Achilles' Anger

I've just started Homer’s The Iliad. In just three days, I’ve read half of it because I can’t put it down. I am noticing a number of leadership qualities that I want to explore more. Although anger is not one of those qualities, it still continues to be an overriding feeling in the poem. Here’s the very first stanza of the poem:

Rage:
Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.
Begin with the clash between Agamemnon—
The Greek warlord—and godlike Achilles.

Achilles is mad because he doesn’t think Agamemnon is honoring him enough after nine years of battle against the Trojans. So Achilles decides not to fight any longer, and I’m 250 pages into the poem, the Greeks are losing terribly and are being pushed back to their ships—they’re ready to set sail for home having lost the war, and Achilles still refuses to fight because of his anger.

Isn’t anger such a terrible, destructive emotion? I’ve seen anger destroy families, destroy careers, destroy friendships, and destroy testimonies. And anger doesn’t have to be loud, it can also be silent. I don’t know what your experience has been with anger, but because of life, I would suspect at some time anger has touched your life somehow.

That’s why this week’s reading of the Prophet Joseph’s reactions to Martin Harris’s loss of the 116 pages of the manuscript or his reactions to being imprisoned in Liberty Jail, have had such a strong impression on me. Instead of placing anger against others, Joseph places self-responsibility and anguish towards himself. His response to the lost manuscripts is, “I have sinned.” The Prophet rarely seems to be angry—hurt yes, but not angry. What a godlike quality to not lash out at others when things are not going well, and it seems rarely things go just the way we’d like.

This weekend I bought and watched Ben Hur—I’ve never seen it before. Anger is the emotion that destroys the lives in this movie between the Roman Marsalla and Judah Ben-Hur. It’s not until the end of the nearly four-hour movie, that Ben-Hur finds peace and forgiveness through the Crucified Christ when He says, not in anger but in love, “Father , forgive them.”

Anger destroys, but Christ's love and patience gives life and hope.