Live Not in Anger but Hope
He who wishes to acquire the anger that is in accordance with nature must uproot all self-will, until he establishes within himself the state natural to the intellect.
St. Isaiah the Solitary, "On Guarding the Intellect," in Philokalia (Vol. 1), 18.
Anger is a complicated emotion.
On the one hand, when I experience an injustice, it can move me to act to correct the situation. On the other hand, though, anger can move me to compound the injustice with one of my own. It can also just as easily cause me to respond harshly when no harm was committed or even intended.
Anger, in other words, can blind me to the truth of my situation and so cause me to become the perpetrator of the very evil I find objectionable.
And Jesus warns us against being angry:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire (Matthew 5:21-22, NKJV).
Taking Jesus' words to heart, many Christians see anger--for whatever reason or in any circumstances--as sinful. Christians, they say, shouldn't get angry. Or, if we do, we should not act on our anger and repent of it.
And yet Jesus gets angry at the hypocrisy He sees in the religious leaders, ordinary believers, and even His own disciples.
It's this kind of anger that St. Isaiah the Solitary describes in the opening paragraph of his treatise on guarding the intellect. What we might call righteous anger or indignation is "in accordance with nature." This form of anger sees not so much the evil that is done but the good that is absent.
Seeing what is needful, anger "in accordance with nature" moves us to act. We don't rail against the abuser, but rescue the victim. We don't condemn the sinner but work to liberate him from the sin that binds him.
Seeing the degradation of the environment, righteous anger moves us to grab a mop or broom; we clean up, we simplify, and thank God for His Creation.
To do this though requires, as St. Isaiah points out, that I "uproot all self-will." This isn't a one-time occurrence--it isn't enough not to get angry in the moment--but an ongoing struggle against my own willfulness. Righteous anger requires surrendering my own plans and projects, that I lay aside my expectations for the persons, events, and things that make up my life and instead stand in openness before God.
Reflecting on his own experience the late Fr Henri Nouwen offers us a clue as to what "anger that is in accordance with nature" requires. He writes in Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and the Spirit that
I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen in me.
It is this embrace of hope that allows us to respond to injustice in a way that provides the good that is absent. Often we do so knowing that our actions will not be sufficient; we may lift the burden for the moment but we do so knowing more work will need to be done. This is why, returning to Nouwen, why we must learn to
...wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear.
Here, we notice something interesting.
Anger in accord with nature requires that I repent of my willfulness. But anger in accordance with nature also heals my willfulness; righteous anger reveals what is lacking in me. In so doing, it also highlights how deep the roots of sinful anger are in despair.
Sinful anger, anger that is not in accordance with nature, is born of despair. For all of its freneticism--shouting, morbid thinking, rumination on past offenses, pointless actions, and suspicions--sinful anger is fundamentally static. Nothing changes. My situation remains the same because, well, I remain the same.
And so, "anger that is in accordance with nature" not only requires that I "uproot all self-will," but that return if only by fits and starts to that "state natural to the intellect." This last element is, Nouwen says,
...a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.
To surrender my willfulness requires that I live in hope not only for myself but my neighbor and the whole world. Only hope is able to banish unnatural anger and hatred for my neighbor replacing it instead with kindness, love, good humor, peacefulness, joy, and affection.