Anger,

“Anger is a gift from God; it is the energy we have to solve the problem,” says Salesian leader Peter Timko.

When anger made the list of the cardinal sins, people didn’t know our emotions. So anger is an emotion, and from a moral point of view, it is not a sin.

“It’s important not to take it so automatically that I’m sinning as soon as I get angry. There is a difference when I feel angry, which is fine, but it is another thing to be angry,” says Salesian Peter Timko in another interview on vices and virtues.

Anger becomes a sin when we mistreat it. We have no choice whether or not to express our anger. Once it is within us, it always manifests itself in some way. Our selection lies only in how we say it.

“A mature person does not express himself by not having emotions or not feeling anger. It would be strange if we did not feel anger. Maturity lies in how I can process and channel my emotions,” explains the Salesian.

The manifestations of sinful anger are not just outbursts of rage or quarrels. Other destructive consequences of poorly expressed anger are silence, ignoring, and creating tension.

“I have known such Christian scribes whom one is afraid to meet. They may live like the best Christians, but they feel the tension everywhere they go. They are angry with everyone and everything,” says Peter Timko.

In the interview, he also talks about how to use negative emotion to do positive things, how to understand God’s wrath, and even which saints can be an example to us in how they were able to handle their explosive temper.

Why is anger a sin, even a capital sin? After all, we read in Scripture about God’s anger; even Jesus knew how to get angry.
We mustn’t look at it in such a simple way. Anger is not automatically a sin.

People did not know our emotions when anger made it onto the list of capital sins.

So anger is an emotion and not a sin in and of itself from a moral standpoint; we don’t believe we are to blame for our emotions. Emotions are a gift from God; they always want to tell us something, to lead us to something. It is different to feel anger, which is okay, and it is different from being angry. That can already be a sin because I am allowing myself to be influenced by emotion to behave in a wrong moral way.

When anger flares up in us, don’t we need to feel guilty?
We need to examine and discern what the emotion of anger that has arisen in us is trying to tell us. Every emotion is like a text message that needs to be read and understood. Based on that, we can then control and process it more easily. We cannot suppress emotion. Repressed anger is a disaster. When it erupts in a person, it does a lot of harm.

I will give an example to explain it better. Surely you know the famous story of William Tell. He had to shoot down an apple on his son’s head with a crossbow from a great distance at the behest of a ruthless landowner as punishment because he refused to bow to his hat. Legend has it that Tell also had another arrow ready to shoot at the landlord in case he failed to shoot down the apple and hit his son. We know that William Tell succeeded in shooting down the apple and did not harm his son.

We also experience this dramatic moment when someone or something makes us angry. The feeling of anger is like a loaded gun that has to go off. However, we are not to shoot at ourselves or others but at the “apple” of the problem to which the emotion alerts us.