[Disclaimer: The following is an adapted excerpt from a semi-formal talk I gave a few weeks ago on the topic of “Wrath,” as part of a series on the “Seven Deadly Sins.” This is part of a larger series called Ockham’s Kegger sponsored by Christ Church—an Episcopal community in South Hamilton, MA. The point of Ockham’s Kegger, says Fr. Patrick Gray, is to discuss “issues of Christian faith in a casual and relaxed atmosphere… This program…will serve up challenging ideas to anyone who likes to think deep thoughts, meet new and interesting people, and have a brew.” I have adapted the language to jive more with the structural guidelines for State of Formation.]

Part 1 of 2: The Tyranny of Opposites

We’re in a time where a lot of community and dialogue is happening online. The possibilities are endless. You can be talking to someone in Peoria and Beirut, and all be talking about the same thing. This is supposed to be awesome, but it hasn’t treated us as well as it could.

For starters, take the world of internet forum commentary. If you’re unfamiliar with what the tenor and tone of internet commentary looks like, I offer you two examples, one involving Justin Bieber’s 2011 haircut, and another being a commercial for macaroni & cheese, circa the early 1990s. Simply scroll below the article/video to view the comments section (for a real treat, look for comments by a user named “PunishedByJesus” on the mac&cheese video).

These are just pop culture’s permutation of online forums. You can imagine that when the blog or video moves into more serious territory, say politics or religion, the positive potential for these dialogic events can go awry fast. People have voices and they want to be heard—a lot of times it’s, “Let’s get angry, and say the most offensive thing we can because it’s 2 a.m., I’m a little woozy, and no one’s around—I can say whatever I want.” This anonymous mentality is problematic.

I’m thinking about this a lot because of the work I’ve been doing here at State of Formation, as it is primarily based online. We have a comment feature, and I want that dialogue to be something that transcends the hate-mongering typical of these forums.

One way SoF attempts to be different is by focusing on narratives of emerging writers and religious leaders. The point is to always start with peaceful dialogue. That may sound at first like being a religious patsy—kind of grossly undervaluing what’s important to your religion, as if you’re going in and saying, “Hey, we can all get along! It’s gonna be kumbaya-awesome! Even if your God has eight arms! Anything goes!”

Instead, I actually come away from these interactions feeling reinvigorated in my own personal faith. The reason for this is because it puts humanity first, then relationship, and then from there, action. So, now you’ve brought together all these different groups and you’re furthering justice and charity—some traits that wrath is diametrically opposed to. From that point, now that you have established a human relationship, you can talk about typically divisive, hot button issues and actually get somewhere. In the end, if you know this person, it’s tougher to scream profanities at her/him if you know that their mother just passed away from cancer, or they’re struggling to find an antidepressant that works, or they’ve been a victim of gendered or sexual bigotry. You know this person, so something’s going to change in how you talk.

I recently wrote an article subtitled “In Defense of Not Being Right,” and this idea works into my thesis as we think about wrath, and how to counteract it: a willingness to admit being wrong, and maybe even a life of living that.

The problem with wrath is that it will shut off your awareness of the outside world, and ultimately eradicate the relational and redemptive work of spiritual connection—referred to in religious circles as a primary tenant of the Eucharist. So, part of me thinks that we have to look to the opposite of wrath, right? I mean, that’s the point of the sin—it must have its opposite.

However, if you’ll indulge me on two preambles before we get to that. One, and I’m giving away my hipster Christianity here, from C. S. Lewis, and the other from the French philosopher and father of Deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida. I don’t fancy myself an expert on either of these folks, however, some of their singular ideas have really shaped who I am.

Lewis wrote an essay called “Transposition” (found in the collection The Weight of Glory) that seeks to give a more nuanced look at the nature of heaven. Lewis builds an anecdote here about a mother who is put in a dungeon, and subsequently gives birth. I don’t ask about the mechanics of this whole thing, but the point is that the child has never seen the outside world. The mother happens to be an artist, and therefore teaches her son about the world by drawing him pictures. You can read the excerpt here (pgs. 109-111), but the gist is that the child has a hard time grasping his mother’s admission that there is another dimension to the 2D world of pencil drawing. The parallel then is that, on earth, we are living as “penciled lines on flat paper,” and rather than being erased in heaven, the figure is brought to full completion.

The second preamble is from Jacques Derrida. As part of his famous theory of Deconstruction, he discusses an idea that I’m calling the “Tyranny of Opposites.”

To keep things simple and avoid Derrida’s labyrinthine language for the time being, here’s an excerpt, from an introduction to his work written in a literary criticism textbook:

“…[D]econstruction involves the skeptical reexamination, not just of speech and writing, but of all the dialectical polarities that have formed the basis of Western culture… We are used to arguing about various other presences and absences: art vs. genius, culture vs. nature, transcendence vs. immanence, soul vs. body, divine vs. human, human vs. animal, man vs. woman, being vs. becoming, and so on. In each case, the first term denotes the presence and the second  the absence of something. Derrida uses the paradoxes…to decenter the first term of each pair, to remove it from its privileged position…”

This calls into question wrath in relationship to its traditional opposite: the virtue of patience.

With Lewis and Derrida in mind, perhaps patience is not in fact the antidote to wrath. It may be its opposite, but if you hold that we live in an imperfect world, then perhaps it’s not the opposite of sins that we need to find, but their point of shortcoming and potential for redemptive completion.

There are far more rivulets trailing from wrath’s delta. It’s not this simple: “I’m feeling wrathful; I better be more patient.” In fact, that seems like a cycle of failure, leaving one feeling guilty about not being at the right level of one or the other at the right time.

So: what if traditional virtues are not a foolproof formula into leading a moral life?

Continued in Part 2