Rage Against the Dying of the Light
By Bethany Kaldas
Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbour,” for we are members of one another. 26 “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, 27 nor give place to the devil.
Ephesians 4:25-27
Anger is a very complicated emotion. As a Christian, it is often quite difficult to see exactly where it should fit into life—if it has any place in Christian life at all. It’s such an ugly feeling after all—the sudden heat, the thunder of the heart, the racing of the mind, the tightening of muscles ready to push against some opposing force. Anger feels aggressive, it feels unkind.
And sometimes—perhaps most of the time, it is. Anger against those who provoke our anger is indeed a dangerous thing. Any anger directed to another creature or even an inanimate object should be restrained, any anger provoked by a sense of self-importance or the preservation of our own dignity or rights should be kept in check. Anger is a dangerous emotion when left to its own devices.
But this does not mean that it is without purpose. Jesus Himself felt anger.
Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”
Matthew 21:12-13
The anger Christ felt in the temple was not a blind rage, it was not untempered aggression—it was not for His own sake or because His own sensibilities had been offended. And perhaps most importantly, His anger was not for the purpose of hurting anyone. Christ’s anger in the temple was a rage at an injustice—it was a reaction against the suppression, the corruption of something that was beautiful and precious. Anger is a prompt to fight for something that matters—to fight against something that is unjust.
Be at enmity, but be so with the devil, and not with a member of your own. For this purpose it is that God has armed us with anger, not that we should thrust the sword against our own bodies, but that we should baptize the whole blade in the devil’s breast. There bury the sword up to the hilt; yea, if you will, hilt and all, and never draw it out again, but add yet another and another. And this actually comes to pass when we are merciful to those of our own spiritual family and peaceably disposed one towards another. Perish money, perish glory and reputation; my own member is dearer to me than they all.
John Chrysostom, Homily 14 on Ephesians
A man named Dylan Thomas once wrote a poem called Do not go gentle into that goodnight. The poem speaks of how we must not simply let death take us—we must fight for our lives, we must fight against the death that threatens to take away something so precious and valuable.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that goodnight
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. This is what our anger is meant for—we are to rage against death, just as Christ did on His cross. But biological death was not the only kind of death that Christ fought against—and it is not the only kind of death we face.
As long as we ourselves are real, as long as we are truly ourselves, God can be present and can do something with us. But the moment we try to be what we are not, there is nothing left to say or have; we become a fictitious personality, an unreal presence, and this unreal presence cannot be approached by God.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray
What about the death of self? Not in the sense of sacrificing ourselves for others or devoting our lives to something we believe in. I mean the slow, degrading death that occurs when we sacrifice our unique individuality for the sake of adhering to a standard set by others. The disease of mindless, fretful conformity, the illness that makes us too afraid to stand out, too weary to stand up for what we know in our hearts to be right, too afraid to show our true selves to others for fear of being rejected or shamed. We have a particular light in each of us—Divine breath formed and moulded into your exact shape, your exact heart. There is only one of you—and there will never be another. Do we rage, rage against the fading of that unique light God has put in our hearts?
Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness. No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or in captivity, if you will be honored or despised, if you will have many friends or few, if you will be liked or rejected. But when you hold lightly these dreams and fears, you can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God’s love for humankind. There is an old expression that says, “As long as there is life there is hope.” As Christians we also say, “As long as there is hope there is life.”
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times
What about the death of hope? When our lives become heavy, the burden strains on our shoulders and we spend so much time with our heads bent beneath it that we can no longer see a way forward. We no longer see a point, we no longer see our worth, we no longer hear that voice that calls us Beloved, the voice that screams that you are never alone and that there is a plan for your life. We cannot hear that voice because it gets drowned out by so many others that say there’s no use. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be what they want you to be, you’ll never make anything of your life. All to easily, without cry or shout, we sink into a despair that infects every aspect of our world and drains it of life or colour like a parasite. Do we rage, rage against the dying light in our souls, the lantern we keep to illuminate our own way and bring hope to others around us?
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
What about the death of love? When we become consumed with our own needs, our own desires. When we become myopic, unable to see beyond our own points of view; when we become deaf, unable to hear the cries of the impoverished, the abandoned, the desperate. When we become so frail of self that we can no longer muster the courage to reach out to those who stumble down dark paths on their own. When people become tools to be used or obstacles to overcome rather than human beings. When our hearts solidify into stone and we no longer shed tears for the weeping, when we cannot bring ourselves to grieve with the grieving. Do we rage, rage against the darkness that threatens to devour those around us, the shadows of persecution, loneliness and distress?
Perhaps you don’t think you face death very often. Perhaps you think your life is relatively tame. Perhaps you don’t. In either case, I can assure you—you see death every day. Maybe not physical death, but all these other kinds of death that are no less dangerous. They prowls like a hungry beast, just waiting for someone to trip, to stagger, to be left behind and left alone.
And when we are faced with those deaths, what do we do? Do we lay down and die? Or do we fight?
Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Do we wage these battles with our integrity, our faith, our compassion? Do we fight to keep our souls whole? Do we fight to stay afloat in the wildest storms of our life? Do we fight to remind each other that we are precious? Do we fight for the lives of our neighbours when the deaths of despair, isolation and oppression surround them?
Our anger was never meant for our neighbour. Our rage was designed to fight death—in whatever form it takes.
If we care nothing when we realise that we are changing to conform to the standards of others and losing ourselves, then something is wrong. If we lay down and accept the feeling that we are hopeless and our lives have no purpose, then we have lost something precious. If we see the pain of our brothers and sisters and sit back and let them suffer, without help, without even a hand to hold, then we are not being what we are meant to be.
We cannot see these deaths and do nothing. We were called to fight. Our anger yearns to fix what is broken. We cannot go gentle into that goodnight. We cannot let the darkness win—whatever that darkness looks like in your life or the lives of those around you.
Feel the anger. Let it surge through you. Let it prompt you into action. Let it be your fuel to fight. Do not go gentle into that goodnight. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Learn to do good;
(Isaiah 1:17)
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.