[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.]

View part 1

Part 2 of 2: The New Sin of Being In the Moment

It may sound cavalier to suggest that the heavenly virtues that so many people have held to for so long are not actually the antidote to “vices,” and that even viewing them on opposing poles could be quite dangerous and self-defeating. However, the background on how the Seven Deadly Sins came about is not some canonical canyon. For one, the biblical precedent for the 7DS is hard to pin down. There is a list of seven in Proverbs, but they don’t sync with the current list. Galatians has many more in common, but a lot more than seven.

In the 4^th century, the monk Evagrius Ponticus put together a list he titled the Eight Bad Thoughts. Two centuries later, Pope Gregory I edited and combined ideas from this list, renaming it the Seven Deadly Sins. This is the list that we know today, and that was used most famously in Dante’s Divina Commedia.

So: Eight Bad Thoughts into Seven Deadly Sins. Seems like a bit of a jump.

From a nonreligious point of view, another helpful text titled The New Sins (McSweeney’s 2001) written by artist-musician David Byrne, best known for fronting The Talking Heads, speaks to the mutability of sin. In good contrarian fashion, he purports, what if the real sins are the things we consider virtues, such as temperance, charity, humor, etc. He then tries to throw things on their heads, to varying degrees of success. However, there are some eloquent passages on the nature of sin, including, “The difference between medicine and poison is in the dose”—an idea that fits with the Lewis and Derrida passages mentioned in part 1.

He goes on to say, “Each culture and the society make their sins—sins are not eternal, fixed and forever. They are constantly in flux… Making an off-color remark at dinner, once considered grounds for ejection from the premises—now is thought of as the height of sophistication and wit. Murder on the battlefield is an act of bravery, but in the home, or in a public bathroom would be seen in a less flattering light. Is this a ‘bending’ of moral standards…?”

The first counter to these ideas would be to just call it relativism. But I don’t think it’s that simple. This is a culturally tested lens. It’s not saying that sins are whatever we make them in our own lives, but rather that things move, and that culture affects how we practice our faith, whether we want to admit that or not—and in fact, we should admit it.

So, rather than looking for the opposite of wrath, should we be looking for wrath’s perfection? The completion of wrath, rather than just its undoing? Patience isn’t something to avoid, but it’s not the whole answer either.

In my lay mentality, I’ll now attempt to give some scriptural backing to these ideas.

Part of me wonders, is it wrath that causes religious leaders in the New Testament to constantly misunderstand Christ? In a way, the leaders are living a cycle or life of wrath that is quotidian—their brand of fury is almost boring. They don’t actually sound mad all the time—there are moments where they fume up, but it seems like they’re walking around with a deeply internalized wrath, and internal is a key word here.

Even when Christ stumps them with stunning logic, and they even recognize it, there’s no accounting for a changing of their minds that I can find, which is also key. That is, until the apostle Paul. Paul’s conversion then becomes a model of how a life of wrath can be overturned. There is hope, but it means admitting you were horribly wrong.

The second thing that sticks out to me is the Gospel accounts of Christ turning over the tables of merchants in the Jerusalem Temple, telling the people inside that they’ve turned the Temple into a “den of thieves.” This scene is troubling for a lot of people, particularly because it seems that the humble and broken Christ with his unconventional and redemptive love isn’t at work in this scene—he doesn’t turn the other cheek. However, I find myself returning to this scene often, and it’s not because I have a hankering for some macho, table-chopping, karate Jesus. In fact, his brokenness not only remains intact here, but is highlighted, and is in keeping with his penchant for quizzically symbolic.

While we see this scene a few times in the gospels, the one I want to focus on is found in John 2, right after the first miracle of water-into-wine. This is where Christ makes the claim, in front of the religious leaders, that he could destroy and rebuild the Temple in three days. John goes on to say to us that, “but the temple he had spoken of was his body.”

The imagery of the body-as-temple, and temple-as-body recurs throughout scripture, and as an artist, I see this scene in part as a metaphor for the desperate need to forcefully drive out that which corrupts the temples of our bodies.

Is this perfected rage? I hesitate to use the term “righteous anger” as it’s problematic, and can end up being a phrase people use to justify any argument that they don’t want to honestly discuss. Rather it seems like a perfected anger leads to and preserves righteousness and redemption of self. For my own life, it’s a call to daily take stock of what I’ve allowed to set up shop in my temple, and, if necessary, drive out that which seeks to rob and undercut the process of redemption. I cannot hope to move if I get stuck in the moment.

It’s only when I look inward first am I then able to enter into dialogic relationship, whether that be as an inter/intra-faith worker, or as a husband, a friend, or soon to be father.

For me, narrative is what searches our temples most earnestly, and it’s our stories that have the potential to remake us. And, if wrath is self-obsessed, I’ll use it against itself by parsing out and questioning my own motives daily. To get out of brain jail, I’ll share my narratives in order to get outside myself and openly discuss where I’m going wrong and what I still feel passionately about.

One of the ways I did this was to write a blog mini-series titled “Letters to an Invisible Church” that allowed me the chance to parse my own relationship and search for my place within the church. And in order to do that truthfully, I have to face the moments that could turn very easily into divisive wrath. Instead, I have to shape, commune, and hopefully redeem them to find the missing pieces, even if at times, it looks like the dissenting voice.

Right now, I have little hope for the internet forum as a place for connection because it strips us of our stories and leaves it easier for us to lead with our fallen attributes and become that squeaky wheel of animosity.

To combat the sin of wrath, then perhaps we should stop viewing ourselves as stuck in an endless ping pong match between wrath and patience, or other opposing poles. Instead, as we navigate interfaith work, and the internet in general, what if we sought the Eucharistic notions of connection and relationship, dialogue, and action first, in order to be loosed from the bonds of belonging to moments. And the freedom is in that prefix: inter, meaning amongst, or between–suggesting a divine ebb and fluctuation. There is a life-changing difference between being in the moment and being inter-momentary.