Anger and Contempt

[Jennifer Courtenay]

Good morning,  everyone 

I have copied below an extract dealing with anger and contempt.  The book is 'The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God' by Dallas Willard that I mentioned on Wednesday.  Maybe I have copied too much and you will prefer to scroll down and focus on the section dealing with contempt alone which begins in the section "Anger As Now Practiced and Encouraged".

It certainly  gave me food for much thought.

Jen

In the Caldron of Anger and Contempt 

The Primacy of Anger in the Order of Evil 

The first illustration of kingdom dikaiosune is drawn from cases in which we are displeased with our “brother” and may allow ourselves to treat him with anger or contempt. 

When we trace wrongdoing back to its roots in the human heart, we find that in the overwhelming number of cases it involves some form of anger. Close beside anger you will find its twin brother, contempt. Jesus’ understanding of them and their role in life becomes the basis of his strategy for establishing kingdom goodness. It is the elimination of anger and contempt that he presents as the first and fundamental step toward the rightness of the kingdom heart. 

Pointing to the moral inadequacy of the commandment not to kill as a guide to relationships with others who anger us, Jesus goes deeper, and yet deeper, into the texture of human personality: “But what I say is that anyone who becomes intensely angry [orgizomenos] with those around them shall stand condemned before the law” (5:22). He uses exactly the same phrase, “shall stand condemned before the law,” to apply to anger as the old teaching applied to murder. 

What Anger Is

And when we look carefully at anger we can see why such a strong statement is justified. In its simplest form, anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life. As such, it is not wrong. It is a feeling that seizes us in our body and immediately impels us toward interfering with, and possibly even harming, those who have thwarted our will and interfered with our life. 

Indeed, anger is in its own right—quite apart from “acting it out” and further consequences—an injury to others. When I discover your anger at me, I am already wounded. Your anger alone will very likely be enough to stop me or make me change my course, and it will also raise the stress level of everyone around us. It may also evoke my anger in return. Usually it does, precisely because your anger places a restraint on me. It crosses my will. Thus anger feeds on anger. The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance, before I even have time to think about it. 

And if that were all there was to anger, all would be well. Anger in this sense is no sin, even though it is still better avoided where possible. (Headaches are no sin, but do we really need them?) Anger would then perform its vital function, as physical pain does, and pass with the occasion. But the anger that is a reality among us is much more than this and quickly turns into something that is inherently evil. 

To understand why, we need to take a still closer look at what anger is. It is primarily a function of the human will, and this in several respects. It spontaneously arises in us, as just noted, when our will is obstructed. That is what occasions it. But as a response toward those who have interfered with us, it includes a will to harm them, or the beginnings thereof. Some degree of malice is contained in every degree of anger.9 That is why it always hurts us when someone is angry at us. 

Consequently, we would not choose to have others angry at us unless some ulterior end were to be gained by it. We know that people who are angry at us will our harm, and by just their look (or refusal to look) or the raising of their voice (or not speaking at all) they intend to make a painful impression on us. They certainly succeed. 

Anger and the Wounded Ego 

But it is a third possible involvement of the will in anger that makes it so deadly as to deserve the censure Jesus places upon it. We can and usually do choose or will to be angry. Anger first arises spontaneously. But we can actively receive it and decide to indulge it, and we usually do. We may even become an angry person, and any incident can evoke from us a torrent of rage that is kept in constant readiness. 

This is actually the case with those who are caught up in the current epidemic of “road rage.” The explosion of anger never simply comes from the incident. Most people carry a supply of anger around with them. Perhaps it comes along with that “quiet desperation” that, according to Henry David Thoreau, characterizes the life of most people. Increasingly, now, the desperation is not so quiet. 

But why, one might ask, would people embrace anger and indulge it? Why would they, as they do so often, bloat their bodies with anger or wear it like a badge of honor while it radiates real and potential harm, not only to its proper object, the one who thwarted their will in the first place, but to others standing by—often with deadly effects on their own life and health and happiness? It is well established today that many people are killed by their own anger.10 Untold many others die of secondhand anger, like secondhand smoke. In Los Angeles and other cities, hardly a week goes by without the death of a child from bullets fired at others in anger. 

The answer to this question of why people embrace anger and cultivate it is one we must not miss if we are to understand the ways of the human heart. Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego. 

The importance of the self and the real or imaginary wound done to it is blown out of all proportion by those who indulge anger. Then anger can become anything from a low-burning resentment to a holy crusade to inflict harm on the one who has thwarted me or my wishes or bruised my sense of propriety. It may explode on anything and anyone within reach. I may become addicted to the adrenaline rush and never feel really alive except when my anger is pumping. 

Only this element of self-righteousness can support me as I retain my anger long after the occasion of it or allow its intensity to heat to the point of totally senseless rage. To rage on I must regard myself as mistreated or as engaged in the rectification of an unbearable wrong, which I all too easily do. 

Anger embraced is, accordingly, inherently disintegrative of human personality and life. It does not have to be specifically “acted out” to poison the world. Because of what it is, and the way it seizes upon the body and its environment just by being there, it cannot be hidden. All our mental and emotional resources are marshaled to nurture and tend the anger, and our body throbs with it. Energy is dedicated to keeping the anger alive: we constantly remind ourselves of how wrongly we have been treated. And when it is allowed to govern our actions, of course, its evil is quickly multiplied in heartrending consequences and in the replication of anger and rage in the hearts and bodies of everyone it touches.

 Anger As Now Practiced and Encouraged 

In the United States there are around 25,000 murders each year. There are 1,000 murders in the workplace, and a million people are injured in the workplace by violent attacks from co-workers.11 Most of the workplace murders occur after long periods of open rage and threats, and many involve multiple murders of innocent bystanders. It is a simple fact that none of the 25,000 murders, or only a negligible number of them, would have occurred but for an anger that the killers chose to embrace and indulge. 

Anger and contempt are the twin scourges of the earth. Mingled with greed and sexual lust (to be discussed later), these bitter emotions form the poisonous brew in which human existence stands suspended. Few people ever get free of them in this life, and for most of us even old age does not bring relief. 

Once you see those emotions for what they are, the constant stream of human disasters that history and life bring before us can also be seen for what they are: the natural outcome of human choice, of people choosing to be angry and contemptuous. It is a miracle there are not more and greater disasters. We have to remember this when we read what Jesus and other biblical writers say about anger. To cut the root of anger is to wither the tree of human evil. That is why Paul says simply, “Lay aside anger” (Col. 3:8). 

Yet influential people tell us today that we must be angry, that it is necessary to be angry to oppose social evil. The idea goes deep into our thinking. I was once counseling a Christian couple about family matters and suggested that they should not discipline their child in anger. They replied in amazement, “You mean we should just punish him in cold blood?” They had no idea of how their sense of righteousness had become intertwined with anger. 

A leading social commentator now teaches that despair and rage are an essential element in the struggle for justice.12 He and others who teach this are sowing the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind, the tornado. Indeed, we are reaping it now in a nation increasingly sick with rage and resentment of citizen toward citizen. And often the rage and resentment is upheld as justified in the name of God. 

But there is nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it. The sense of self-righteousness that comes with our anger simply provokes more anger and self-righteousness on the other side. Of course, when nothing is done about things that are wrong, anger naturally builds and finally will break into action, whether in a family or a nation. That is inevitable and even necessary outside The Kingdom Among Us. 

But the answer is to right the wrong in persistent love, not to harbor anger, and thus to right it without adding further real or imaginary wrongs. To retain anger and to cultivate it is, by contrast, “to give the devil a chance” (Eph. 4:26–27). He will take the chance, and there will be hell to pay. The delicious morsel of self-righteousness that anger cultivated always contains comes at a high price in the self-righteous reaction of those we cherish anger toward. And the cycle is endless as long as anger has sway. 

Contempt Is Worse Than Anger 

But contempt is a greater evil than anger and so is deserving of greater condemnation. Unlike innocent anger, at least, it is a kind of studied degradation of another, and it also is more pervasive in life than anger. It is never justifiable or good. Therefore Jesus tells us, “Whoever says ‘Raca’ to his brother shall stand condemned before the Sanhedrin, the highest court of the land” (v. 22). 

The Aramaic term raca was current in Jesus’ day to express contempt for someone and to mark out him or her as contemptible. It may have originated from the sound one makes to collect spittle from the throat in order to spit. In anger I want to hurt you. In contempt, I don’t care whether you are hurt or not. Or at least so I say. You are not worth consideration one way or the other. We can be angry at someone without denying their worth. But contempt makes it easier for us to hurt them or see them further degraded. 

Today, of course, we would not say, “Raca.” But we might call someone a twit or a twerp, maybe a dork or a nerd. These are the gentler words in our vocabulary of contempt; when it really gets going, it becomes filthy. Our verbal arsenal is loaded with contemptuous terms, some with sexual, racial, or cultural bearing, others just personally degrading. They should never be uttered. 

The intent and the effect of contempt is always to exclude someone, push them away, leave them out and isolated. This explains why filth is so constantly invoked in expressing contempt and why contempt is so cruel, so serious. It breaks the social bond more severely than anger. Yet it may also be done with such refinement. 

How often we see it, in the schoolyard, at a party, even in the home or church sanctuary! Someone is being put down or oh so precisely omitted, left out. It is a constant in most of human life. In the course of normal life one is rarely in a situation where contempt is not at least hovering in the wings. And everyone lives in terror of it. It is never quite beyond the margins of our consciousness. 

But those who are “excluded” are thereby made fair game for worse treatment. Conversely, respect automatically builds a wall against mistreatment. In family battles the progression is nearly always from anger to contempt (always expressed in vile language) to physical brutality. Once contempt is established, however, it justifies the initial anger and increases its force. 

Recently cultural observers have noted the overwhelming rise in the use of filthy language, especially among young people. Curiously, few have been able to find any grounds for condemning it other than personal taste. How strange! Can it be that they actually find contempt acceptable, or are unable to recognize it? Filthy language and name calling are always an expression of contempt. The current swarm of filthy language floats upon the sea of contempt in which our society is now adrift. 

Some attention has recently been paid to twelve- or fourteen-year-old children who kill people for no apparent reason. Commentators have remarked on the lack of feeling in these young killers. But when you observe them accurately, you will see that they are indeed actuated by a feeling. Watch their faces. It is contempt. They are richly contemptuous of others—and at the same time terrified and enraged at being “dissed,” which is their language for contempt. 

Jesus’ comment here (Matt. 5:22) is that anyone who says, “Raca,” to an associate is rightly to be singled out by the highest authorities in the land—“the council,” or Sanhedrin—for appropriate and obviously serious penalties. Contemptuous actions and attitudes are a knife in the heart that permanently harms and mutilates people’s souls. That they are so common does not ease their destructiveness. In most professional circles and “high” society, where one might hope for the highest moral sensitivity, contempt is a fine art. Practicing it is even a part of being “in good standing.” Not to know whom and how to despise is one of the surest of signs that you are not quite with it and are yourself mildly contemptible. 

In his marvelous little talk “The Inner Ring,” C. S. Lewis comments that “in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”13 

To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is withering to the human soul. But when expressed in the contemptuous phrase—in its thousands of forms—or in the equally powerful gesture or look, it stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. It can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy. Its power is also seen in the intensity of the resentment and rage it always evokes. 

“You Fool!” 

But Jesus notes one stage further in the progression of internal evil that may be there without murder occurring: “And whoever says ‘You fool!’ shall merit condemnation to the fires of gehenna” (v. 22). “You fool!” said with that characteristic combination of freezing contempt and withering anger that Jesus had in mind, is a deeper harm than either anger or contempt alone. Twerp or twit usually is not said in anger but even with a certain amusement. Fool, on the other hand, in the biblical sense, is an expression of malice as well as contempt. 

Actually, that word will no longer do to capture the sense of Jesus’ teaching here and, in fact, is now closer to twerp than it is to what he had in mind. Thus one who would follow Jesus’ “law” by not calling people fools today gets off easy. We have plenty of other terminology that would allow us to go ahead and do exactly what he was in fact condemning, without using the word fool. 

The dominant sense of fool in our culture is that of a benign folly, as in “Feast of Fools,” an ancient idea that became the title of a popular book some years back. Excuse the crudity, but the nearest equivalent of the biblical fool in today’s language would be something more like stupid bastard or f—jerk, as said to someone who either has just messed up something important we were doing to meet a deadline or has just cut us off in traffic. One would hardly speak of a “Feast of Stupid Bastards” in the same celebratory sense. 

The fool, in biblical language, is a combination of stupid perversity and rebellion against God and all that sensible people stand for. He is willfully perverted, rebellious, knowingly wicked to his own harm. The Old Testament book of Proverbs carefully delineates his soul. “The fool,” we are told, “is arrogant and careless” (Prov. 14:16). “A fool doesn’t care about understanding, but only in displaying his own heart” (18:2). “Like a dog that re-eats its own vomit, a fool repeats his folly over and over” (26:11). And so on and so on. 

To brand someone “fool” in this biblical sense was a violation of the soul so devastating, of such great harm, that, as Jesus saw, it would justify consigning the offender to the smoldering garbage dump of human existence, gehenna. It combines all that is evil in anger as well as in contempt. It is not possible for people with such attitudes toward others to live in the movements of God’s kingdom, for they are totally out of harmony with it. 

These Three Prohibitions Are Not Laws 

Today one is apt to feel that Jesus is taking all this too seriously But what is it, exactly, that is being done in the delineation of this threefold progression of prohibitions from anger to contempt to verbal desecration? The answer is that Jesus is giving us a revelation of the preciousness of human beings. He means to reveal the value of persons. Obviously merely not killing others cannot begin to do justice to that. 

By no means, however, is he simply giving here three more things not to do, three more points on a “list” of things to be avoided. Certainly, we are not to do them, but that is not the point. If that were all, the enterprising human mind would soon find its way around them. Don’t we already know that not getting angry is the way some people have of winning? And don’t we hear people say, “I don’t get mad. I just get even”? One doesn’t have to be mad to be mean. 

So here as elsewhere in his lovely Discourse on the Hillside, we need to put the idea of laws entirely out of our minds. Jesus is working, as already indicated, at the much deeper level of the source of actions, good and bad. He is taking us deeper into the kind of beings we are, the kind of love God has for us, and the kind of love that, as we share it, brings us into harmony with his life. No one can be “right” in the kingdom sense who is not transformed at this level. And then, of course, the issue of not being wrongly angry, not expressing contempt, not calling people “stupid bastards,” and so on is automatically taken care of. 

When I go to New York City, I do not have to think about not going to London or Atlanta. People do not meet me at the airport or station and exclaim over what a great thing I did in not going somewhere else. I took the steps to go to New York City, and that took care of everything. Likewise, when I treasure those around me and see them as God’s creatures designed for his eternal purposes, I do not make an additional point of not hating them or calling them twerps or fools. Not doing those things is simply a part of the package. “He that loves has fulfilled the law,” Paul said (Rom. 13:8). Really.