I was reflecting on my anger yesterday at CitiCorp, after they pulled an egregious scam on me having to do with undisclosed hidden charges ('residual finance charges') that surface a month after one has settled and closed their account.
I occasionally get angry, but not all that often. Yesterday I was as angry as I have ever felt in recent years. It got me thinking about why people get angry and what they do with their anger.
I went looking for stories about anger, and the obvious one that came to mind was the time Jesus went into the Temple and chased out the money-changers, whom he chastised as a 'den of robbers'. It's one of just two or three episodes where Jesus expresses anger. Normally he just tells a charming little anecdote or allegory, and all is right with the world. But not with the money-changers. He has no stories for them. Just scorn and contempt.
I can relate to that.
Yesterday's anger also got me wondering if it offered any insight into why some people get angry enough to fly airplanes into buildings. Obviously the 9/11 terrorists weren't upset about anything so trivial as 'residual finance charges'. But they did go after the Twin Temple of Mammon and Cronos, rather than the Statue of Liberty.
There aren't many commemorative days that are named after the calendar date on which they fall. The Fourth of July is one. The day the WTC fell is known as 9/11.
Which brings me back to the Temple. It was on the Ninth of Av in the Jewish calendar when the Romans destroyed the Temple, in the year 70 AD. That was the same Temple (the Second Temple) where Jesus had chased out the money-changers a generation earlier. That calamity is commemorated as Tisha B'Av (the Ninth of Av).
The reason there was a Second Temple was that the Babylonians had previously destroyed the First Temple (the Temple of Solomon). And that event also occurred on Tisha B'Av (in 586 BC). In fact there is a whole raft of calamities that are tied to that date on the calendar.
Timothy McVeigh took down the Murrah Federal Building on the anniversary of the Siege of Waco.
Now the Sunnis and the Shiites are blowing up each other's mosques in Iraq.
There seems to be a recurring pattern here.
