To Know and Taste the Truth

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf. (Kephalaia IV.77; The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by Sebastian Brock)

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Last time I studied what St. Isaac was not saying in this passage, how he is not rejecting the positive biblical language about "zeal" for God or "contending" for the truth. This time I'll try to delve into the profundity of what he is saying as I have been exploring it for the last few weeks. Here is where some research into what more qualified writers have made of St. Isaac's words is in order.

Polemics and passions

Fr. Gregory Jensen, an Orthodox priest and chaplain, wrote in 2008 on Orthodox-Catholic relations and why they tend to degenerate into polemics, offering some helpful insights on healthy conversation that eventually intersect with St. Isaac's words. Using the example of how "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52), he argues that mental health, "the integrity of the person's cognitive, emotional and social functions", is not something automatically conferred by an encounter with God, but something we must learn and grow in, a natural part of human development. Summarizing his professor, he explains, "to live a constant human life means that we remain open in awe, trust, and gratitude to the Mystery of Being (God) and becoming (human life as a life of dynamic openness)." He incisively applies this to Catholic/Orthodox conversations (and inter-traditional dialogue in general):

We often talk as if the Catholic/Orthodox dialog is a conversation is between two different, even competing, traditions. In fact these conversations are always conversations between human beings who in their conversations with each other, make selective appeals to their own understanding of the past, both their own and the other's. Traditions, to state the painfully obvious, do not have conversations—only human beings can speak, can enter into a conversations. Tradition, as Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) has pointed out in Being in Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, only exist enhypostatically, that is, by way of the person. 

Too often conversations between Eastern and Western Christians are not understood as human encounters. In fact, I would suggest that the reason that our conversations are so often polemical, is because we imagine that there is nothing of ourselves in our talks with each other. Let me go even further, we are so often polemical because we are striving not to encounter one another. We do not wish to know the other, because not only do we do not wish to be know by the other, we do not know, or even wish to know, ourselves personally. Any human encounter is necessarily one that demands from me both self-knowledge and change. To refuse one or the other of these is to refuse the encounter, the gift of the other person and so to refuse to receive my own life as a gift from God. 

For too many of us, our attachment to our religious tradition is an escape, a refusal, of the dynamic and gratuitous quality of our own lives. We do not wish to grow, to change. Our conversations are polemical because more often than not, our thinking about ourselves is static and rigid. Catholic/Orthodox polemics—at least as we see them in contemporary practice—are only accidentally theological. In the main (and I will address this more in another post) our polemics reflect our own lack of wholeness, of balance, of our own lack of virtue. Or, to borrow from psychology, our encounters so often go wrong because of we are neurotic.

According to Fr. Gregory, our polemics, our defense of and contentions for "the truth" as we perceive it, are in fact a way of refusing authentic knowledge of ourselves and each other, of resisting needed change and growth by drawing doctrinal lines in the sand and refusing to see, much less step beyond them. But by shutting out others, by refusing to let ourselves encounter them as fellow humans (or even living icons of the Almighty) rather than just representatives of enemy traditions and threats to the "truth", we do the same to God. (cf. Matthew 25:31-46)

I am reminded here of how Andrew Louth wrote that truth-as-mystery, the really vital, weighty truth we encounter in the humanities and especially in religion, is of a sort that makes personal demands of you, that cannot be engaged with in a merely "objective", detached sort of way. Theological conversations are not simply abstract debates between rival systems of truth to determine which has the epistemological upper hand; they are human encounters like any other, and to treat them as less than this does not do justice to God, our neighbor, or ourselves.

Fr. Gregory continues in a follow-up post by applying John Zizioulas' description of tradition as existing "enhypostatically" to the subject of inter-traditional conversations:

Let me suggest that if the tradition only exists by way of the person, then tradition is not simply, or even primarily, an objective content. Rather tradition is a virtue and virtues wax and wane. In other words, a tradition is only more or less revealed by how I live my life. Complicating this further, is that I do not live or embody only one tradition. Rather each human life is lived as the intersection of multiple traditions.

Tradition is not merely a body or system of teachings; it is a way, a life, or (in the case of other "traditions", like where we live, where we go to school, or experiences that have shaped our lives) at least a part of how we live. All of these things contribute to how I, as an individual, come to experience and embody the Orthodox tradition. They also add considerable complexity, depth, and need for sensitivity to what we may be tempted to suppose is a simple, straightforward conversation between two rival forms of Christianity (or other traditions).

Add to this the fact that none of us are flawless representatives of our tradition. All too easily we can end up representing instead our own egos, our insecurities, the desire for pleasure and avoidance of pain that Orthodox call the "passions". Fr. Gregory warns that "unless we are well formed in the spiritual life, and psychologically sound, what we are mostly likely to give voice to is not the tradition of the Orthodox Church or the tradition of the Catholic Church, but our own passions. And this, I would suggest, is true regardless of the objective validity of any given statement that we might make." Speaking truly requires more than getting the facts right—again echoing how Louth wrote that holistic truth is not merely objective. Gregory gives an illustration:

The example I use with my own spiritual children is this, it may in fact be objectively the case that I am stupid and my mother dresses me funny, but it is unlikely that telling me this truth is sufficient to change my life. Still less is telling me this likely to encourage me to trust you and give you a place of authority in my life. And let us make no mistake here, in any conversation I have, I only listen to the views of those who I see as authoritative—I might or might not trust [their] authority, but I still must see them as an authority for me.

The great danger of polemics, he warns, is that in our rush to defend "the truth" it is all too easy to become oppositional and hostile, to cease acting and treating others in accordance with that truth.

Whatever the reason, sharp disagreements are inevitable when we are looking together at what divides us. Polemics, however, seem to me to begin with that sharp disagreement. In so doing, they are intellectually unchaste embodying as they do an underlying lack of respect for the limitations of both self and others. In our polemical attitude we are freed from any consideration of our own passions in the pursuit of the Truth. The fact that we often say things which are true does not remove from us the burden of intellectual dishonesty.

Truth as appetite

If we treat dialogue as merely an exchange and weighing of "objective" truths for which the persons involved are merely vehicles, we leave the personal dimension (which is closer to the level on which Truth actually exists) of the "rational" conversation to be governed by our sinful passions. University of Alberta professor David Goa, beginning with the quote by St. Isaac, describes more precisely how this happens. He sums up relativism and zealousness for the truth as two sides of the same coin, two related ways of "misunderstanding our deep desire for a firm truth. ... In both we see this human desire [for truth] turned into an appetite." What follows is a deep diagnosis of the polemical attitude:

Whatever we come to look at and care about is then forced into conformity with the idea, image, or ritual that we have erected as absolute. We begin to hang all our hopes and dreams on the truth of our chosen framework, our precious absolutes (including the relativists’ precious absolute that there is nothing of ultimate value). Our longing is captured by an absolute of our own making. It follows, almost without saying, that once we hang all our hopes and dreams on something that we claim as absolute, it is a short step to hanging all our fears on it as well. In this moment the holy longing of the human heart and mind that lies behind the search for absolutes becomes polluted. Zealousness for the truth frames how we see and understand and reshapes our response to the fragility of the life of the world.

It is this passion, this disease, that St. Isaac says we are freed from when we learn what truth is really like. But we are only open to learn what truth is like when our understanding of truth itself is transformed.

For the relativist, this transformation involves letting go of the rejection of absolutes. But his description of the one who is zealous for truth sounds uncomfortably like me:

The zealous, often religious men and women, have yet to walk through the valley of shattered absolutes. They erect elaborate temples of truth, statement-by-statement, fact-by-fact, temples that have turrets strategically located, each well armed and poised to fire at a moment’s notice. Both the relativist and the zealous are spiritual adolescents at best, and in our fragile world, where the news media often shape the public discourse, they have bonded with each other to divert attention away from serious encounter with “what truth is really like.”

Using public discourse about Islam as an example, Goa goes on to describe how parties (for example, political parties) that are diametrically at odds with one another can unwittingly work together to "contribute with equal passion to the emotional landscape that traps the human spirit somewhere between indignation, despair and cynicism." Both parties antagonistically use the pressure and the perceived threat posed by each other "to reduce complex issues and themes to what they have come to understand in their zeal." For the positions of the religious right and secular left, "truth has become coterminous with a selected set of facts, real or imagined." He then seeks to apply the line of thought offered by St. Isaac to this standoff:

For St. Isaac, zeal for truth is itself a symptom of a spiritual disease. Or, perhaps, it is a condition that tends to develop at a certain stage in the spiritual life and is itself simply a marker of that stage. It is the spiritual equivalent of adolescence where the young try out all sorts of ideas and actions with the conviction that no one else has ever had these thoughts or feelings and they are exploring them for the first time. How can it be that no one else has ever seen just how important and ultimate these thoughts and feelings are?

Recall what Fr. Gregory wrote about "mental health" as the the integrity and functioning of our natural faculties, something in which we should develop over the course of our lives. Zealousness for truth occurs when this growth is arrested by our stubbornly clinging to a certain set of facts as "the truth". And so, "one is stuck in the adolescent stage of the spiritual life."

Better than most wings of the Christian tradition, Orthodoxy has understood that the concern for truth and the question of truth are not anchored or bounded either by philosophical concepts or principles or by historical fact. Fact is not truth nor is truth merely fact. Truth is far beyond the reach of fact. That either philosophical ideas or historical facts are cast in the language of the Christian teaching does not make them any more a matter of truth. You can dress them up all you like, but they remain exposed for what they are, simulacrums for truth. They all indicate that one has not “tasted of truth.”

Goa is exploring the implications of what I glimpsed as I was investigating Orthodoxy, that Truth is not merely "that which corresponds to reality", but reality itself—the supreme Reality, God in three Persons. Statements of fact, while they may soundly describe this Reality, are not the Reality Himself. When we make something less than this Reality the "absolute truth" around which we orient ourselves, no matter how correctly it describes reality, we have replaced the Truth with something less than ultimately true. And this substitution, this idolatry, is the basis for "zealousness for truth".

We want the comfort of our truth statements, of our elevated theologically clothed philosophical doctrines. And we want them because we are addicted to the spiritual adrenalin we feel at the sudden rush of winning, at least in our own minds and hearts, the argument for truth. We want to be defender of the faith, the kind of person who knows he is right and takes pride in staking a claim to what is true no matter what the cost.

Orthodox are no strangers to this phenomenon, especially converts to the faith, who go through what is known as "conversion sickness" (as useful a reference as my lengthy series on becoming Orthodox is, I was probably in the throes of conversion sickness when I wrote it). Calvinists apparently go through it as well, calling it the "cage stage" (the word-picture implying that these zealous new converts need to be temporarily locked in a cage until they calm down to avoid hurting themselves or others). The remedy St. Isaac offers for this zealousness is to "taste the truth". Goa concludes:

We are called to better. We are called to better precisely because in Him who is “the truth and the life” we are freed from the habit of taking refuge in abstract notions of truth. If we taste of truth at every Eucharist we know better. If we taste of truth every time we, like the disciples, find ourselves in Emmaus breaking bread with someone we didn’t know we knew, we know better. We know better every time our hearts are moved with compassion.

No wonder St. Isaac says that when we learn what truth really is we will cease being zealous for truth, cease responding as if it were our place to defend and protect truth. If the history of religions teaches us anything, and I think it teaches us much, it teaches us that one of the most serious religious diseases is zealousness. It was a deep concern to Jesus as he walked the valley of the Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem. And he finally healed us of its bondage when he spoke from the throne of the cross to those who were contentious for truth, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Fr. Gregory, in his last post on the subject, finally cites both St. Isaac and Goa. After summarizing Goa, he concludes with his earlier point that

polemics, a zealous approach to the truth has a strangle hold on us because we do not wish to grow, to change. Our conversations are polemical because more often than not, our thinking about ourselves is static and rigid. Catholic/Orthodox polemics—at least as we see them in contemporary practice—are only accidentally theological. In the main (and I will address this more in another post) our polemics reflect our own lack of wholeness, of balance, of our own lack of virtue. We are, as I said earlier, neurotic.

To know the Truth

Drawing from multiple commentators, I hope I've painted a fairly clear picture of what he meant by "zealous" or "contentious" for truth. In contrast to the good, more metaphorical uses of these terms in the Bible to denote religious fervor and discipline, "zealousness for the truth" is, as Goa says, an appetite for certainty, our disordered passions—pride, insecurity, fear—hijacking our natural will's desire to know the Truth. We erect the system of our own perception of "truth" like a fortress, pledging to defend it against any and all threats, satisfying our appetite by zealously vindicating "the truth" as we see it over against the falsehoods that others have come to stand for in our eyes. In 1 Corinthians 11:16 the word translated into "contentious" is is philoneikos, literally "victory-loving"—a telling construction. Safe and secure in our fortress of facts, we don't authentically encounter God, ourselves, or others, but only the thrill and agony projected by our passions onto the contentious interplay of "truths" being lobbed across the great divide.

Implicit in Isaac's statement is that the truth we are zealous for is something less than the real Truth, which the "zealous" have not yet tasted. Zealousness for truth, as I have been describing it, entails the substitution of a rigid, constructed system of "truth" for openness to encountering and being changed by the Truth that exceeds all of our attempts to define and circumscribe it. When we move from reality to statements corresponding to reality, however correct the correspondence may be, we are removed a step from tasting the truth. This step back is the basis of the "human tradition" that Jesus (Mark 7:8) and the Reformers rightly deplored. Holy Tradition, if it is to be any different, must be the Church's Spirit-guided ascent towards, and life within, the divine Reality, never stopping to accept any lesser construction as ultimate. (Apophatic theology, "theology of negation", is one way of realizing this)

Our need to always be open to and growing is why an inherently parsimonious of minimal approach to truth, such as the Enlightenment ideal of questioning everything and basing one's beliefs only on what can be demonstrated by reason, is inappropriate for us. For if we refuse to accept anything that we cannot fit into our established system of truth, that cannot pass by the gatekeeper of our judgment, we make it impossible to grow in the truth, to be changed by it. We become "closed-minded". There is a similar danger to insisting on only "objectively knowing" the truth at the expense of subjectively engaging with it.

In the Orthodox tradition Truth is, most "truly", the person of Christ (Jhn 14:6), the "one who is", the ultimate Reality and the ground of all being. To know this Truth is to participate in him, to be known by him. Christ is the reality towards which all of our statements and doctrines are directed; they call us forward, to actually taste the Truth, to push past all lesser substitutes. (This is why no one is simply argued into believing, because belief is so much more than the acceptance of certain facts) Thus truth does exist "out there", independently of ourselves, as apologists for "absolute truth" are so quick to assert, but it does not exist independently of persons; rather, the Truth is a Person. The Truth objectively exists (in fact, he exists much more objectively than we do), but cannot be truly known objectively. To know God is to love God. (1 John 4:7-8) Relationships, intercommunion or sharing of life between persons, are much closer to the "natural language" of the Truth than mere words or propositions.

If this really is the case, then it is obvious that the Truth does not need our help, in contrast to systems of truth constructed by us. We need the Truth, he does not need us. And so it is that "tasting the truth" frees us from needing to be zealous on its behalf. Once we have actually tasted truth, our assurance and experience of truth is no longer based on a system that we construct in our minds and need to defend, but on reality, on living experience which is not in any way endangered by what others are saying; we know better. In Orthodox thought, knowledge is indistinguishable from participation. Tasting the truth, partaking in the truth, frees us from the neurotic doubt that drives us to zealously defend truth. The real problem is not the truth itself being somehow threatened, but simply people refusing it, preferring darkness to light, and we respond not by treating them as enemies to be polemically defeated, but by inviting them in.

Tasting the Truth

St. Isaac's words come as an answer to the intense concern I felt for the "unity of the church" and divisions among Christians during my period of doubt. I was grieved by the polemics, the doctrinal disagreements, and the schisms I saw among Christians, and not just because they made it impossible for me to find "true" teaching concerning my doubts without arbitrarily choosing the version I wanted to accept. I sensed that the state of division I felt immersed in was not the way things were supposed to be. While I no longer believe that the mystical body of Christ is divided in this way (praise God for this), this study of polemics has allowed me to see more clearly what was going on, and why theological debates are so intractable: one or more parties have made truth into a sinful appetite, substituted their own perception for reality, and dug into polemical trenches, ready to defend "the truth" against all threats.

The real kicker is that this can happen regardless of the "truth" of the position being defended, how well it expresses reality. Belief that you are in the right, no matter how well-substantiated, does not justify "zealousness for the truth", but rather is undermined by it. Humility, admission of our own weakness, removal of the plank in our eye are just as essential in discussions of traditions and truth as everywhere else. Faith in the Truth can invisibly slip into faith in ourselves as its designated defenders. Zeal for a "false" belief isn't just a matter of ignorance, illogic, bias, or faulty reasoning; it is a symptom of sin, a sickness of the soul. Proving a zealous person wrong, even if you somehow manage to do it, won't cure them of their zeal. Instead we must confront zealousness with patience, grace, and compassion, not contentiousness in kind, like any other sin.

Zealousness for the truth, the mirror image of postmodern pluralism and relativism, pervades our society (especially in election years). It characterizes a fair amount of the dialogue between Christians, especially those belonging to disparate traditions, as well as the constant skirmishes of the "culture wars". But reflecting on St. Isaac's words, I see the pattern he describes nowhere so clearly as in myself—as I feel threatened and angered by opposing viewpoints, build "temples [of truth] that have turrets strategically located, each well armed and poised to fire at a moment’s notice", or leap at opportunities to represent and defend all the treasure I have found in the Orthodox tradition.

Especially now, I am glad that St. Isaac did not speak of "tasting" the truth merely metaphorically, but concretely and intentionally. For in just three days, I will be received into the Orthodox Church by the sacrament of chrismation and finally, after a year and a half of visiting, partake in the mysteries of the body and blood of Christ. On that day, I pray that St. Isaac's words will be fulfilled in me as I taste the Word who gave himself for my sake.

Zealously Contending for Truth?

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf. (Kephalaia IV.77; The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by Sebastian Brock)

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When I first came across this passage of St. Isaac a few months ago, it grabbed my attention forcefully because I recognized its truth in myself (and not because I'm "someone who has actually tasted truth"). As I've listened to the reflections of wiser men than myself, I've began to glimpse its profundity, far greater than I first imagined. In just a few words, this bishop who lived in the seventh century on the other side of the world diagnosed a spiritual sickness that is running rampant to this day.

Before I can begin to explore more of what St. Isaac meant, a bit of ground-clearing is in order. He wrote against being "zealous" or "contentious" for truth, but aren't we supposed to have zeal for God (Rom 10:2, 2 Cor 7:11), and "to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3 ESV)? How can Isaac proscribe what God commands?

The first thing to note is that as his title implies, St. Isaac the Syrian was not writing in Greek, but in Syriac, so of course the words he used for "zealousness" or "contentious" are not exactly the same ones used in the New Testament. This makes possible the same kind of semantic slippage that we see in the denigration of the "passions" (epithymia) as dangerous and needing to be subdued both in the New Testament (Rom 6:12, Gal 5:24, Tit 2:12) and in the Orthodox tradition, whereas today the word "passion" is used much more positively, especially in Evangelical Christianity, to mean a God-given affinity or calling to something that is generally worth following.

I don't know a word of Syriac, but I can at least investigate how the New Testament speaks of "zeal" or "contending". The word used in Jude 1:3 is unique in the NT, but it is constructed from the more common root agonizomai, "I struggle/fight", used by Paul to refer to "fighting the good fight" (1 Tim 6:12, 2 Tim 4:7), as well as striving in the work of God (Col 1:29) or to lay hold of salvation (Luke 13:24). Paul uses it to metaphorically describe the way of Christ as a foot race in which we compete for the prize, salvation (1 Cor 9:25). Just once is it used negatively, to refer to physically fighting in John 18:36.

The Greek word for "zeal", in both its noun and verb forms, is more mixed. It frequently denotes  envy, jealousy, or coveting (Acts 7:9, 13:45 17:5, Rom 13:13, 1 Cor 13:4, 2 Cor 12:20, Gal 5:20, Jas 3:14,16, 4:2) and can also mean indignation (Acts 5:17, Heb 10:27). But it can also be rendered as earnest desire (1 Cor 12:31, 14:1,39) or simply "zeal" (John 2:17, Rom 10:2, 2 Cor 7:7, 11, 9:2, Phil 3:6, Col 4:13, Rev 4:19). Paul writes that "it is good to be zealous in a good thing always" (Gal 4:18 NKJV). Paul is "jealous for you [the Corinthians] with godly jealousy" (2 Cor 11:2), and in the Septuagint God himself teaches that he is a "jealous God" (Exo 20:5, 34:14, Deu 4:24, 5:9, 6:15, Jos 24:19).

What it seems to me is happening with these usages is that zeal/jealousy and contending/fighting/struggling, while literally denoting undesirable qualities, are being used metaphorically to mean something good. I don't know what else to make of "godly jealousy". It's somewhat like how Jesus commands us to hate our parents (Luk 14:26)—obviously he is not commanding us to break the fifth commandment, but calling us to love God so surpassingly above any other attachment that it seems like hatred in comparison.

Most people are already aware of this example; I think something similar is going on with the usage of epagonizomai and zelos/zeloo. Physical altercations and quarrels have no place among God's people, but there is a "good fight" to fight (1 Tim 6:12), and we are to "contend" for the faith (Jude 1:3)—describing how we are to strive for the life and salvation of ourselves and others with the vigor and discipline of an athlete or a soldier. God's concern for the good of his people, that they worship and serve only him, is so strong and stringent that it is described as jealousy (Exo 20:5), as is Paul's (2 Cor 11:2). God wants us to belong to him and not to any idol or lesser thing. When applied to us (Gal 4:18), zeloo probably likewise refers to the fervor, exclusivity, and purity of our devotion to "a good thing", and not anything else. Likewise, the "zeal" for which the Levite Phinehas is commended in Numbers 25:11 (same Greek root) is his concern for the purity of Israel's worship, mirroring God's zeal/jealousy for his people.

Presumably, St. Isaac did not have these positive meanings of "zealous" and "contentious" in mind, but was writing more literally, with the negative connotations not elided through metaphor. I also think he was speaking more with respect to the inner life, whereas the NT authors are metaphorically describing external actions and disciplines by drawing parallels between them and combativeness or jealousy. (This is especially evident in descriptions of God as jealous, which are certainly anthropomorphisms) The Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul paraphrases his peer John Piper as aptly saying "that we not only have to believe the truth, that it’s not enough even to defend the truth, but we must also contend for the truth. That does not mean, however, that we are to be contentious people by nature." I think St. Isaac is highlighting this same distinction, between contending for the truth and becoming contentious.

That wraps up the ground-clearing. The next post will be longer and delve as deeply as I can manage into what St. Isaac did mean.

Some deep thoughts on games

Disclaimer: This post is far more subjective and personal than my usual. Everything I say here applies only to me, as far as I know. Enjoy!

In the rush of games that happened over Christmas break (from Marissa getting Power Grid for Christmas to a marathon that stretched over New Year's Eve and Day when my friend was visiting from New Jersey), I glimpsed the almost unequaled ability games have to work me up emotionally. One round of Dominion could put me in a sour mood for an entire evening. With some prompting, I remembered the simple truth that my submission to Jesus extends to every part of my life, even to things that I normally consider idle distractions. So I started asking some long-overdue questions: why do I enjoy playing games—of the board or video variety? Why do I sometimes get so frustrated at them? Why have I disliked competition since I was little?

One of the first things I found was that my enjoyment of games breaks down into a few discrete categories. Just as flavors have five basic tastes, so I realized the the appeal of games to me consisted of four different "flavors". For lack of any other literature to draw from, I've tentatively named these flavors "strategy", "flow", "immersion", and "progress", and I describe them below.

Strategy

(I'm actually no good at chess, but it's a highly recognizable example)

Strategy is possibly the most fulfilling flavor for me, because it engages the intuition/thinking loop that forms the core of my thought process. It gives enjoyment by allowing me to use strategic, high-level thinking to creatively overcome complex challenges (even more complex than checkmating the opponent's king). Ideally, it involves open-ended play with lots of options, echoing the nonlinearity of the real world. Where I often find details difficult to handle in the real world, these games help me to practice uniting them into a "bigger picture" with strategic thinking, pursuing my goal from many different angles at once.

On the other hand, strategy gets frustrated when I am unable to engage in this kind of creative/strategic planning, either because my options get cut off or because my choices are no longer meaningful/impactful to the course of the game. This feeling of powerlessness or a sense of meaninglessness to my actions is the opposite of how I seek to feel in Strategy games.

Examples: Strategy games (obviously), some puzzle games, most adventure-type board/card games; Supreme Commander, SimCity 4, Civilization V, Portal

Flow

Once again, I don't play DDR, but good example.

In contrast to strategy, Flow doesn't focus on higher thinking at all and simply employs a stream-of-consciousness, act/react loop that emphasizes skill and precision at high speed. It's hard to describe why, but successfully strumming/drumming a hard song on Rock Band just feels good, much in the same way climbing a difficult wall does. The appeal of Flow games is the development and successful use of a skill; conversely, I get frustrated with them if I feel that skill is not being judged or evaluated fairly, or if I'm prevented from using it (like if a display lag in Rock Band makes me miss notes and fail a song).

Examples: Rhythm games, fighting games; Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Divekick, Super Smash Bros.

Immersion

I miss Skyrim almost like I miss the Canadian Rockies.

In contrast to both of these, Immersion appeals to my imagination, emotions, aesthetics, and sense of wonder. Games of this flavor attempt to create a sweeping, cohesive world that you can lose yourself in, and so appeal strongly to my inner escapist. If they are done well, you begin to feel attached to the people and places in the virtual world almost like real ones. Obviously this can lead to unhealthy, addictive behavior, but mostly I find the chance to step into another world incredibly enjoyable and refreshing. Some of my favorite games became so because of this flavor.

I don't get frustrated with Immersion games as much, but when I do, it's usually because something breaks the immersion—such as a game-breaking glitch, poor camera control, or a bad mechanic that keeps your character from doing something they "should" be able to do.

Examples: Most RPGs, adventure games; Paper Mario, Golden Sun

Progress

Progress becomes possibly the most addictive "flavor" by appealing to my sense of (obviously) progress, or accomplishment. It encourages the regular setting (and meeting) of goals, and a steady increase in abilities, resources, or prestige that gives the game a bigger and grander "scale" over time. There's something highly rewarding about going from a penniless Rogue with a wooden dagger and no armor to (say) the leader of the Thieves' Guild. I get frustrated with Progress probably the least of any of the flavors, but when I do, it's usually because the steady effort-reward cycle the game builds up has been disrupted, or the sense of accomplishment I seek has been invalidated. ("I can't believe my awesome team of dragons I spent weeks building up got swept by an Aerodactyl!")

Examples: Some RPGs, Pokemon games in particular, FarmVille

Of course, hybrids of these flavors are also possible, such as:

Strategy/Flow: Call of Duty (single player)
Strategy/Immersion: Braid, Portal 2
Flow/Progress: Sequence
Immersion/Progress: Lots of MMORPGs, The Elder Scrolls, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy

Strategy/Flow/Immersion: Halo
Strategy/Flow/Progress: Call of Duty (multiplayer)
Flow/Immersion/Progress: Mass Effect?

I'd be very interested in hearing from any readers who can identify other "flavors" of games that they enjoy besides these.

Since this post was prompted by my experience with board/card games, which generally all fall into the category of Strategy games (though collectible games like Magic or Warhammer have elements of Progress, and tabletop RPGs also have Immersion), I'll be focusing on their appeal and challenges for the rest of my time.

Going deeper

I often think of games as decision trees, a perspective which focuses on the choices the player makes and the control I have over my position in the game. Each choice alters the game state and leads to more choices. It is this diversity of choices that makes, for instance, Chess more interesting to me than Checkers. Here is a sample decision tree for the first few turns of a game of Dominion.

Of course, as the game goes on you would also gain the option of playing the various cards you buy, which further multiplies the complexity of the game in ways dependent on your earlier choices. But I'm getting ahead of myself. With some more introspection, I identified three reasonably discrete properties of Strategy games that I enjoy:

Open-ended play/high complexity: I prefer games that present me with a wealth of options and choices to navigate. This means a decision tree with a high branching factor, enough to allow for "creative" gameplay, yet with enough structure that you don't feel hopelessly lost. It means having many paths to a successful outcome to allow for a variety of viable and interesting strategies, each of which might involve making goals, subgoals, and so on. I like games that resemble optimization problems (simply trying to do the best you can at overcoming complex challenges) rather than a simple decision of winner/loser(s).

Proactive gameplay: What I mean here is that I like when the real challenge and thrill of the game is in "figuring out" and implementing my own strategy, not responding to the actions of others. (This contrasts sharply with Marissa's style of play) Lest you think me inflexible, what I mean is that the game should (ideally) allow you freedom to form a strategy at a high enough level that unexpected circumstances (such as other players' actions) can only affect the implementation of a strategy, not render it completely invalid. My preferred style of thinking handles complex challenges by innovating or stepping one level "out of the matrix"—being able to partially define my challenges, rather than simply being the best at a particular one that I am forced into. I like being able to roughly decide a big-picture "path" through the decision tree that is general enough to adapt to other players' actions, so I readily have another tactic to fall back on. If I lose sight of this big picture, I begin to feel helpless.

The "Feedback Principle": This is probably the most important one. I define the Feedback Principle as the general rule that the outcome of a situation requiring my input should be connected with my actions. In other words, success should be contingent on sound play, and failure on mistakes made or ineptitude. It's important that I be able to see a meaningful connection between my actions and their outcomes, or I quickly get frustrated. If I fail, I must be able to at least recognize choices that, made differently, could have led to success—otherwise, failure was inevitable and then what was the point of playing? Of course, there is probably some self-serving bias at work here, but not in every case.

Addendum: On his blog Richard Beck defines "power" as the intersection of capability and opportunity. I think a lot of what I am saying about my preferences above are that I like to be limited in my "power" in a certain game only by my capability, not by my opportunity—or I like it if part of my capability is redefining and shaping my opportunity. If I see opportunity as a limiting factor to my ability to play, outside my control, then I get frustrated.

Hopefully some examples will help illustrate these preferences...

Case studies

Candyland: As an extreme case, Candyland gives the player no choices, and so I don't develop any expectations of strategic thinking (or attachment to the game). Not suitable for adults.

The Settlers of Catan: I'm pretty biased against Settlers because, to date, I've lost every game of it horribly due, as far as I can tell, a combination of improbable dice rolls and inconvenient robber placements. (I think I keep picking the most favorable spots for resources without thinking, and so get heavily affected by both of these) Overall, it gives external things, namely the whims of the dice (which I swear are weighted to not roll 6 or 8) and the actions of other players, too much control over my options, which are generally pretty slim to begin with.

7 Wonders: Both an interesting and somewhat exasperating game. It has seven different resources you have to balance and a multitude of ways to win like military, science, civic buildings, and guilds, which must be pursued somewhat all at once.  On the other hand, you only ever have a maximum of eight choices of what to do each turn, and these decline over the course of each age. Plus, several of the cards in a given hand are usually useless to you due to either not being able to play them or their contributing virtually nothing to your position, and the most desirable cards in an age are often snapped up before they ever get to you. Like Catan, 7 Wonders gives other players a high degree of control over your options (often the best move is to take a card that the player next to you would love to have), which I don't find enjoyable.

Power Grid: I like how Power Grid promotes long-term strategic thinking with such relatively simple mechanics. The rhythm of the game is a simply feedback loop: you collect money by powering cities, use the money to buy plants, resources, and cities (that part doesn't really correspond to reality), and feed resources into the plant to make more money. The balancing system is interesting; players often jockey for last place to get the best pick of plants, resources, and cities while plotting to pull ahead in the last few turns for the win. Lastly, I also like the simple way in which the resource market mimics the law of supply and demand.

Most of my hard times with Power Grid come from how it comes close to simulating a real-life economic race (though energy markets tend to be monopolies), but not quite. The resource market could more accurately be said to capture the law of demand, as the supply rate is based entirely on the stage in the game and not the rate at which resources are being used. This allows the players who go first to exert a crippling degree of control over the players who go later if resources get depleted. Likewise, the limited selection of the plant market makes for heated bidding wars, but doesn't really intuitively justify itself with any basis in the real world. I simply don't see how other players choices should be able to restrict which plants I can build.

Wizard: Wizard is another simple, but enjoyable strategic card game. The bidding system means that there are basically no "bad" hands, only easy or hard-to-bid hands. Still, I notice that while pondering bids I tend to set expectations for how many tricks a given set of cards "should" be able to take, and I get frustrated when these expectations are broken.

Dominion: Is probably my favorite card game. The huge number of possible games makes the game extremely open-ended and favors the creative exploration of new strategies and combinations instead of sticking to just a few. Still, my preferences come through; I strongly dislike attack cards when they cut off my options or force me to respond to other players' actions instead of focusing on my strategy. Why can't we leave each other alone? (Or have reactions that are more positive/interesting, as with Governor)

And as benchmarks, three of my favorite strategic computer games...

SimCity 4: Ah, SimCity. No interactions with hostile opponents out to ruin your city (except the occasional alien, kaiju, or giant robot) Just you, a plot of land, and the open-ended challenge of building your dream city. Most of the challenge comes from complex, intangible environmental forces like the education level, health, safety, traffic levels, and land value of your city, which if optimized will make it a more appealing place to live for tax-producing Sims. There are always at least several things to do in your city (zone for more industry, expand the bus/subway system, put in some libraries and museums...), and the whole game is something of an optimization problem on a city-scale. It encourages the setting of broad goals (expand your city's commercial sector, cut pollution, improve traffic...) and their methodical implementation.

Supreme Commander: Easily my favorite real-time strategy game because it exposes other games of its genre as real-time tactics games by virtue of its epic scale. The maps range from 5 x 5 km (corresponding to a mid-sized StarCraft skirmish) to a ridiculous 81 x 81 km. The slow pace that these larger maps lead to encourages analytical, long-term thinking about your strategy, and the extremely nice order-queuing system lets you assign all sorts of complex behaviors and plans to your units with a minimum of hassle. It gives a lot of room for creativity in strategy that goes behind the simple unit-combination mechanics of other RTSes. You can play aggressively, expand defensively try to claim more territory (and resources) to slowly choke your opponent, sneak a secret firebase within striking distance of them, rush to an experimental unit/nuke... The possibilities and choices are nearly endless, which is just what I like about SupCom.

Civilization V: Much like with the other two games, I enjoy how much is always going on in Civ V. You have cities to manage, units to direct, diplomatic relations to navigate, and a world to conquer. there are over a dozen various resources and variables to manage, and you have a great degree of control over the direction you take your empire, which is exemplified in the four victory conditions: domination, cultural, science, and diplomatic. Like SimCity, it throws a great deal of complexity at you but manages to do so in a clear way that lets you manage it surprisingly easily. All the parallels with real history allows each game to be its own kind of alternate history, some more entertaining than others (like the time I played as Gandhi and slaughtered the rest of the world with Giant Death Robots, or when George Washington besieged Mumbai for 500 years straight). Civ V encourages you to combine creativity with strategy and just a bit of megalomania, leading to the legendary "Just one more turn..." syndrome.

From preferences to obligations

It seems like I have different expectations for games than most people. I don't enjoy competition for its own sake; I enjoy the strategic challenges that it accompanies. When the competitive elements of a game get in the way of the strategy (e.g. by violating one of the three properties above), it's no longer "fun" for me. So I tend to gravitate toward games (like the last three) that embody these properties more, by design. All this research into how I enjoy strategic games might even help me to identify such games before I even try them.

I also noticed something else that you might have as well: all the times I use "should" or other words conveying a sort of moral ought-ness when talking about what are supposed to be my own subjective preferences. This way of projecting preferences into a moral dimension is seen in how I usually dislike using "attacks" that hinder my opponents: I'm applying the golden rule. Similarly, I reinterpret violations of my expectations as injustices committed against me. Once a situation has been cast in this light, it's easy to get angry; after all, (I'm convinced) I have a right to be.

I think I'm somewhat of an escapist in how I approach games, as I often am with books and music. I play them to temporarily leave the real world for a simpler one that is more like my idealized world-that-should-be. So, recast in moral terms, those three properties that I like games to have correspond to three ideals I value, perhaps excessively: freedom (to blaze my own path with my choices), power/agency (or a realized internal locus of control), and justice/fairness (or a simplified version of justice I'd label "karma"). I recently came across an article about the video game jump that sounded surprisingly like me (emphasis added):

Begy claims that jumping in a virtual world is "ultimately about expressing power." This is not just limited to power over the physical opponents in a game. In many games, the greatest challenge a player faces is the environment itself.
"Jumping over ledges, walls, or down stairs is defying the environment's attempts to constrain or influence your navigation of it," Begy says. "The dominating jump can be a means of attack or avoidance, but dominance is always present."
Donkey Kong's "Jumpman" jumps to dominate the barrels. If he does not jump over the barrel, it will dominate him. But by jumping over it, he can render it harmless.
Begy's theory is that the real world does not always grant individuals the control over their lives that they desire. However, through the jump, video games provide a virtual world in which freedom, dominance and autonomy can be expressed at the mere press of a button.

There's nothing inherently wrong with valuing freedom, fairness, or a sense of dominance and seeking to enjoy them in games. But my giving them a moral dimension indicates that they have become more than mere preferences. I feel entitled to have games I play meet my expectations by embodying these things for me, and in a selfish way that views other people as obstacles to their enjoyment. When they don't, I feel like I've been wronged.

But "love does not insist on its own way" (1 Cor 13:5, or more literally, "love does not seek its own"). When this moralizing insistence on my expectations gets in the way of enjoying my friends' company, then I stop loving them and act selfishly. I'm reminded of God's question in Jonah 4:4 (I can't remember the translation): "do you have a right to be angry?"

"Anger at" and "Anger for"

The Biblical Data on Anger

How many sermons have you heard about how to get angry? How many books have you read on the subject? (This is a rhetorical question; if anyone actually has heard any sermons or read any books on how to get angry, let me know) In my experience as a Christian, anger has always been presented as something to be avoided, as a manifestation of sin from which Jesus cleanses us. Paul has plenty of words against anger, especially in his "sin lists":

For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish--that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. (2 Corinthians 12:20)
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:19-23)
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:21-32)
But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. (Colossians 3:8)
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling. (2 Timothy 2:8)

Or 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)

Clearly anger isn't a good idea for the children of God. It's one of the "works of the flesh" opposed to the fruits of the Spirit; it destroys Christian fellowship; it stifles the love we're supposed to resemble Christ by. I could write a lengthy post about how anger has twisted God's image in the church, but Morgan Guyton has already written a better one.

Well, that's all great, except Jesus got angry a few times.

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. (Mark 3:1-5)

And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city. (Mark 11:15-19)

Also, the Greek word for anger, οργη, also translates to "wrath", which we're promised plenty of

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (John 3:36)
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18)
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:9)

What is going on here? Is getting angry "okay" or not? How can Jesus do it if Paul prohibited it? The answer (as you may expect if you frequent my blog) is complicated! Let's look at the two examples of Jesus getting angry in more detail.

In the first passage, Mark 3:1-5, Jesus meets a man with a deformed hand. As He is preparing to heal the man, He notices people watching Him to see if they'll get a chance to condemn Him for healing someone on the Sabbath. He just made His intentions regarding the Sabbath very clear a few verses ago: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." In other words, the Sabbath is supposed to be a gift for Israel to enjoy, not a burden to make their lives onerous or a "gotcha" by which to condemn people. When no one is willing to recognize what should be obvious to them, that it's okay to heal someone on the Sabbath, He gets angry.

In the second, Jesus kind of goes on a rampage through the temple in Jerusalem driving out the money-changers and pigeon-sellers. Commentaries are helpful for providing context here. Jewish males had to pay a yearly "temple tax", but the temple had its own currency and onsite money-changers would exchange between the currencies--for a markup. Meanwhile others would sell "approved" sacrificial animals like pigeons, again for a nice profit. (Kind of like movie theatres and sports venues getting to charge you more for snacks) This capitalistic chaos would all take place in the court of the Gentiles, the only place where people from non-Jewish nations could come to worship at the temple. Hence Jesus saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

What is the common thread in both of these instances? Jesus is getting angry at people twisting or perverting the words of God (the laws about the Sabbath or the rules of temple worship) and destroying shalom, God's persistent desire for peace, justice and human flourishing. (This also applies to all the times He gets huffy at the Pharisees, who took God's laws which were supposed to be blessings and turned them into heavy burdens that they made people carry) Making an intuitive leap, I would more generally say that Jesus gets angry at sin.

"Anger at" vs. "Anger for"

In combination with Paul's writing about avoiding anger, we start to see a difference between "good" anger (as modeled by Jesus) and "bad" anger (as warned against by Paul). It is righteous, just anger; jealous anger--jealous for God's people and their redemption from sin to shalom. Paul warns against selfish, sinful anger at people; Jesus models righteous anger for people. "Anger at" is self-focused and intended to harm; "anger for" is others-focused and intended to protect and redeem. "Anger at" comes from a desire to be right, to have your way, or to put down those you dislike; "anger for" is rooted in love for God and for the people He loves.

This is, in my view, a better response than just saying, "God is allowed to be angry at sin because He's perfectly holy, but we're not supposed to imitate Him in this because we're not like Him. We're supposed to pay attention to the log in our own eye, not the dust in our neighbor's eye (Matthew 7:3)." By learning to see multiple shades of anger, we can move past this dissonant picture of sanctification where we're supposed to become just like Jesus except X, Y, and Z, about which He effectively says "do as I say, not as I do". Becoming more like Jesus means getting angry at sin, for sinners just like He did.

I just saw an example of this in my small group last night when we went over Jonah 4. Jonah has just preached a message of impending doom to Ninevah, the capital of Assyria, at which they immediately repented and avoided destruction. But Jonah isn't happy but angry at this development; he reveals that the reason he initially ran from God's call to prophesy to Ninevah was because he was afraid this would happen. (4:2) So Jonah gets angry, "angry enough to die" (4:9). God asks him twice, "do you do well to be angry?"

So we see that Jonah and God had different purposes for Jonah's prophetic message to Ninevah. Jonah was "angry at" the Ninevites and hoped that they wouldn't repent and would be destroyed. But God is, if anything, "angry for" the city of Ninevah and its people, so He wants to redeem them and is glad to relent from destroying them. Jonah saw the Ninevites as "those people"; God saw them as His people, alienated from Him as they were. It got me wondering, who are "those people" to us? Who, if we went to heaven and saw them there, would we get angry at God over?

This helps us to see how God can be so full of wrath, even in the Jonah story. Shalom is God's desire for His creation: every part at peace, with justice rolling like a river and righteousness like a never-ending stream (Amos 5:24). God's wrath can be thought of as frustration that this vision is not yet realized, and indeed that some created beings (that is, us) actively resist that vision and work to defeat it, maybe for their whole lives--we sin. Yet simply wiping us all out would be equally fatal to shalom (which we're supposed to be there to enjoy) as allowing us to continue sinning, as we see in the story of Noah. God's mission is positive (the ultimate fulfillment of shalom), not negative (the destruction of sin). God loves us as His children, created image-bearers, and intended enjoyers of shalom, yet He is grieved and angry when we reject these roles. God's wrath, when it happens, is an expression of this anger from a protective parent--not simply that of a child who doesn't get his way or an OCD neat-freak who can't tolerate any contamination of sin. God's wrath is primarily "anger for" His glory, for His kingdom, for us, for shalom, not "anger at" sin. His love and desire for these things is foundational, not His hatred for sin.

A deficiency of anger

I was inspired to write this post after reading a recent post by Rachel Held Evans about her struggle with anger. She also describes how God's anger arises from His love:

Throughout Scripture we encounter a God is angered by injustice and the neglect of the poor. Jesus expressed anger at those who exploited the poor and vulnerable, who harmed children, and who “shut the door to the Kingdom in people’s faces” through religious legalism and exclusion. As N.T. Wright has said, “To deny God’s wrath is, at bottom, to deny God’s love. When God sees humans being enslaved… if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God.” 

We are right to be angered by inequity and injustice, whether inflicted upon ourselves or on other people. And we have to be very careful of telling other people—particularly those in the process of healing— when they ought to be angry, when they ought to forgive, or when they ought to “move on.”

With this in mind, she describes the limitations to the role anger should play in our faith, and her own difficulties staying within these limits and setting aside her need to "win" over others by being right.

I’ve been thinking lately that the hardest part of fundamentalism for me to leave behind is the part that equates rightness with righteousness, the part that makes "winning" the goal. 

Because I like winning arguments. 

No, I LOVE winning arguments. 

No, if I could marry winning arguments and cuddle with winning arguments every night while we watched ’30 Rock’ reruns together, I probably would. 

And yet I feel God’s presence most profoundly when I give up—not on making the argument, but on winning it. I know God’s love with more certainty, not when I’ve proven it, but when I’ve experienced it and when I’ve extended it. I find the most peace when like Dallas Willard I “practice the discipline of not having to have the last word.” 

It’s possible, I suppose, to win an argument and lose your soul.

Lastly, I thought this sentence was brilliant:

After all, the words Jesus promises at the end of this journey aren’t “Congratulations! You were right!” The words Jesus promises at the end of this journey are, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

As I was reading her thoughts about how we can't stay angry, I realized how little they seemed to apply to me. Anger is an unstable equilibrium for me. I don't like staying angry, especially against people. By nature, I don't hold grudges against people or consider them my "enemy". Especially since my humbling journey through doubt, I find it increasingly hard to care about winning arguments. Fortunately, by now I've learned enough about my relative uniqueness to not assume I'm "off the hook" because the sin issues people make a big deal of don't sound familiar to me. I started to think that instead of Evans' anger issues, I might have a different problem.

My default response when something would make me angry is to constructively redirect that anger into looking for ways to blame myself and subsequently "fix" whatever in myself is making me susceptible to the stress. Basically, I've realized that it's much easier to solve problems by changing myself than by changing the world. This has the effect of making me very good at taking responsibility for my "stuff", learning from my experience and mostly avoiding a victim mentality toward my problems in life. Also, it occasionally backfires when I get sick of myself or don't think I can change.

Unfortunately, another implication of this way of dealing with anger and stress is that the easiest way to "solve" stressors that I can't redirect in this way, that pertain to me only loosely or not at all is to simply ignore them. Better to save my care for things that are closer to me. This attitude is completely opposed to the righteous "anger for" I described above. It gets angry only for itself, no one else, and is just as "un-Christian" a treatment of anger as the domineering one that is seen as more of a problem.

Everyone processes anger differently. Maybe you fit Evans' profile (too much anger), or maybe mine (too little), or maybe you have your own problems living Paul's exhortation to "anger for". I don't want to try to enumerate all the ways people can fall short of it (because that's impossible), but rather to hold up the example we're called to strive for--a jealous, righteous anger at sin in ourselves and the world, for God's people and the shalom He earnestly desires for them.

Stay angry, my friends.