It took me a long time to learn this simple truth: anger is a valid emotion, one that needs to be recognized, acknowledged, and dealt with. Good people tend to deny, repress, suppress, or just plain ignore anger, but these feelings don’t just go away: they fester; they simmer; they slow boil, and they eventually manifest as depression or rage.
Throughout my life, I tried to make peace at any price, and this prevented me from speaking my truth soon enough. Over time, all the slights, injustices, betrayals, and hurts would build up to the point that I would blow up in highly destructive, explosive, and over-the-top ways. This kind of expression of anger, which I call mortal anger, usually backfired on me, and I’d come across looking like a raving lunatic.
Most of us haven’t been taught godly ways of expressing anger. We haven’t learned to say what we mean, mean what we say, without being mean about it. We have to stop seeing anger as a “bad” thing, as some kind of vile emotion, and come to realize that anger can be a positive force that can be galvanized to create a fairer and more just world. This kind of righteous anger is called divine anger.
In going about our daily lives, we’re asked to be God’s instrument of peace through the vehicle of divine anger. Properly thought out, planned, and executed, divine anger becomes a reflection of God. If we do our part to seek justice in a fair and moral manner, then we can expect the universe to do its part in bringing about a state of divine retribution. The popular expression “revenge is a dish best served cold,” reminds us to not act rashly in the heat of the moment, but to wait until we can react in a calm and rational way in our quest for justice for all.
Now, when I’m confronted with a situation in which I’m not quite sure how to respond, I use this as a rule of thumb: if something were done to my beloved daughter, would I tell her to just turn the other cheek and walk away, or would I tell her to stand firm, to speak up, to file a law suit, and to seek justice? What I would tell her to do in that instance, is what I need to do, and knowing this helps me to clearly see the right course of action.
The next time that you feel torn and conflicted over a particular situation, and you really don’t know what the right thing to do is, try thinking about what you would tell someone you love to do under those same circumstances. Then go in peace and do just that, knowing that you’re walking in the visionary footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas K. Gandhi, four men who harnessed the transformative power of divine anger and used it to make the world a better place.