Righteous Anger?

In his sermon today, our Pastor spoke of righteous anger. He used John 2:13-22 as his text; the story of Jesus cleansing the temple of the money changers and animals being sold for sacrifice.

By righteous anger, he was referring to anger sparked by social or religious injustices.

The sermon today started with a discussion of anger in general. What causes it and how people respond to anger.

For some reason, my mind quickly started associating anger with physical response. Then the association became anger and war.

Having been exposed to war, I believe there is nothing glorious about war. The average soldier, sailor, marine, and airman does not possess anger at the enemy. Sure there are instances that provoke war such as Pearl Harbor, or September 11.

There have been many recent wars. There was the first middle east war to protect Kuwait from Iraq. Then there is the second war against Iraq. There’s the Viet Nam War and the Korean War. Can you believe we have had troops in Korea for 59 years?

I seriously wonder what kind of anger I was supposed to possess during Viet Nam to make me want to kill "the enemy". I can’t think of a single Vietnamese person I hated enough to kill when I received orders requiring me to go. Ditto for the Koreans. Exactly which Koreans were we interested in killing?

In Kuwait and the current Iraqi war, exactly what is it that provokes the average American to want to kill folks? Oh yes, I understand the anger associated with being under fire or having a buddy killed or wounded. But does the average trooper wake up each moring wanting to kill someone? No.

The average American military professional is called on to execute the orders of the President of the United States. If that involves killing and maiming people, then so be it.

But the experience of war is totally in conflict with our American social, religious, and human values.

We don’t go around killing strangers who inflicted pain on other strangers, who are 12,000 miles away. We always try to protect women and children, but in war, they can be just as much the enemy as anybody else. Women carry bombs and crying babies are booby trapped to set off bombs when the GI tries to rescue it.

Righteous anger such as that exhibited by Jesus is acceptable. To me, war in self defense is acceptable, if necessary. But war for economic or political reasons is totally repulsive and unnecessary.

I don’t think war is in the category of righteous anger.