Are you an angry person?

If you are, let’s start with something unusual. Let’s celebrate that.

“A study of the accordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness,” writes Arthur Pink.[1. In The Attributes of God, pp. 95-96]

Richard Niebuhr famously criticized liberal Protestants for ignoring that point: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[1. The Kingdom of God in America (1937), New York: Harper and Row, 1959, p. 193] In Niebuhr’s formulation, the beginning of the error came by a denial of God’s wrath. So Garret Keizer says to the contrary, “I am unable to commit to any messiah who doesn’t knock over tables.”[1. in The Enigma of Anger, as quoted in Rebecca DeYoung’s Glittering Vices, p 121.]

Why would we celebrate a God who has wrath? A messiah who knocks over tables?

My favorite quote about anger may answer that question: “Great love is the root of great anger. You don’t get angry unless you care.”[1. Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices, pp. 121-122. Again, I’m indebted to DeYoung’s work in this post more than I am probably even aware. You should read it.] We celebrate a God who has wrath because our world is full of injustice, and we want to know that God cares.

Wouldn’t you agree, too, that human anger has a godly place in our world? Yes God says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.”[1. Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19; Hebrews 10:30] Yet few of us would say that leaves no room for our own anger at injustice and our own efforts to repel it. Imagine a world without anger, outrage, and retribution. It would shrug at the Holocaust, acquit the rapist…

Anger shows that you care. It rises out of a great love.

When anger becomes a vice

Just as we’ve seen with lust and gluttony before, vices start with good things and then distort and pervert them. Anger becomes a vice when it misuses our desire for justice.

Fighting the wrong fights

Think back through your last week or month. When did you get angry? What was the injustice that drew your wrath?

If that anger showed that you care, if it arose out of a great love, what does it reveal about your love?

When I think back on my greatest moments of outrage, this self-assessment cuts pretty deep. I’ve had moments of righteous anger when I saw people blaspheming or misrepresenting God, or church workers doing poor work in the name of God. I’ve written with indignation about double-standards in church staffing situations.  Events like the Newtown school shooting have left me at once heartbroken and furious. But a lot of my anger has been spent on personal offenses.

When I look at the proportions, I’m sickened to see how strongly I’ve reacted, and how long I’ve burned, over perceived injustices done to me in the past. Moreover, I’ve seen how quickly I can get irritated and grit my teeth when something isn’t going precisely as I want. A low-grade anger starts to develop when the traffic lights seem against me, or when things at work or home don’t all run smoothly.

What does this say about my great love? It says that a lot of my great love is for myself.

I know we aren’t meant to be doormats––walked all over by other people without ever a word. We needn’t take every bit of injustice that comes our way or tolerate poor or inappropriate behavior forever. In the ministry setting, churches are often accused of being too slow to fire. We’ve been known to bear with great patience people who should have been let go long before. We need to recognize that patience has bounds, and when we cross them, we become simply negligent.

But I recognize too often in myself something opposite the description of God’s character. Did you know that eight times in Scripture, God is described as “slow to anger and abounding in love”?[1. Exod 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2] Most of those times, he’s also called “compassionate and gracious.” To the contrary, my anger can come quickly and negate all love and compassion and grace.

What fights are you fighting? Are you fighting good fights? The kind of fights that God would fight––for justice and truth and beauty?

Fighting the wrong way

The other question to ask is how we fight when we’re angry.

Let’s acknowledge it: fighting dirty can feel good. Because it’s usually about achieving justice through the lowest common denominator––eye for eye, tooth for tooth, insult for insult, misery for misery.

These feel good because they’re quick answers that give us control. Damage inflicted in a moment can take years to heal. When we fight, we can be part of the slow struggle to heal or we can inflict quick damage.

This happens when we direct our anger at ourselves, too. A person angry at herself for something she did (or didn’t do) can seek peace, or she can choose to punish herself––taking vengeance against herself for past mistakes. How many suicides have been the result of self-loathing? A person’s final angry judgment against herself?

The vice of anger misuses our outrage in legitimate cases of injustice. It causes us to seek justice through more pain rather than through healing.

Fighting back against the vice of anger

The most common pattern in fighting the wrong fights and fighting the wrong way: quickness.

We pick the wrong fights when we lack the forbearance to endure some amount of personal suffering or offense or inconvenience. We fight dirty when we lack the patience to seek peace and let God avenge. We become quick to speak and quick to anger.

I’m amazed by the lack of anger that I’ve seen from many Holocaust survivors. I think it’s a result of the forbearance they were forced to learn and exhibit. Their very survival required a degree of patient endurance I can’t fathom. Those who survived can tell of a great hope they carried––that their lives and sufferings could still have meaning. They didn’t give up because their existence still had a purpose.[1. See Viktor Frankl’s excellent book, Man’s Search for Meaning, for a treatment of this.]

And here patience and hope come together. When our hope is in God––in God’s justice and care––we can stand to patiently endure our present struggles, fight the good fight of peacemaking and restoration, and trust God to administer final justice.

Patience and hope light the path away from the vice of anger. These come only from God, as we grow to trust in him.

Can you assess your anger this Lent? What’s making you angry and how are you fighting? How can you be quicker to listen, slower to speak, slower to become angry? How can you fight good fights as a peacemaker, seeking justice and restoration for all? The beginning of the answer is to recognize how the vice of anger is perverting our sense of justice and then to seek patience and hope from God.

 

“In your anger, do not sin.”[1. Ephesians 4:26] May your desire for justice make you a peacemaker, blessed and called a child of God.[1. Matthew 5:9] And “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”[1. Romans 15:13]

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Pirates of the Caribbean depicts one of the last curses I’d want to endure. Barbossa and his crew have lost all ability to feel, smell, and taste. That big green apple is its most prominent symbol. Barbossa yearns for the day that he can actually enjoy it again.

What a great gift God has given us, that we were made to delight in things! We don’t go through life merely using things for the sake of survival and efficiency. We’re made to enjoy and savor and appreciate.

It’s no wonder that the symbol for the Pirates curse is a piece of food. Our relationship with food has a special place among all the things we enjoy.

Think of any party. It might have dancing or singing or games or music. But there’s little doubt that food will be a part of it. Regardless of time or place in history, food has been a party staple.

I originally thought it was odd that one of the seven capital vices would focus on eating. The category seemed too narrow. Some people have expanded the definition of gluttony to include any over-indulgence––movies, social media, email, even being a “glutton for punishment.” Yet as I’ve considered these more, eating seems to have a special place in our lives. God has given us all a common need for food and the common gift of delight.

What, then, is the problem with gluttony? If you think it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t overeat, stick around…

Good desires gone bad

In my post on lust, I said that every vice distorts or perverts something good. Lust and gluttony are considered two of the three “warm-hearted” vices. They have to do with a distortion of our desires––an attempt to over-indulge them.

Our desire to enjoy food gets distorted in two ways. We could call the mottos for these two distortions “eat to live“ and “live to eat.”

Eat to live

You might have met an ascetic––someone who practices severe self-discipline and avoids all forms of indulgence. Maybe you’ve toyed with ascetic ideas in your own mind. For the ascetic, anything that’s not specifically devoted to God is a waste of time, money, and energy. In many ways, the ascetic is the extreme Christian utilitarian. “What’s the purpose in eating anything else when beans and rice can sustain?” For the ascetic, food is for sustenance and nothing more: “eat to live.”

Temporary periods of ascetic living can serve a good and holy purpose. With regard to food, we call that fasting and abstinence. More on that below. But a permanent lifestyle of asceticism risks denying the goodness in God’s creation.[1. You’ll see an example of the same outlook affecting sexuality in 1 Corinthians, when Paul has to write to married couples about sex: “Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.” (1 Cor 7:1)]

Live to eat

The more common distortion in our relationship with food is gluttony. We usually associate gluttony only with overeating, but the issue at root isn’t necessarily quantity. You can be a skinny glutton.

Asceticism distorts our desires by denying pleasure. Gluttony does the opposite. It over-amplifies pleasure. For the glutton, the pleasure of eating and being full isn’t one of many pleasures to enjoy, it’s the pleasure. The appetite and tastes dominate: “live to eat.”

I think Aquinas described it best when he called this sort of intemperance a childish sin.[1. Found in Rebecca DeYoung’s Glittering Vices. Again, I imagine more of this post than I know is indebted to insights she led me to. You should read it.] Imagine a child at the table, unhappy with what he’s been offered to eat. “It’s yucky, I don’t want it.” He complains. He pouts. Because his personal pleasures aren’t being met, he sits through dinner with a scowl.

Or imagine the child ready to eat before dinner is ready, throwing a fit because she’s hungry, pestering her parents for something to eat “right now!”

Adults may handle the same situations with a bit more dignity, but their attitudes may be the same. We all want things to be exactly to our taste,[1. Sally: But I’d like the pie heated and I don’t want the ice cream on top, I want it on the side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it, if not then no ice cream just whipped cream but only if it’s real; if it’s out of the can then nothing.

Waitress: Not even the pie?

Sally: No, I want the pie, but then not heated.] in enough quantity, and exactly when we want them. But to what degree will we dishonor and disregard other people and priorities when these needs aren’t perfectly met? When our desires go unfulfilled, does it affect our attitude and treatment of others? If so, gluttony may be at root.

When gluttony elevates the pleasure from eating to an unnatural place, it tries to get too much from food. That may be because of another void that we’re trying to satiate. We use food to dull a feeling of emptiness or pain and, in the process, we ignore the real void.

You can see the vicious cycle at work in this… The root of emptiness goes unresolved, but food’s pleasure doesn’t last. As a result, we go back to food over and over, trying to temporarily fill the persisting void. If you’ve ever watched The Biggest Loser, you’ve seen them identify this cycle in nearly every contestant’s life. The pleasures from drugs, drinking and sex often attempt to do the same.

Seen this way, gluttony turns food into our comfort in times of trouble and distress. We seek refuge in food at times when God should be our refuge. When this happens, we not only distort God’s good gifts, we replace God with them.

As a caution, we should remember what ascetics seem to miss: there’s a time for feasting. Refraining from gluttony isn’t refraining from feasting. It’s about placing our feasting in the proper context––as an occasional special indulgence, one that accompanies celebration and facilitates relationships. That’s much different than gluttony’s regular over-indulgence, often as a coping mechanism or replacement for healthy relationships.

Fighting back against gluttony––Lenten Practices

Join me in two practices in the next week.

First, spend some time in self-examination. Is gluttony evident anywhere in your life? Rebecca DeYoung outlines five forms of gluttony with the acronym FRESH. Are you eating Fastidiously (is it spoiled if you don’t get just what you want?), Ravenously (e.g. loading up at the potluck in case there’s not enough), Excessively, Sumptuously (does it have to be rich and filling to satisfy you?), or Hastily?[1. from Glittering Vices, p. 141-142]

Second, spend a day in fasting. Actually, I’d encourage you to pick a day of the week to fast for the rest of Lent. (See this excellent piece by Jonathan Powers on fasting and feasting and gluttony as the gateway to all sin.)

Why fast? First of all, because God commands it in the Old and New Testaments. Furthermore, through fasting, God forms the virtue of temperance in us. He forms in us the ability to moderate our desires. Fasting claims that we don’t have to have everything that we want, even when it’s accessible to us.

If you can’t do a full 24-hour fast, perhaps you can choose something to abstain from. I recently heard someone talking about a person who was giving up chicken for Lent. He asked, “Why give up chicken for Lent? Is chicken really hindering your relationship with God?” He didn’t understand the purpose of Lent or fasting. Chicken isn’t likely hindering anyone’s relationship with God. But a gluttonous attitude that compels a person to take whatever they want, whenever they want, may very well be hindering their relationship with God. Temporarily abstaining from chicken may be the small next step someone needs to take in learning temperance.

 

So may you take pleasure in God’s good gifts. May you eat not just to live, but to delight. And may that delight lead you to a deeper enjoyment of God and his creation, not to a replacement for them.

What do you think? Should gluttony really be considered one of the capital vices (those that tend to underly all of our sinfulness)? What do you think about a definition that includes fastidious and sumptuous eating, not just over-eating?

Next week: “Wrath––fighting dirty for a bad cause”

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