"Righteous" Indignation (Trinitarian article)

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

September 2016 Trinitarian, monthly newsletter of Trinity Parish Ashland

“Righteous” Indignation

When Elena and I went to Ruidoso New Mexico recently for a week’s rest, on the way there I had an experience that brought back all sorts of bad memories for me.  Transferring flights in the Phoenix Arizona airport, we had to leave the secured area and go back through the federal security screening.  The screeners were overwhelmed by an unexpected peak in their work flow and we ended up having to wait an inordinate amount of time to have Elena go through the screening device in her wheelchair and then be searched manually.  Noticing Elena’s increasing exhaustion at the ordeal and concerned about making our next flight and getting to a rest room for the two of us before the flight, I found the wait frustrating.  The officiousness of the screeners (not something we see often in Medford or even in Portland) finally made something inside of me snap.  I was angry, and for a just cause: defending my beloved wife, disabled and tormented by these bureaucrats who clearly did not see things in reasonable terms.  I found myself thinking with angry nostalgia about how things used to be when “this was a free country.”  I also wondered if the reason that Arizona seemed not to have figured out how to make TSA screenings relatively humane and expeditious, or at least maintaining basic courtesy, was because of its politics, so dominated by politicians whining about “illegal aliens,” defending the “right to bear arms,” and even policing the gender of who uses what bathroom.  (This last point has become somewhat of a cause for me, since I regularly have to escort Elena into her rest room, marked female, after announcing “an opposite sex caregiver is entering.”) 

When we finally settled in the waiting area, a television nearby was blasting national news: an extended excerpt from a speech by Donald Trump.  “Great!” I muttered to myself, before suddenly realizing, as I listened to more and more, that Mr. Trump was appealing with almost every line to anger, nostalgia for the good old days, and a sense of grievance at what has been lost: the very emotions that had just almost undone me in TSA.

We have emotions to help us get by and survive.  Anger is part of the fight instinct where fear is what feeds flight from conflict.  Because sometimes Scripture describes God as “angry,” we somehow think that anger, especially righteous anger, is okay.  But I don’t think those scriptures describe the heart of God.  They describe how our relations with God feel to us when we are at odds with God, not how God feels about us.   God is love.  And as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

Feeling emotions—the whole range of emotions—for us is okay; what matters is what we do with those emotions.  Dissatisfaction with injustice motivates us to do the things necessary to right the injustice.  But going crazy angry and labeling others as deficient, is just another type of scapegoating.   This is why anger is dangerous, as is fear.  Both can wholly disrupt our serenity and sense of grounding in Good and Love.   Anger and indignation at the unfair or unreasonable, are particularly dangerous, because they take on the numinous power of the Deity and make all sorts of unfairness and evil done by us appear justified.   It is unwise to encourage or milk anger of any kind, especially the anger that calls itself “righteous.”   

People who follow Twelve Step Programs desperately try, day by day, to maintain Serenity and Balance as a way of keeping their compulsions at bay.  They say, with a great deal of experience, “[We found that] if we were to live, we had to be free of anger” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 66) and “Justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it… Anger, that occasional luxury of more balanced people, could keep us on an emotional jag forever” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 90). 

There is a reason that Wrath is considered one of the seven deadly sins. I believe that most of us have great problems sorting and processing our emotions, especially powerful ones.  The spirituality that is suggested again and again in scripture is one of acceptance, of expectant waiting on the Lord, and openness to God’s voice.   Jesus tells us to not judge, lest we ourselves be judged.  The spirit tells us to listen to each other, and to cultivate gentleness and kindness.    Perhaps anger is best left to others, indeed.  Perhaps it is best left alone altogether. 

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+