Wrath

This Lenten season, our church went through the Seven Deadly Sins. It was a fascinating series that brought some very interesting revelations. In conjunction with that theme, I led a book study on one of the books the pastors used as a kind of guide for the series: Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield. (They also used Sinning Like a Christian by William Willimon.) I didn’t realize just how much I missed leading book/Bible studies until I did one again. This was our third Lent/Easter season at our church. Every single one of them has had a large impact on me. The first one led me to write (almost) every day for 40 days. The second one saw me participate in a poetry workshop and write a bunch of poems - at least as close to a poem as my brain could generate. This year I hadn’t really written much. I wrote one poem, but it wasn’t really tied into the series; it just kind of popped into my head one day. The last sin, though, made me think pretty deeply about the focused-on sin. So I felt that this may be a good time to punch something out. 

(To be fair, I haven’t done much writing at all for the past eight months. I had some major physical issues hounding me the entire fall that have dragged out through the start of 2025. The lingering remnant is almost exclusively located in my hands - which you kind of need to type. Know that even typing this right now is hurting very much bad, and I will pay for it for the rest of the week. I’m having carpal and cubital tunnel surgery in June. So fingers crossed… Figuratively. It hurts to cross my fingers too.)

Some of you may not know much about the seven deadly sins, or only know about them from the 1995 movie Seven with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. (The ending to that movie messed me up so much. I have never rewatched it, never will rewatch it, and hate talking about it. This mention of it is too much, actually. I’m moving on.) So here is a super-fast explanation. Way back, some monks who were cloistered in their little abbey or whatever had a contest to name the most deadly sins. They took the top seven sins and put them up on a board. Kind of like Ye Olde Family Feud(al). Ok, that is probably not how it happened. But this isn’t an official list that was found in the Bible or whatever. The list has also mutated over the years. The list we were working with was pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. I know not everyone will be on-board with that list, or even the existence of a list of this sort. I remember back in 1993 MTV ran a special on the seven deadly sins and how they didn’t apply any more. So people have felt awkward about this topic for a long time. It isn’t a pleasant topic - sin. People don’t like talking about it even in churches - unless it is pointing out how everyone else is sinning. And these seven seem ultra personal. Every single person can find discomfort thinking about how they fail in each of these things. 

Wrath was a very sensitive one for me personally. Many years ago, I wrote about my struggles with anger. That has been a place where I failed for many years and hurt people around me - especially the people I love the most. I expected this lesson to hurt since it would dig into scars that still don’t feel fully healed. People generally don’t like being reminded of their failures. I’m guessing on that point. I hate being reminded of times I screwed up. The fact that my brain loves dredging those memories up is quite frustrating. Hey remember that time you were giving the speech at the debate tournament, and you started singing America the Beautiful? Remember? The judges laughed at you and had you start over? And then told everyone on the bus afterwards about it? Remember that? Yes brain. I remember. How about when you gave the speech at the other debate tournament that was so stupid… YES BRAIN, I remember. Now shut up. 

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, anger and wrath. There are some important lessons I’ve learned about anger and wrath over the last fifteen years - things that have helped me to defuse issues inside me before they reach the point of explosion.

Wrath and anger aren’t the same

I think there is a reason the sin highlighted is Wrath and not Anger. It helps to have something to differentiate those things, to know what we have crossed the line. Our pastor Sunday talked about the difference between Holy Wrath and Unholy Wrath. In my mind, it helps to separate Anger and Wrath. To me, Wrath is when things go too far. When we get violent in our actions … or words … or behaviors. You don’t have to physically assault someone to demonstrate wrath. I’ve been on the receiving end of verbal lashings that hurt every bit as much as a physical beatdown … or maybe more. Unfortunately, I have also been the one administering that verbal attack. I know when I’m getting to the point of wrath, to the point of explosion. I feel tense and hot all over. My mind is chaotic with voices, with thoughts I can’t piece together. When I look back on every time I have lost that battle for control and succumbed to wrath, it was something that was done to me. (There is that turning inward again.) My kids did something that I didn’t want them to, or didn’t do something that I wanted them to. My boss ignored something blatantly wrong that someone else was doing and got on my case instead. Burger King messed up my order. (Yeah, that happened.) One spark would ignite all of that boiling rage and FOOOOM. Blind fury lashing out at anyone and anything that crossed my path. Not caring or thinking about who was being wounded by what I was saying and doing. That hardly seems like a controlled response or even just run of the mill anger. That is WRATH. So I am comfortable separating those two concepts. 

Actions should not define us

For many many years, I was saddled with the label of “angry.” I was told by my birth family that I was an angry person - largely due to these explosions that they witnessed. It was an unfair assessment. When I started therapy, my therapist told me something no one had every told me before: “You aren’t an angry person. I work with angry people all the time. You aren’t one of those.” He went on to explain, “You come across as a person who feels like he isn’t in control which makes him angry and needing to achieve some level of control.” That all floored me. I thought about what he said and realized he was right. Most of the time, I was not angry - or wrathful. But there were indeed times when I lost control and exploded. That action shouldn’t have defined me, yet it did for a very long time. When I was able to separate myself from that label, I no longer felt doomed to always be an explosion waiting to happen. The other thing I had to realize was that I didn’t even have a fair shot at not developing those angry tendencies. 

History matters

I grew up in an angry house. It wasn’t angry because of the injustice of the world. It was angry for other reasons. Loud vicious arguments were commonplace. Cutting comments flew all around like mail at the Ministry of Magic. There was physical abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse everywhere. And we were made to feel like we didn’t matter on a regular basis. Here is one way to explain it. I felt like I was constantly being hit with a bat. Everywhere I turned, I was being told I wasn’t good enough, was a disappointment, was flawed in some way. You don’t play outside enough. Smack smack smack. It was a bad thing that I liked to stay inside and play or read. It was freaking hot outside in South Florida in the middle of summer. I wasn’t athletic and didn’t enjoy sweating just to be reminded of my failure on that front. You need to lose weight. Smack smack smack. That was my responsibility to deal with. As a ten year old. Pardon me sir, but apparently you think you are talking to someone who gives a shit. Smack smack smack. That was from my dad when I was trying to tell him about something important to me. “Just nod and smile and eventually he’ll stop talking.” Smack smack smack. This continued for years and years. Eventually, I learned to protect myself and swing a bat myself. I kept getting hit, but I at least would be able to defend myself. The problem is that I got to be too good with the bat. I started hitting people who didn’t “deserve it.” I became one of the sluggers. This didn’t stop once I started working at churches. Smack smack smack. If anything, it got worse because those people should have known better. When all you’ve ever known is getting hit with bats, you believe that is normal behavior. It is what you should expect. You know what, though? Getting hit with bats sucks. It hurts. And I don’t like it. Neither does anyone else. I had to learn to put down my bat. A lot of the other people I knew didn’t put theirs down, though. So I kept getting hit. Finally, I decided that I didn’t want to get hit. I learned that if I went into a certain place, I was going to get pummeled. So I avoided those places. Or I just stuck my head in for a little while. I still would get hit, but not for as long. That didn’t always go over well. Some people got offended that I removed myself from their bat swinging. But for me to function, to be healthy, to not be as angry I had to make that decision. What the point? I had no understanding of what anger actually was. All I knew was pain and rage and wrath. Not only did I need to learn to control my anger, but I needed to process what anger even was. 

Anger isn’t wrong

In and of itself, anger is not evil. It has been treated as a “bad thing” for so long that we immediately think of it that way, though. At least people who grew up in an Evangelical American Church. We were talk that all kinds of emotions were wrong; they led us down the “slippery slope” into wanton depravity. Actually, all seven of these highlighted sins have a God-given component to them. There is a healthy kind of pride - satisfaction in a job well done, happiness over a child’s achievements. Ambition isn’t a bad thing. Wanting a better life, community, situation isn’t bad. Desire isn’t bad. Enjoyment and rest aren’t bad. And anger isn’t bad. The problem is when those things are turned inward, and WE become the focus of it. When those things become all about us, when a selfish, self-centered component takes over - that is when those qualities are poisoned and mutate into sin. Jesus never sinned. Yet we see Jesus angry … really REALLY angry. Paul in Ephesians 4:26 even says “in your anger do not sin.” He doesn't say “don’t be angry.” He warns about letting anger turn INTO sin. That is a very different position than what most of us probably learned about anger. 

Anger - in its right form - is actually good

I know this can be a hard concept to grasp, but it is true. A former pastor of mine said “anger is a God-given quality, a natural response when you see injustice.” That floored me when I thought about it. Gary Chapman’s book Anger expounds on this thought as well. We are supposed to get angry when we see people mistreated. When we observe racism and abuse. When we see people treated as something other than a precious and valuable creation of God. That same pastor also frequently said “you will never lock eyes with someone who doesn’t matter to God.” When that fact is ignored, it should make us angry. That is what motivated Jesus in the times when he was angry. Oh yes, multiple times, not just the clearing of the Temple. He got angry with his disciples and with church leadership. When he saw people focused more on their power, money, prestige, and influence than the people they were supposed to lead and care about, he flipped his lid - and tables. When we are told to avoid anger, we tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. We just jettison all the feelings we associate with anger. We become numb to the evil and injustice all around us. The fact is we SHOULD be angry. The way people are treated now, the way things are going, that should piss us off. We should be angry enough to push us out of our inertia and force us to do something. I know some people would find it strange to find theological truths in something like The Avengers, but there is good stuff to be found everywhere. In the movie, Tony Stark keeps on trying to irritate Bruce Banner to get him to Hulk out. Tony tries to uncover Bruce’s secret for keeping from being angry. Finally, Bruce tells him, “My secret is that I’m always angry.” When I think about myself in my current iteration, I really relate to Bruce Banner. I find myself angry all the time. That sounds bad, like I haven’t actually learned to control anything. But there is control necessary to keep a constant level of anger. I’m not flipping out and starting fights or cursing out people for their opinions. But I am angry at SO much that I see occurring. And I should be. I’ve been told by a pastor how wrong it is to be angry on someone else’s behalf - like it is their issue to deal with. But isn’t that the best time to be angry? When I see injustice happening, I should want to stand up against that. That definitely isn’t inward focused. I am fighting for the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the prisoners, the mistreated. That’s the whole reason for being angry. 

Anger - in its wrong form - is death

The problem is that it is so easy to let our righteous anger consume us, to see it turned inward, to be mutated into wrath. I feel like that is where we are in our world - overcome and controlled by our wrath. So many people are so concerned with their own interests that they don’t see or care who they hurt in the process. That’s the thing about wrath - it blinds us while we are in the midst of it. We are lashing out with bats and knives and whips, viciously taking down faceless, nameless, meaningless people. But they aren’t faceless. They aren’t nameless. And they aren’t meaningless to God. Misplaced anger - wrath - kills and wounds and destroys. And it is the opposite of what God wants. “In your anger, do not sin.” Wrath is sin. It truly is a deadly sin, also. The list of deaths that spawned from anger literally starts at the beginning of the Bible and runs all the way to the end. And when other sins - pride and envy and greed and lust - are swirling around, making a toxic explosive concoction, wrath is the spark to set it all ablaze. The devastation that ensues is horrific. It is hard to spread God’s love when we are busy spreading wrath’s fire.