Rage Definition
We must then be on guard against any base desire, because death is stationed near the gateway of pleasure. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.24)
This was not a Kenny Rogers kind of Gambler. But was he one of us?
Answer 1:
We don’t see the appeal of murdering as many people as possible before killing ourselves. If we were to kill ourselves, we’d just swallow a bottle of pills.
Answer 2:
Ending it all is not necessarily the goal. You just want what you want, and you don’t care if it kills you.
Answer 3:
The lure dangling before your eyes is more playful. You figure you can take the bait and leave someone else on the hook for it.
Answer 4:
None of the above. You want to live a good life. And you want to be happy. Why does this have to be so hard?
St. Benedict’s approach:
St. Benedict warns us not against desire in general, but against base desire. We keep all our other desires in check because our deepest desire is for life itself. Only God can satisfy this desire.
First mistake to avoid:
The first mistake is to imagine that Christian faith requires a repression of desire itself.
Not so: Christian faith is all about the ultimate fulfillment of desire.
Second mistake to avoid:
The second mistake is to imagine that because desire itself is good, therefore all of our particular desires must also be good.
Not so: the practice of the faith involves learning to distinguish between right desires and base desires. We also develop self-control, so we can enjoy good impulses without giving in to bad ones.
Third mistake to avoid:
The third mistake is to imagine that because there are right desires and base desires, every impulse must have a moral rating.
Not so: many actions are in themselves neutral. The rightness or baseness of a desire resonates within the forms of God. Where God is silent, we may improvise as we please. But where God reveals, we heed and harmonize.
The theory isn’t that difficult. It’s the practice that gets you, as you finger your way through the cacophony. All around are neurotic types who want to dominate, each according to his own devices. There are hedonist types who want to let everything go, especially themselves. And there are neurotic hedonists: the peculiar creatures of our time.
The neurotic hedonist rejects the forms of God in their entirety, by rejecting the very existence of God. He sets himself up as a replacement for God. This sort of narcissist glorifies the impulses of the self. But the neurotic hedonist also regulates the worship of the self with a complex, compulsory structure. Then when he really gets going, he tries to impose the worship of himself onto everyone else.
The Enraged Man:
A neurotic hedonist can develop into an enraged man. For a lifetime he cultivates anger at everything that does not conform to his control. For a lifetime he refuses to tune the one thing his creator asks him to adjust: himself.
The Christian script calls for an entirely different way of living. We worship God and attempt to follow his lead. We subordinate our wills to his on principle and seek to harmonize our desires with his. But within the parameters set by God, we enjoy complete freedom. We’re under no compulsion to do anything in a fixed way. We rid ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander–how? By giving thanks to the one from whom we receive every good thing.
