“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, that wage war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
Fredrick Buechner compares rage to a sumptuous meal: ”To savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back; in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you” (Wishful Thinking).
I understand the rage of the marginalized and disadvantaged. “You have not,” is James’ poignant response to the wrath that drives violent, destructive protest (James 4:2).
But of all the passions of the flesh, rage is the most self-destructive: Wrath-filled men and women become bitter, sullen victims of their own frustration and wrath. In the end they have nothing to live for but their rage.
Dante, journeying through hell and moving toward the fourth circle’s farthest edge, finds a dark watercourse that discharges into a marsh called "the Styx." Here the wrathful are forever doomed, denied the mercy of forgetting. They stand, stark naked in the bog, striking one another with their heads, chests, hands and feet, tearing one another’s flesh with their teeth (Inferno, Canto VII).
Jesus, however, had another, better, more hopeful take: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest'” (Matthew 9:36,37).
Angry, driven fools, or a field ripe for harvest? It’s a matter of perspective.
David Roper
10.17.10
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