Anger is Very Hungry

What celebrity chef Rachel Ray can teach us about feeding anger

Most Fr. Dad posts don’t start with Beyoncé.

But this weekend Beyoncé debuted her new album, Lemonade, in which she seems to allude to her husband, Jay-Z, cheating on her. In one of the tracks, this someone is identified as “Becky with the good hair.” Rachel Roy (notice the ‘o’!) who is a fashion designer and the ex-wife of Jay-Z’s ex-business partner, Tweeted something about her “good hair” that might have suggested she was the “Becky” referenced in the song.

The next thing that happened was celebrity chef Rachel Ray, who is significantly more famous than Rachel Roy but not the same person at all, then got absolutely hammered on social media and was called all sorts of absolutely horrible things by Beyoncé’s angry fans.

This is because anger is stupid, and also apparently illiterate.

Another example, a million times more prosaic: recently on my neighborhood Facebook one neighbor publicly confronted another (this “other” being the owner of a home landscaping business) about a job poorly done. The landscaper defended himself. And from there, things went crazy — not only did other people join the fray on one side or the other, but thread morphed into a whipping post where a whole host of local businesses were derided and mocked for alleged failings. Soon the local dry cleaner had been dragged into what began as criticism of a landscaping job. Many, many businesses were deemed places “I will never go again!” The posts grew so broad and so violently angry — this great catharsis of rage at any local business that had mistreated any neighbor and any point in the past — that my wife and I soon found ourselves discussing it in bed.

And we complained about dry cleaners.

Even assuming that every aggrieved person expressing anger was justly wronged by the business in question (which seems doubtful), is this a proper expression of anger? Is this who we want to be? Do we want to raise children trained to summon their literary skills to the high purpose of expressing fury at marital infidelity among pop stars or publicly eviscerating dry cleaners?

But of course it’s not just the celebrities and dry cleaners. We’re in an election year here in America, as you’ve surely noticed, and the single best explanation for the results so far is anger — anger at the political class, Mexicans, the wealthy, the banks, the healthcare system, foreigners, Muslims, people with the last name Clinton, and many more.

This is a really bad idea, because anger is stupid. No, I didn’t say you’re stupid for being angry (there are lots of good reasons to be angry). I said anger is stupid. It’s dumb. It’s not thoughtful. It obviously cannot even get basic short-vowel sounds like ‘a’ and ‘o’ correct. Anger is literally dumber than a pre-schooler. Or as the book of Proverbs says, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Prov. 14:29). Anger is a violent, oafish, giant that lives in all of our hearts. And we’ve handed anger the reigns of decision making in this country.

Even though I know I’m guilty of it too, I also know that as a father I don’t want to raise my kids in this roiling anger soup. It’s ungodly. Literally. Being “slow to anger” is part of God’s nature, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6).

Jesus isn’t very ambiguous on the subject: “I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be liable to judgement” (Matthew 5:22). Ephesians recognizes the emotion, but drastically curtails its shelf-life: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26).

If you can browse Facebook in the evening and somehow avoid letting the sun go down on your anger — well, you’re a better person than me. I get angry.

I can’t solve the question of anger on the national stage, or really even address it, in a “Fr. Dad” post. More importantly though, national politics is the wrong level at which to begin thinking about, and repenting from, our anger. As long as we’re going to spend our Sunday nights furiously slut-shaming the wrong celebrity on behalf of Beyoncé, we can’t expect to steer clear of the macro-level social danger of acting out of national anger.

So let’s think small. Real small. Like “small children” small.

The angry outbursts of small children take place in a much, much safer spiritual space than the angry outbursts of adults. When one of my children has a fit of anger, even if the anger is legitimate, there’s no one around to legitimize the fit. No one says, “Way to crumple up your sister’s drawing and throw it in the trash! That’ll show her for stealing your marker. Now go scream some more! Then grab another marker and write some nasty things on her wall!”

No one feeds the anger of a small child.

But as adults, we’ll nurture and feed one another’s anger. This is particularly true on social media, but even in regular conversation. In a world where most people struggle to feel in the right, one thing we can identify is when we’ve been wronged. It feels good to be right about being wronged. This is true even if the wrong was just a dry cleaner mistake. Things we wished we received more of in life, like support, confidence, and encouragement, are rained upon us in our anger. We feed one another’s anger, even over little things. Or the wrong things (sorry Rachel Ray…our anger was just so busy feeding).

Taking anger into our culture right now is like taking a hungry dog into a Brazilian steakhouse. It’s really important to keep it on a short leash, because if it gets free, it will eat — a lot.

And anger is very hungry. We actually cannot feed it enough, for as we feed it, it grows. And as it grows, it’s appetite increases, and so it has to be fed more. Soon the only thing left to feed it will be our souls.

We must stop feeding one another’s anger at the dry cleaner. Or the landscaper. Or the doctor. Or Wal-Mart. Or financial adviser. Or whomever.

It’s not that we can’t be angry —we will be wronged and that will make us mad and that’s completely fine. But that anger doesn’t need to be stroked and fed and nurtured until it grows uncontrollably big and strong.

At it’s best, anger is a catalyst to do something new out of love. The Bible says even God gets angry. Often. And then end result of that was that he sent his Son to die for us. Which is really very, very different than a Facebook rant.

— Fr. Dad