“Anger is all around us these days. The emotion of anger in itself is not a bad thing. Thomas Aquinas went so far as to say that not responding to something with anger can be a vice because sometimes reason demands anger at injustice and sin.

But anger is a very volatile and dangerous emotion; one that Christians must take great care to direct in a healthy way. Augustine warned that “anger habitually cherished against any one becomes hatred” and “we must watch lest hatred of any one gain a hold upon the heart.” Thomas Aquinas wrote that anger can become a mortal sin if “through the fierceness” of the anger a person “falls away from the love of God and his neighbor.”

Which is why it is disturbing that so many Christians so easily excuse uncharitable displays of wrathful anger by pointing to the example of Jesus overturning tables in the Temple and Nicholas punching Arius at the Council of Nicaea (which most likely never even happened). In fact, of all the deadly sins, wrath seems to be the sin considered least serious by most Christians (at least judging from social media!).”

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