Being Angry Is Too Much Fun

“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.”

These poetic words from Frederick Buechner speak deeply to our time.

To my UMC siblings: Christ knew that we are prone to cannibalize ourselves or our neighbor and so let us call to mind that Christ offers the atoning substitution of himself. To be sure we are called to feast at the banquet table. And we are called to feast to be filled. Christ offers himself so that we do not consume others or ourselves.

Be aware of the angry prophets of grievance who set a table and invite you to a feast promising that they, or their version of Church, will be the place you will satiated.

"For We Are Consumed By Your Anger..."

“For we are consumed by your anger;
by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”

— Psalm 90:7-8

At first reading, some might read Psalm 90:7-8 and think, “God is so mad at us that God will destroy us and we should be afraid of how angry God is at us.”

The problem is that when we take a verse or two and do not look at the overall arc of scripture we really can miss the much bigger point. In this case, the bigger point is that no matter how much we want to think that God is angry with us, God is not angry with us.

I know this can sound like I am speaking crazy since the “Scripture clearly says” that we are consumed by your (God) anger. How could this be a verse that testifies to how God is not angry with us?

The words here indicate that perhaps we are not consumed (as in that we are being destroyed) but that we are consumed (as in it captures our imagination) with God’s anger.

Humans are consumed, convinced and sure with God’s anger.

Maybe we are consumed with God’s anger because we believe, deep down that God cannot really love us. We are angry people and so God must be angry. We project ourselves onto God and thus violate the one of the big ten (thou shall not make graven images). God’s ways are not our ways and yet we are convinced/consumed with the idea that God must be angry.

God is not angry at you. You do not anger God - your actions are not significant enough to make God angry. Maybe we want to believe God is angry with us to convince ourselves that our actions are much more important then they really are in the grand scheme of things? Maybe we are convinced that God is angry at us as a way to exert some feeling of power and control? I mean what could be more powerful than to be able to get under God’s skin?

Let Us Eat the Phlegm

in her book, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, Benedicta Ward translates the following story of our Christian desert teachers:

At a meeting of the brothers in Scetis, they were eating dates. One of them, who was ill from excessive fasting, brought up some phlegm in a fit of coughing, and unintentionally it fell on another of the brothers. The brother was tempted by an evil thought and felt driven to say, ‘Be quiet, and do not spit on me.’ So to tame himself and restrain his own angry thought he picked up what had been spat and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. Then he began to say to himself. ‘If you say to your brother what will sadden him, you will have to eat what nauseates you.’

In case you missed it, one brother coughed up phlegm onto a different brother who grew angry from being spat on. The spat upon brother chose to fight the internal battle of anger rather than say anything to the sick brother and possibly hurt him.

So he eat the phlegm.

My beloved denomination is sick. Many of us are spewing up all sorts of phlegm onto one another. We are become angry that someone would say something repulsive; that someone might act against the “code of conduct” and even the Book of Discipline - that someone might spread their “disgusting” theology. Too many of us become angry and choose to correct, embarrass or even reprimand another (always in the name of love).

I desire the heart (and stomach) to eat phlegm. I desire to address my inner conflict and anger knowing that is where the enemies last stand will be. Or in the spirit of another desert saying:

If anyone speaks to you on a controversial matter, do not argue with him. If he speaks well, say, “Yes.” If he speaks ill, say, “I don’t know anything about that.” Don’t argue with what he has said, and then your mind will be at peace.’

The world will be at peace not when we stop fighting, but when humanity is at peace with ourselves. For that internal peace will guide our actions toward one another. We do not have a denomination in conflict so much as the people that make up the Church are not at peace with our own selves. How do we overcome the internal anger and conflict within? Eat the phlegm.