From my personal experience, from my experience as a spiritual
father, and from my observations in society, I have found that one of the endemic
sins of contemporary mankind is anger.
This sin can be of a personal nature and also of a group nature. The first is individual anger and the other
is the anger of a people which can lead to destructive war, for a short or a
long time, but executed with a cruelty which the technology of past centuries
could not carry out…
Personal anger transforms the heart of a man from a dwelling
place of the Holy Spirit into a demonized house, because it changes the
spiritual structure of the soul, orienting it toward the dark regions of the
human being. History knows disastrous
events brought about by anger and tragic incidents caused by impetuous anger,
which created regrets and hopelessness in he who allowed himself to be seized
by it.
The Holy Scripture is intensely preoccupied with the problem of
anger. In comparison to ancient times,
our times give greater occasion for anger to manifest. This is due to the great increase in the
density of the population, which has reduced the personal security of the individual
to a minimum. The appearance of anger
presents a major temptation which the devil uses to lure us, knowing that anger
darkens the mind and equips the tongue and hands with a violence which gravely
wounds…
In chapter thirty-four of Genesis, there is a reason for the
anger of Jacob’s sons. The son of the prince
of the country of Shalem dishonored Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. This deed provoked anger in Jacob’s sons who
decided to avenge their sister, even though that youth asked Dinah to marry
him.
The place where Jacob had settled, not far from Shalem, was very
convenient for this family to live for many reasons. But his sons were roused to anger and the
desire for revenge. When the youth from
Shalem asked for the hand of Dinah, his brothers answered deceitfully—that it
would be shameful for their sister to marry one who is uncircumcised. And they asked that all the males of the town
be circumcised, and they accepted. After
two days, when all the men were still in pain, Jacob’s sons entered the city at
night with their servants and slew the fiancé, his father and all the men with
the sword. Then they robbed the city of
all its wealth and took the women and children captive. Thus, under the impulse of anger, they used
the token of Abraham’s sacred covenant with God (circumcision) as a means of
deception through which they carried out their revenge, disregarding the holy
for their personal gratification. When Jacob found out, he said to his sons, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink
among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites
(Genesis 34:30).
And Jacob had to depart from that place with all who were with
him and all his wealth, where he had desired to stay, because of the
uncontrolled anger of his sons. Behind
him he left a spoiled city and murdered men, and he was followed by the hate
and anger of the inhabitants of that region.
This intervention of the devil in arousing the anger of the sons
of Jacob and, as a result, the inhabitants of the region, was unto the
fulfillment of the journey toward the Promised Land. The meaning of this story is like all that
happens as part of God’s will, through which He communicates something to us or
drives us toward something which we must fulfill, but this does not mean that
the sin of anger remains unpunished.
The Christian, however, must not get angry. He knows that God watches over him and that
not a hair of his head falls without the Lord’s knowledge. In relation to his neighbors, he must
moderate his anger, because the Savior was not angered against those who mocked
and crucified Him. Will we get angry
with our neighbor, knowing that he is created in the image of God? Indeed, how can we utter words of anger
against him if he did something to us, knowing well that we have done the same
thing to him or to another, and even worse?
Man today lives under such overwhelming pressure that his nerves
are strained to the limit and even the slightest provocation arouses in him the
sin of anger. Causes for anger could be
the child who does not listen to us, or the husband or wife who contradicts us,
or the driver who cuts us off with his car, or only seems to us to cut us off,
giving a motive for us to be roused to anger.
Even if, through self-restraint, our anger is not outwardly expressed or
is not heard by the one who provoked it, it is still a sin, because it harms
our soul and our heart. It is an action
against ourself, under the temptation of the devil to anger. (to be
continued)
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