By Dr. Johan Tredoux

Edited April 28th, 2024

I remember a game my older brother and I played as pastor’s kids that can serve as an introduction to this reflection on anger in the framework of religious cultures. The game was called “Turn the other cheek.” The game was to show how tough you were, and someone had to be the sucker for punishment. That just so happened to be me, as the younger brother. There was not much to the game; my brother slapped me on one side of my face, and I had to turn my cheek for another slap in the face — to see how many slaps I could take. And so it went until my brother got to enjoy it too much. It didn’t take long before the aspiration for proven bravery gave way to anger, with retaliation as my only option. I remember chasing my brother down the hallway, aiming to hit his face with a clenched fist, only for him to dodge my uppercut at the last minute. Fortunately, my fist missed his face, but it hit the brick-plastered wall and cracked my knuckles. That was the last time we played that game. 

Unfortunately, the game continued to be played differently in my 30+ years as a senior pastor in the evangelical world. However, this pastoral “turn the other cheek” game did not allow you to get angry. Everybody else was allowed to get angry except the pastor. The lot in life ascribed “by the Bible” was to be the suffering servant and absorb every punch that ministry threw my way. The unwritten rule was to be nice and not get angry. Of course, there were a few times I felt like putting a few parishioners’ names on a golf ball and hitting it as hard as I could. 

For over 30 years, my anger feelings lodged somewhere deep inside, and it took me almost two years of group counseling to get in touch with feelings I didn’t even know I had. Like many of my pastor friends, I was good at describing anger but not very good at expressing it. Since then, I’ve been able to express feelings of anger, which remained silently hidden for years.

Being trained as a clinical chaplain, I learned that anger could catalyze change. We need anger to know when we (or others) are violated, hurt, or abused and our boundaries aren’t respected. Anger might be the most trustworthy emotion we can lean on to discern if something is off, especially when dealing with religious systems. It’s an alarm saying, “Something is not right. You have been wronged. They are being wronged.” The religious system that taught us to disown or disavow the parts of ourselves that let us know we are angry- is emotional abuse at its finest. If we can convince a whole group that anger is a sin, we can better control and manipulate them. If we convince an entire group of people not to trust their internal experiences, they won’t be a threat. And so it was.

Today, I reflect on corporate anger that has descended upon the evangelical world. This time, it is not an encounter with an antagonistic parishioner but anger from deep inside many pastors and parishioners. It is a wave of rage intermingled with the necessary deconstruction that had to accompany the journey away from culture wars, fundamentalism, racism, nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, redemptive violence, and scapegoating. It is a “turning over tables” anger, seeking to address unhealthy systems without hostility. 

It is anger brought on by denominational systems that do not allow pastors or parishioners to wrestle with complex theological or ethical issues. Religious institutions cannot accommodate those who want to reconstruct their faith and reflect on an individual moral cognitive level beyond the conventional. Out of fear that the equilibrium will be disturbed, the system requires toeing the line to keep control. This anti-intellectual posture, unfortunately, has opened the door for fundamentalism to get a foothold and arrested the development of thousands of curious minds who, like Martin Luther, want to ask questions and wrestle with their faith. 

These systems bring the image of a bunch of crabs in a bucket to mind. Experience has shown us that when one crab tries to break free from the bucket, the majority will try to pull the free-spirited one down. The dilemma we now face is that we, in our desire to be “part of” Something, to be close, can become so captured by our systems that we lose the sense of our unique individuality. Of course, if we try to assert our identity, we risk losing the closeness our systems provide. 

In this unstable environment of fear and control, constructive anger can signal a way forward as we seek to embrace rather than reject. In The Art of Intimacy, Tom Malone shows us a way forward, allowing everyone a place at the table. Tom suggests that understanding closeness and intimacy can help us have constructive dialogue. According to Tom, “closeness” in our systems tends to lean towards conservation and security, whereas “intimacy” allows people to take risks and explore differences of opinion to birth something new. Tom believes that intimacy develops when two people open themselves to each other, respect each other’s integrity, and share themselves without demanding mindless capitulation. I agree. Real energy can be released at this interactive, dynamic, relational place to bring about growth and change within oneself and our systems! 

I’m learning that constructive anger’s deep motive can increase the quality of being related. It has the potential to melt away superficial impurities, not allowing niceness to rob genuine intimacy. Of course, this is only possible with authenticity and a negotiated space where true knowing and knowing with acceptance and understanding permeate the atmosphere.

The existential grounding of these beautiful ideas happened for me as I shared with my chaplain peers a case that greatly affected me. The sharing and interaction with my peers broke through stereotypical “I-it” perspectives. They anchored us to consider the raw humanity of a patient who had to carry the burden of dis-attachment through a stroke and dis-attachment because of the patient’s sexual orientation as a gay person. Sharing this patient encounter created space for me to differentiate myself from established systems of prejudice and provided moments of intimacy with my peers, even though different beliefs on the subject were present. It was a case in which I was able to share an instance of cross-cultural pastoral care that showed respect for the physical, emotional, cultural, and spiritual boundaries of others. I feel that Tom Malone has his finger on the pulse reflected in the trap ever before us. He wrote:

Knowing” and “already knowing” are the states in which we live most of our lives. We built a “set” as we do in a play. We built the set to suit the characters, particularly the main character, ourselves… This “living in a set,” an unchanging format, prearranged and accepted as reality, is what is so devilishly dangerous about righteousness. People who insist on being certain rather than being loved “know.” They “know” what is “true” and how it should be. They “know” who they are. They “know” who the other is. In such “knowing” they remain unloved and unloving. They cannot hear, touch, see, or feel differently. They cannot be intimate since they cannot experience themselves. This kind of “knowing” has certain identifiable qualities. It is a “knowing” almost always about the other, the outside, or about me. It is never about the connection, the self. People who talk to us with this kind of “knowing,” the righteousness, the firm complete black book under their arms, speak only of him or her, or of me, and are judgmental of both. They have no sense of self, the reciprocal experience of the connection between I-me and the other. The discourse changes little, if at all, over time or with experience. They “see” the situation, think of it the same way, and generally emotionally drown in their sameness.^[1]

Even though this description is fodder for a “turn over tables” anger, I feel like Tom is saying to me that I need to be careful, as a way of living in this world, to not fall into the trap of prejudgment, “already knowing,” and in so doing not leave room for experiencing newness and strangeness. This means not “pre-constructing” but “constructing” experientially in the present if a door should open in my relationship with those who see things differently than I do. 

The Holy Spirit prompts us to produce clear thinking, rational judgment, sharp self-awareness, the ability to discriminate, and the power to make difficult choices. In this angry season of culture wars, may we be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16) as we stay open to the other and choose constructive anger over hostility. May God open new doors of intimacy where closeness proves to be too suffocating. May it also be a time not so much for “witness” but “WITHness” as we linger and hold each other’s pain and anger in holy silence. These final rhythmic words express my conclusion in poetic form:

My self-awareness curiosity
in countertransference forming
Johari perspicacity
in silent anger storming
Our cooperative reciprocity
in uncertainty norming
Absorbing non-being anxiety
in mysterious love performing

---

^[1] Tom Malone, The Art of Intimacy, p. 86.