Sunday Morning Meds--Wrath

“Who knows the power of your anger? 

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.” Psalm 90:11

I’m going to go to make a generalization I’ve no right to. One of the good things about aging is that, through the years, we simply grow less angry—Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Grumpy Old Men notwithstanding. Old bucks like me simply have less testosterone to work with, less dignity to protect, less turf to maintain—thus, fewer reasons to boil over.

When so many things recede the way they do as we get older, quarrelsomeness is a possibility—I’ll grant you that. Our aging means fewer people notice us—again, my perception. But that doesn’t make me mad, just bad-tempered. Being peevish isn’t necessarily being wrathful.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Last night I was mad. Last night, I used language I shouldn’t have, even to my daughter, who didn’t have it coming, who had nothing to do with why I was boiling over. Last night—memorably, I might add—I was spitting fire.

This morning I could still throw flames; in fact, I just sent out an e-mail I probably shouldn’t have. But I’ve calmed down a bit now, a bit; and having that rare chunk of rage at arm’s length this morning is helpful when reading this strange verse from Psalm 90. It’s helpful because normally it’s easy for me to get a little embarrassed by the OT’s occasionally draconian Jehovah. I find it hard to know him, maybe in part because, nearly sixty, I don’t know all that much anymore about rage. Wrath isn’t the deadly sin I register all that often.

But I did last night. And the provocation, basically, was injured pride—I was convinced that certain people didn’t respect me. But even that is explanation is subterfuge, half truth. What blew my cork was that I didn’t get my way. We’d worked our duffs off, but the whole project shipwrecked because someone in authority thought maybe someone else might be hurt. Honestly, the whole story is not worth a story.

But my wrath is worth a story when I think about this line from the venerable 90th Psalm. Here’s what I’m thinking: maybe the OT God isn’t a far cry from who I am. If I read the whole Exodus narrative, it seems that what God wants more than anything is not to be an also-ran. In the panoply of gods available to the Israelites, he doesn’t want to be just another silly graven image.

“Who should I say this God is?” Moses—the writer here—asks of this God. “I am the always,” he says. End of story. And if he isn’t respected—when people create golden calves of whatever size and extremity—this God, Jehovah, spits and fumes and, often enough, people die. He’s like me that way. Sort of. But nobody died last night.

Oddly enough, maybe I don’t think of God as human enough. If I were him and people didn’t really give me the dignity I’d deserved, I’d be mad—like I was last night. Maybe all that anger—it’s behind me now—maybe even all that blasted wrath is helpful. You think you got dissed?—just think of Him. And on a daily basis. Shoot, hourly.

That’s scary. And that’s only half of it, this verse says. That’s not even the whole story. Your wrath is everything we can imagine, Lord—that’s what Moses says. And a great deal more.

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About 15 years ago, this meditation was written about some kind of provocation I have totally and completely forgotten. Mea culpa.