Mission Monthly – November 1997

“[People] are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that [a person] can be induced to make, the more often they will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

There has been something burdening me for the last couple of years. It has been a sporadic, social subtlety which, like a chronic cold sore, may be hidden for a time but at the slightest irritation reappears with its oozing ugliness and stench. What I am referring to is anger. Maybe one reason I am so sensitive about this issue is because of my work in a mainstreaming Special Education program. Many of my students are placed in lower level classes, exposing me to many regular education students who come from challenging and difficult situations (some of whom are even labeled “at-risk”). If there is a common thread which runs through the characters of many of these challenged young people it is a common thread of anger, which usually seems ready to (and many times does) explode at any moment.

Each time another “crisis” arises I wonder, “What is it this time?” I usually see nothing truly provoking. Most often it is merely a request from the teacher for good behavior. When crisis occur the self-willed student feels imposed upon while the inconvenience of academic expectation drives the undisciplined into sudden rage. I am occasionally able to interact with these kids in less “hostile” environments and, therefore, am able to see their potential goodness and more gentle natures; but my heart is saddened by these relatively frequent episodes of young people violently transformed.

On a larger scale one need only open any current publication or turn on the nightly news to hear about short tempered tragedies often resulting in property damage, physical harm or even the loss of life. What is this emotion which so often results in irreparable damage? What is the cause of an irritation so great that it insipidly motivates one to injure another (and ultimately himself)?

We live in a country which promotes, more than anything, the self-rights of the individual. The ideal which is set before us time and again is an ascent to freedom without accountability. The essential issues of “civil rights” nobly fought for in the earlier decades of this century, lose their moral excellence when people “claim and blame” every time actions are taken or decisions are made which may restrict or interfere with this “ideal” and our perceived “claims on life.”

C.S. Lewis is quite agreeable with the Fathers of the Church. Anger comes not when a person encounters misfortune. We all encounter misfortune from time to time. Rather, anger comes when our misfortune aggravates our possessiveness. Anger is inevitable when someone or something disrupts our ownership of agenda and priority.

Compounding this problem is the growing social perception of entitlement. It seems more and more people, crossing all levels of society, believe they are entitled to something more than they have. What amazes me even further is how a person can be so consumed with their own self-right that they lose sight of the other. Is it any wonder that ours has been labeled an “angry society?”

This is not the first or last meditation ever written on the selfish causes of anger, nor the first admonition to be (especially we as Orthodox Christians) more pure, humble, patient and loving. When the priest prays in the Holy Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy, “Thine own of Thine own. We offer unto Thee…” he acknowledges our belief that all belongs to God while we are only challenged to be faithful stewards. The moment we take ownership of anything, even life itself, we fail and fall into disappointment and conflict.

In a sermon given in honor of our own St. Ignatius, St. John Chrysostom said, “He put off his body as easily as a man takes off his clothes.” And our blessed patron wrote in his letter to the church in Rome just prior to his martyrdom, “I but begin to be a disciple of Christ when I desire nothing, either visible or invisible, but to come to Christ.” May God help us to recognize the signs of our selfishness and acquire the balance of the great monastic father who when served salty soup would quietly add water, or when served bland soup would quietly add some salt. He knew that if he were to give way to anger he would be offering up his heart to the will of those who so hate the Glory of God and the peace that belongs only to men of good will.