C. S. Lewis on Anger

Here are some miscellaneous quotes by C. S. Lewis on Anger and Wrath.

This first quote points out the effect of our anger on others is not the measure of the impact of the unrighteous anger on our souls.

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.” (p. 72,Mere Christianity)

In the following quote, Lewis is trying to convince Malcolm that depersonalizing God's anger with unemotional analogies of anger (i.e. "The live wire doesn't feel angry with us, but if we blunder against it we get a shocked") doesn't really help us at all.

All the liberalising and "civilising" analogies only lead us astray. Turn God's wrath into mere enlightened disapproval, and you also turn His love into mere humanitarianism. The "consuming fire" and the "perfect beauty" both vanish. We have, instead, a judicious headmistress or a conscientious magistrate. (p. 97, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer)

C. S. Lewis commenting on James 1:20

I know that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." That is not because wrath is wrath but because man is (fallen) man.(p. 97, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer)

Here's the passage in James.

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19-20, ESV)

The first sonnet of the poem the Five Sonnets by C. S. Lewis. Notice the line "Anger's the anesthetic of the mind."

You think that we who do not shout and shake
Our first at God when youth or bravery die
Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache
Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why?
You have what sorrow always longs to find,
Someone to blame, some enemy in chief;
Anger's the anesthetic of the mind,
It does men good, it fumes away their grief.
We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate
Is equal. After that, for us begin
Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate,
And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win
A high, unearthly comfort, angel's food,
That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood.