7 Deadly Sins - Wrath

“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” warns the mild-mannered scientist, shortly before turning into Hulk.  Well, no, I wouldn’t - you go green and burst out of your shirt.  But then I don’t really like anyone when they’re being angry.  It’s not a very likeable quality.  In fact, it’s a sin.

Anger is an emotion that’s evolved for a reason – if prehistoric versions of us get angry at a sabre-toothed tiger for eating our relatives, we kill it, and no-one else gets eaten (by that particular tiger, anyway).  If modern versions of us get angry about the extinction of the sabre-toothed tiger, we can channel that anger into work to stop other species becoming extinct.

It’s certainly not good for us to suppress anger, it can lead to us turning that anger on ourselves, and cause all sorts of psychological problems, but properly expressed anger can be constructive.  If you can calmly tell someone that their action has made you angry, you are halfway towards sorting the problem out.  At the other end of the scale, there’s good old-fashioned sinful wrath, which is never internalised or constructive.  It’s the sort of anger that produces the “hairdryer effect”; a blast of hot directed towards the hapless individual on the receiving end.  Gods are notorious for their wrath – the Greek ones in particular were always getting wrathful at some poor mortal and turning him into a bunch of flowers or something.  Maybe that’s why it’s a sin – the gods probably don’t want us getting in on the act in case we decide it’s fun!

The best way to deal with wrath, of course, is with calm reasoning.  

Last Christmas Eve, someone close to me, who works in a supermarket, was berated loudly and at length by an extremely wrathful customer.  His problem was that, with hours to go before Christmas, the shop had run out of his favourite brand of beer.   Once my friend could get a word in edgeways, he gently suggested that as the customer was obviously very angry, alcohol may well be the last thing he needed in terms of his blood pressure.  He could therefore consider the supermarket had done him a favour.  This succeeded in replacing the customer’s wrath with bewilderment, which is much easier to deal with.

Wrath really is bad for your blood pressure - with or without beer.  It makes your heart beat faster and your adrenaline levels shoot up (much like some of the other sins, come to think of it).    Not only that, it’s no fun at all for whoever you’re raging at – even if you’re only angry at yourself, that still counts as a sin.  You’re supposed to be calm in the face of whatever outrage life has visited upon you today.  

So don’t forget that wrath isn’t just a sin committed by football coaches and petulant teenagers – count to ten and relax when something happens to make you angry, and your world will be a calmer and less sinful place.

Cindy George

Posted Mon, 08/16/2010 - 16:18 by Cindy.George