The sin of anger
I feel rather certain that many of those who shouted vociferously for the immediate hanging of all those who had raped and eventually killed the 23-year-old girl in Delhi would now be more amenable to J.S. Verma’s proposals, which have ruled out death penalty or chemical castration of the accused.
I feel confident of this because most people then were reacting out of the raw emotions of anger, threat, fear and frustration, all rolled into one and born out of that ghastly incident. I am certain that most of them have thought things through and now regret that anger got the better of them.
A young girl, of about the same age as the Delhi “brave heart”, was horrified to hear me suggest, during the Church services on a recent Sunday, that asking for the death penalty for the accused was nearly as bad as what those guys had done. Much as I tried, I could not convince her that while her anger was certainly justified, the demand for taking a life, the insistence on killing someone, was retributive — it wasn’t justice that she sought, it was revenge.
I asked her, “If angry people applied the principle of, ‘an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’, would it not leave the whole society blind and toothless?”
Anger is a strong emotion of displeasure caused by some sort of grievance that is either real or perceived to be real by a person. Psychologists have identified three situations that contribute to anger: Emotional reasoning which makes us misinterpret events; low tolerance for frustration which makes things appear as threats to us; unreasonable expectations from people and society. Psychologists also hold the view that while it might be quite healthy to be angry in certain situations, they advise us not to be dictated by anger.
The Bible says, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20); “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4: 26-27); “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back” (Proverbs 29:11).
People in a fit of anger are sometimes more intoxicated than those who consume alcohol. Most people who act on their anger are known to regret their action for the rest of their lives because either they have destroyed their own lives or they have hurt others really badly. They did not realise the consequences of giving in to anger then, but spend the rest of their lives repenting.
God-given life is too precious to be frittered away by acting under any of the many negative influences that often cross our path.
Father Dominic Emmanuel is the director of communication of the Delhi Catholic Church.
Post new comment