Agnosticism / Atheism: What's Hot Now: Punishing Anger and the Angry

Agnosticism / Atheism: What's Hot Now These articles that had the largest increase in popularity over the last week // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Punishing Anger and the Angry Feb 10th 2012, 11:07 Anger (Wrath) is the sin of rejecting the Love and Patience we should feel for others and opting instead for violent or hateful interaction. Many Christian acts over the centuries (like the Inquisition or the Crusades) may seem to have motivated by anger, not love, but they were excused by saying the reason for them was love of God, or love of a person's soul - so much love, in fact, that it was necessary to harm them physically. Condemnation of anger as a sin is thus useful to suppress efforts to correct injustice, especially the injustices of religious authorities. Although it is true that anger can quickly lead a person to an extremism which is itself an injustice, that doesn't necessarily justify condemning anger entirely. It certainly doesn't justify focusing on anger but not on the harm which people cause in the name of love. It can thus be argued that the Christian notion of "anger" as a sin suffers from serious flaws in two different directions. First, however "sinful" it may be, Christian authorities have been quick to deny that their own actions have been motivated by it. The actual suffering of others is, sadly, irrelevant when it comes to evaluating matters. Second, the label of "anger" can be quickly applied to those who seek to correct injustices which ecclesiastical leaders benefit from. Angry people, those guilty of committing the deadly sin of anger, will be punished in hell by being dismembered of alive. I don't see any connection between the sin of anger and the punishment of dismemberment, unless it's that dismembering a person is something an angry person would do. It also seems rather strange that people will be dismembered "alive" when they must necessarily be dead when they get to hell. Don't you still have to be alive in order to be dismembered alive? This image appeared in 1496 in Le grant kalendrier des Bergiers, published by Nicolas le Rouge in Troyes, France. There are sharp knives lying about and people are being poked with sharp sticks, but that's it. Somehow, "Being Poked with Sharp Sticks for All Eternity" doesn't sound quite worthy of hell. Maybe this is really an image of the punishment in hell for those guilty of the Not So Deadly Sin of Grouchiness? Further Reading: Anger: The Seven Deadly Sins, by Robert A. F. Thurman

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