‘Anger is language of justice’

It's interesting to me that the link between justice and anger is being rediscovered in more popular discourse.

"...people kept suggesting anger is irrational,” the US-based writer and critic Soraya Chemaly tells me down the phone during her recent trip to the UK. “That makes no sense. Anger is deeply rational response. It’s a warning. Anger is the language of justice and fairness.”

I see in this a parallel with a denial in popular Christian conversation of a link between love and wrath. The two are seen as incompatible opposites.

I guess I should also note, as I bring these two observations together, that I tend to agree with the idea that justice is love made manifest in social ordering. It is a political outworking of loving neighbour as yourself.

I am also invested in this to some degree as I have been thinking about atonement and various Christian accounts of it. Part of that consideration has to be to rehabilitate the notion of anger as an expression of love and as having roots in our notions of fairness and justice. It can, of course, come adrift from love and justice (and often does) but it would not exist without them.

So, rightly directed anger is something we might expect to give us energy to change things for good. To change things for the good of those we love and even for the good of those who have become our enemies. To change things to be more just, fair and gracious. Anger is something we need to learn to listen to: it tells us that someone is hurting or threatened and feeling disempowered or unheard. Our response is not to hit back but to understand, and if necessary offer the other cheek also in order to deal with the injustice at the heart of the matter.



‘Anger is language of justice’ says author of new book on women’s rage | openDemocracy:

See also 9'41" in TEd talk by Ryan Martin.