Blessed Are The Unoffended
Anger and the Sermon on the Mount
Mark Ruffalo plays the Hulk in the Marvel movies. I remember seeing him being interviewed and he shared that his young son had bragged at school about his dad being the Hulk. One day, he accompanied his son to school and one of the other little boys looked at him and asked if he was really the Hulk. Mark made an angry face, and the boy nearly jumped out of his seat, begging him not to get mad. He did not really want the Hulk appearing in the middle of his classroom.
Do you ever feel like Bruce Banner, better known to us as the Incredible Hulk? Think about the last time you felt mad. Most of us don’t need gamma radiation to turn into the Hulk. A traffic jam will do. Is it bad to be angry? Is there a way to be angry in a right way? As much as it happens, it is surprising how tough it is for us to deal with anger as Christians. We feel bad, and then we feel bad about feeling bad.
There are lots of reasons to feel upset. And yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus invites us to not even be angry with others.
Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment (Mt. 5:21).
Now, we have to distinguish between our spontaneous emotional reaction and sustained, chosen resentment. The first can happen in an instant. The second is something we choose to nurse. Jesus is telling us not to be angry, which feels really hard, if not impossible. There is a great book from a Florida radio host, Brant Hansen, called Unoffendable. He talks about how as Christians, we can speak a lot about righteous anger as a way of justifying how offended we get. He proposes something different. Just stop being offended.
Your life will become less stressful when you give up your right to anger and offense… Forgive in the big things and the small things. Don’t take offense (Brant Hansen, Unoffendable, p. 19. 20).
We live in a culture that often rewards outrage. Oh, they spilled a cup of coffee on you at the cafe? Well, you will never believe what happened to me. Hazardous waste backed up in the sewer and spilled out all over my bathroom floor. We feel the need to “one-up” the other person’s story because we want to be the most offended. Feeling offended is not necessarily a sin. But living offended is exhausting. And we are far freer when we are not offended by everything.
If we are going to give up being offended all the time, we need to learn some techniques to let go of our anger. We can pray and reflect to reject the rise of anger in our hearts.
In the first reading, we hear today from the Book of Sirach.
Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses will be given him (Sir. 15:17).
Think about this the next time you get mad. We have all been driving and somebody cuts us off. We can get tremendously angry and launch a litany of epithets, or we can maneuver defensively and pray for the person who perpetrated the misdeed. Which reaction feels like life and good, and which feels like death and evil? Anger is often less about what happens to us and more about what we choose in response.
When we feel anger rise up within our hearts, we can call out to God with other verses as well. Psalm 4:2 proclaims “Answer me when I call, my saving God. When troubles hem me in, set me free; take pity on me, hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:2). This seems like a better reaction than throwing your roommate’s hairdryer in the trash because it was left on your side of the room.
We also need to fight against our tendency to catastrophize. Whatever situation we are experiencing, we tend to make it as big and terrible as possible. I failed a midterm in my sophomore year of college. That’s it. I am not getting into medical school. Yes, one midterm matters. But it is not the apocalypse. Catastrophizing turns irritation into rage and inconvenience into injustice.
When we learn to pray and reflect, we learn to counteract the offenses that lead us to be angry. We end up having more peace in our hearts, and this leads to greater joy. In the whole Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is giving the keys to Christian happiness. I think that learning to not take offense so often and avoid being angry is one of the surest ways to happiness.
Perhaps the best text on dealing with anger comes in the Letter of St. James. We could take it as a crash course in practicing charity in word and deed.
Everyone should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath (Jm. 1:19).
We tend to be slow to hear and quick to speak, and this is how we get ourselves into trouble. If we learn to listen and have compassion for others, we will notice how our hearts experience more peace and we get to feel more joy. Real strength is not explosive power, but rather disciplined love. Ask the Lord today to transform your anger into patience, your outrage into mercy, and your reactions into love.