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Down through the years human misbehavior in the western world is often sorted out into what are called The Seven Deadly Sins.  Usually on the top of the list is Pride. The others fall in line in varying order. One of these is Wrath or Anger, a feeling of hostility toward others.

Some yield to anger more easily than others, and in different ways, but it’s all the same in the end, for essentially anger is wanting others to suffer, to suffer from words, from pain, from circumstances, from grief, from despair, from anything that will hurt. The passion of anger, suppressed or displayed, does provide a certain pleasure or satisfaction—but there is a price—as is the case with all sin. Frederick Buechner puts the price of anger clearly:

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”