond with oppressed people, and for oppressed people, it may combat the feelings of loneliness and isolation that often accompany our grief at our own oppression and the oppression in the world.
One of the reasons I was so drawn to politically-oriented punk rock music in my youth is that it gave me a helpful way to channel my anger: singing (and shouting) along to bands whose style and content I deeply resonated with. Other ways that I can name and hold my anger are exercise and bike riding, and a special strategy from my spiritual director to write out the things I am angry about on paper and burning them in a mug (or maybe as fuel for a charcoal chimney—yum!).
Anger is useful, not only emotionally, but when it is practically channeled for political organizing. Unconscious anger is real and can result in actions that we can empathize with, without endorsing. When we are not aware of our anger, or overtaken by, it the violence that follows may be understandable, but it is limited in its political efficaciousness.
Put another way, individual acts of violence, like the murder of a health care CEO, are a response to the collective grief of those who suffer under the U.S. for-profit health care system, but they have limited value and can hinder a movement.
With that said, anger used to agitate the powers can raise awareness, as well as offer an outlet for expression. Too often, Christians conflate violence with agitation, however.
I was recently involved in a pro-migrant action that resulted in our group blocking the on-ramp to the Ben Franklin Bridge. We were demonstrating our rage at the detention centers that imprison migrants, even babies, and hoping that the Biden Administration, with its last days of power, to do something meaningful (like shut down those camps) before Trump and his crew are empowered to do the mass deportations they promised to do. We shared our anger, agitated the unmoved, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the spirit of the theatrics of protest that Jesus our Lord and Savior engaged in, as well.
Channeling collective anger is a sure-fire way to unite a political group, and perhaps, the Democrats' inability to do that is why we are in the situation we are in. Trump and company effectively generated and channeled the population’s anger and managed to get the whole country to shift toward them. What we heard from Democratic pundits though was that everything was fine as it was. Rather than channeling the frustration of the public, they downplayed it. Their inability to empathize led to their loss. It’s not easy for an incumbent to do this, but we need to hold that anger is sharable if we want to have success in our political organizing.
The godhead itself elects to be angry at the injustices in the world; we know this because of the voices of the prophets who empathize with God’s pathos by speaking for God and God’s anger in scripture. Jesus also channeled God’s anger, and even more, actually became a human being and showed us how shareable humanity’s anger is. Jesus was angry both on God’s behalf and on behalf of the people suffering around him, whom he came to liberate.
In many ways, Christmas is all about Jesus coming to earth to show us that God feels what we do,that God is angry at the things we are, and to show us that that anger is shareable. Jesus didn’t just turn over tables, he expressed his greatest judgment at evildoers who make a mockery of God’s love for the oppressed. In his anger, he committed his followers to caring for the vulnerable and preached, comforted, and liberated those very vulnerable people. He identified with them so much, he became one of them.
Maybe you’re reading this and you don’t feel too angry about the state of the world. Maybe you don’t feel it in your bodies like many of us do. My call is to stretch your empathy to feel the anger of the migrants, queer people, women, people of color, and workers that are tiring of getting the wrong of the stick. The injustice in our world is apparent to many of us, and that anger is shareable. No longer do you need to say you cannot empathize with the anger of the afflicted, pay attention to them, and join them. Solidarity forever.