You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry

When I was growing up, I LOVED the late 1970’s and early 80’s TV show starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrignno called The Incredible Hulk. Bixby played mild-mannered scientist David Banner who, when angry, would change into the green-skinned, muscle-bound Hulk played by Ferrigno. You knew trouble was brewing when Bixby’s character would say, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

What do we do with our anger?

Jesus addresses anger directly in today’s gospel.

He is speaking to the crowds about their “righteousness” and said that what they have been taught must be transcended. He says his famous, “You have heard it said…but I say” statements, and today focuses on “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with [another] will be liable to judgment.”

Wait, what? Are we not supposed to get angry with people?

Of course we’re going to get angry with others, but what Jesus is getting at is something much deeper.

Jesus – like so many other great spiritual teachers through the centuries – was a student of the human heart. He knew that something like killing emerged from other sources. He also knew that most people were not likely to kill anyone and might feel “justified” that they were good with God’s ways.

So Jesus invites his hearers to a deeper standard. He invites us to the places where hate, malice, resentment and anger reside in us and says that these are the  places that require deeper scrutiny and examination if we’re going to be in right relationship with each other and God.

Jesus did not say a lot about this teaching (at least not what was recorded) but other great spiritual teachers have, and someone like the Buddha (and others in the Buddhist tradition) have. Some of the wisdom that I have gleaned from their teachings is that anger very quickly morphs into a binary mindset – friend/enemy, love/hate, right/wrong – and has deep roots in fear responses. As such it easily becomes the fuel for aggression, dehumanization and separation. Jesus – being an agent of reconciliation – counsels against harboring anger and suggests leaning into it instead. “Go,” he says,  “as soon as you recognize the anger and be reconciled with your comrade or opponent. Do not let it linger.” 

Do not let it linger.

Anger is certainly an emotion worth listening to, and we need not be afraid of it. Few of us, however, had good modeling related to anger. We most likely have witnessed anger as aggression/violence or denial. And it is in both those extremes that anger gains its destructive power. When it leads to unchecked aggression, anger becomes violence. When it is denied, it festers and eventually comes out sideways. And I think Jesus knew that.

The great Black poet warrior, Audre Lorde, spoke directly to anger and how to use it in her powerful 1981 keynote address at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference.  Her remarks were aimed at the use of anger as a response to racism, yet what she says in this address is powerful counsel that I think Jesus would resonate with. She says: 

“I have lived with…anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also…[Our anger] will not kill us if we can articulate [it] with precision…[and] when we turn from anger we turn from insight…

It is not the anger of other[s]…that will destroy us but our refusals to stand still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to move beyond the manner of presentation to the substance, to tap that anger as an important source of empowerment….[Anger] can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between [us can birth] change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth.”

Just read those words again slowly.

Lorde is inviting us to pay attention to anger – ours and that of other people – and let it be a creative force in the world. There is a space in between aggression and denial where anger can reside that can lead to growth, change and empowerment.

Jesus wants a world – not just without killing – but a world where anger between people causes change and growth and not destruction. And he invites us deeper into that journey today.