#44 | Anger And Lust As Fuel For God

Anger, lust, jealousy, pride, cravings, addiction, we usually talk about them like they’re glitches to delete. I’m taking a different angle today, sparked by reading Orthodox bishop and theologian Kallistos Ware in The Image Of The Father, where he asks a brave question: are the passions evil by nature, or are they human energies that can be redirected and transfigured?

We sit with the language that really bites: do we say mortify or redirect, eradicate or educate, eliminate or transfigure? I share honestly that these aren’t abstract ideas for me. They show up in real life, and they can either push us into disconnection from our neighbour, disconnection from God, and disconnection from ourselves, or they can become the very place where grace starts to work.

We talk about practical redirection. What happens when anger stops targeting people and turns towards the roots of evil instead? What would it look like to educate lust and craving, training desire towards prayer, worship, time with God, and love of neighbour? This is the Orthodox Christian vision of transformation: not becoming less human, but becoming more human than we’ve ever been before, shaped into the image we were created to bear.

If this reflection helps, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What passion do you most want to see transformed?

Transcript

Welcome And A Short Reflection

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Sunny Bunani, welcome to the Sunny Banana. I see you. Welcome brothers and sisters. Thank you for tuning in today. And another short reflection.

A Book That Sparks Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I'm sitting in the living room reading this wonderful book called The Image of the Father by a bishop of the Orthodox Church called Cholestos Weir. A lot of you may have heard about this gentleman, but a lot of you may not know who he is. Look him up, I recommend. Some YouTube videos of him talking. He's a theologian, a bishop, as I previously said. And he wrote magnificent books for us today. And the chapter I'm reading is called The Passions. Mortified or Transfigured.

Are Passions Evil Or Neutral

SPEAKER_00 1:06

And the passions, as understood in the Orthodox Church, are our our urges, our desires, namely Anger, Lust, Jealousy, and these type of things are our passions. And the chapter takes us through thinking about whether these things are intrinsically evil, anger and lust and pride, or are they just neutral realities and they become evil or good depending on the outcome of the anger? Or are they there to be transfigured? Are they there to be transformed? Now the questions he asks about these things. Now, you may be sitting there and thinking, how does this relate to me? However, I would like to just make this clear that this is a personal experience of the passions. And I'm not going to hide by not saying, admitting, that lust, pride, anger, jealousy, and all these passions have been involved in my life and which I struggle with.

Transforming Anger And Lust

SPEAKER_00 2:40

But here, at the end of the chapter, there's a beautiful array of questions about these passions like lust and pride. And the questions are, do we speak negatively or positively? Do we say mortify or redirect? Do we say eradicate or educate? Do we say eliminate or transfigure? If Christians today find it more helpful to speak in terms of transformation, not mortification, they can claim the support of at any rate a significant minority among the Greek fathers. Now, and as I read that, I popped up and ran to my microphone. So I just wanted to share this with you today, you know, that anger, if redirected towards the serpent, or redirected towards evil, and not our brother or sister, or those we don't agree with, or those we don't see eye to eye, or those who have hurt us before. But we redirect that anger to the source of that evil that is that is that we are struggling with. One thing I that hit me really hard was so lust redirect, transfigure, educate lust to be for time with God. So you you you you train that lust or that anger to direct ourselves towards the greater good. And we transform all these passions, all these things that are availing us to be the people we are created to be.

Becoming More Human Through God

SPEAKER_00 4:49

So this is I wanted to share this with you today because as you know, the sunny banana is about our seeing people, being human, and this book obviously has the image of the Father, which as Christians, we believe that we were created in the image of God. But what does that look like? What is the potential of that? And this is what I find Orthodox Christianity to be: a a redirecting of my humanity towards the actual image I was created to be. So, in a in a nutshell, in essence, to be more human, to become human, as Father Alexander, our parish priest, teaches us, to become more human than I've ever been before. And of course, to suggest that if our our lust and our passions and our and our cravings and our addictions and our anger directs us in the opposite direction, i.e., disconnection from our neighbor, disconnection from God, ultimately disconnection from ourselves, we need to ask these questions. We need to grapple with them and say, how can I direct my lust, my anger, my pride, even pride, perhaps, which one we must be careful about pride though, but redirect all of these passions to spending time with God and neighbor and worship and prayer, and these things that make us more human than we've ever been before.

Pentecost Hope And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 6:26

May God bless you all. May we all be transformed in the light of God, may we all be transfigured by his Holy Spirit, which is coming, the Pentecost Sunday, this Sunday coming, as we approach God. Let us put down our own needs and redirect our passions towards the ultimate good, the creator of the universe. Sunny Bunani. Thank you for listening to the Sunny Banana ICU. God bless.