I saw an article about someone's anger

Context
I came upon this column at the Fox News website today. I believe I’ve heard of Mike Straka, but I hadn’t seen this Grrr! column before, where it appears he regularly writes about things that annoy him. In this case, people who urinate in inappropriate places.

Commentary
Public urination doesn’t anger me; it saddens me. I feel sorry for people who are that poorly socialized. I find this happens frequently; situations that really piss (hee!) some people off just look pitiable to me.

I was kind of hoping my response could be considered the morally superior one. Anger can be quite sinful after all, especially if it’s the self-righteous kind of anger that says, “I would never pee in a public place; why can’t everybody be more like me?” On the other hand, zeal for true righteousness gets its own beatitude, so there’s a blessing available for the person who fights against the lack of respect for rules and property and the rights of other people.

What about my feelings of sadness, then? Well, that’s compassion, so it’s a great moral choice, right? Maybe, but if I’m honest with myself, I know that sometimes I’m being not so much compassionate as resigned, believing that nothing can be done to remedy a bad situation and that’s a shame. Or worse, I jump right to, “I don’t need to try to do anything to fix the problem I see; I’m busy being sad about it.” Depression can have just as many self-indulgent elements as anger.

So self-centeredness becomes the problem with both emotions, and in fact, all emotions. Any time joy, sorrow, anger, sexual desire, or whatever is focused on the self, it becomes a vicious, ultimately pointless thing. When an emotion proceeds from one’s love for God, it’s transformed into a powerful weapon for good. It's not so much what you feel as who you feel for.

What did you see today?

I saw an e-mail about death

Context
I belong to an e-mail list called Fiction-L, which covers reader’s advisory issues. A discussion of “books so good you read them over and over again” led to an exchange between a colleague and me regarding Charlotte’s Web. Some snippets follow:

Colleague - People who don't cry at the end of Charlotte's Web worry me. They are the same people who don't cry when Bambi's mother dies.

Me - Them's fighting words, [name omitted]! Charlotte dies in the natural course of nature, which is a little sad, but in more of a "sighing" than "crying" way. Bambi's mother is brutally murdered by stupid human beings! I not only cry; I tend to leave the room so I can pound my fists on something!

Colleague - They're both tragedies--since when is the loss of a friend to natural death any less painful than one to murder? In either case they are gone, and they aren't coming back. Death is no less final for being natural.


Commentary
I was surprised that my reaction to death was so different from my colleague’s, so I’m trying to figure out where the difference comes from. Is it because I don’t believe death is “final” for anyone? Yes, I’m not only a Christian, with the Pauline view of our demise, but a person who thinks that All Dogs go to Heaven. It scarcely seems worth calling it “heaven” if there won’t be critters there.

That can’t be the only reason for the way I feel though, because then I would have the mirror image of my colleague’s opinion: murder is an equal cause for celebration as succumbing to natural causes.

So why are the circumstances surrounding death important? I think it’s because I also hold the “other” Christian viewpoint on mortality: that it infects all of creation because of human sin. We were made the stewards of Earth, so everything on it suffers the same fate we do. So let’s recap: it’s our fault that animals die in the first place, and in Bambi’s mother’s case, we hasten the process along by setting fire to her habitat.

I think the last piece of the puzzle is this: I’m much more likely to cry about things that make me angry than those that make me sad.

What did you see today?