The Enigma of Anger: Essays on a Sometimes Deadly Sin

I asked myself the question, "What do you want of your life?" and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, "Exactly what I have-but to be commensurate, to handle it all better."

But to divest God of wrath out of deference for those abused by anger is ultimately to salve their wounds with despair. It is to describe a God so benign as to be indifferent, so slow to anger that he is always late to save.

In our resolutions, and even in our fantasies, we are continually making that assumption. If I could just get away from here, if I could just be more disciplined, if I could just renew my prayer life, then things would be better, more manageable, quieter.

Apparently, the poet who asked God to "Throw away Thy wrath" would not have asked him to throw away the thunder.ANGER

Envy is superficially the opposite of pride, but it has the same features of disproportion, and often the same symptoms of rage.

The Lord my God is a jealous God and an angry God, as well as a loving God and a merciful God. I am unable to imagine one without the other. I am unable to commit to any messiah who doesn't knock over tables.

WHERE

Our advertising and even our arts convey the idea that we as a society are brash, irreverent, and free of all constraint, when the best available evidence would suggest that we are in fact tame, spayed, and easily brought to heel.

And I would go so far as to say, not only that anger in many of its forms is sinful, but that anger comes close to exemplifying the very nature of sin itself.