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Saint Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas

Please consider the following quote and place your thoughts about it within your reply:

"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust."
-- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Aquinas Thomas Saint

I agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that there is a time and place for anger, not just any type of anger, but righteous anger. We should not only feel righteous anger but I believe we should act upon that anger in an appropriate way to correct or prevent the evil that provoked our righteous anger.

Jesus gave us the perfect role-model for righteous anger when he threw the corrupt money-lenders out of the temple (Matthew 21:12). He overturned their tables and drove them out, saying they were defiling a place of worship, His Father's house. He not only showed us it is acceptable to have righteous anger regarding evil, but that we should act upon that righteous anger to correct the situation.

There are many other examples in the Bible where prophets of God in the Old Testament also showed righteous anger in the face of evil and acted to resist it or correct the Jewish people.

To live among evil without acting, without resisting it, is a sin of omission. We are duty-bound to fight evil wherever we discover it. To stand up against evil men and their works.

Example: Hitler - if righteous people had resisted him in the beginning, would the Holocaust have occurred? Would millions have died because of Hitler and his henchmen if people had initially resisted in righteous anger at their atrocities? Those passive people sinned against God and their fellow humans, allowing evil to flourish and grow.

There are times in the Bible where God became angry and destroyed unrelenting evil, too.

I believe these instances are in the Bible to teach us there is a time and place for Godly or righteous anger. The acts of Jesus and prophets in the Old Testament show action is also justified, even required, of God's people in the face of evil.