The limits of anger

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. (James 1:19-20)

A word many in our time need to hear, I think. Contemporary politics, both right and left wing, seem shaped by the belief that pure and uncompromising anger against wrongdoers on the other side is what is most needed.

A similar perspective from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. 

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.” 

God's truth will illumine many falsehoods, the ones inside us and the ones inside others. Let us oppose falsehood, seeking God's grace to constrict it within us; praying for our opponents that God would enlighten them.