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Orthodox Christian Parenting, hosted by Faithtree Resources Executive Director (and mom of four!) Michelle Moujaes, is a weekly podcast for parents and grandparents navigating the holy struggle of raising kids in the Orthodox Faith. Each episode offers honesty, encouragement, and practical wisdom from the Church—creating space to exhale, freedom from the pressure to be perfect, and openness to grow as you raise children who are deepening their knowledge and love of Christ.
Welcome to Orthodox Christian Parenting, where we bring the church's timeless wisdom into the everyday chaos of raising kids. I'm Michelle Mujaias, and today's conversation is one I've been especially excited about because it hits so close to home for so many of us. Today, we're talking about anger. Yep. Anger.
Michelle Moujaes:The kind that shows up at breakfast or during homework, in the car or definitely online, or maybe just with people that irritate us in the carpool lane. Anger that can show up in us before we even realize it's there. This episode isn't about fixing your kids, and it's not about shaming ourselves. Today is all about understanding what anger is trying to tell us and how our faith gives us a way better path forward. So buckle up.
Michelle Moujaes:This one's gonna be good. Listen, if my husband and I have learned anything as we've been raising our children, it's this. Anger can show up whether we invite it to or not. It shows up in our kids. It shows up in our homes.
Michelle Moujaes:And if we're being honest, it shows up in us because life can be frustrating. Expectations get crushed. People disappoint us. Siblings push buttons. Parents say no.
Michelle Moujaes:And none of us, kids included gets a free pass from the emotional weight of living in a fallen world. So the question isn't whether our children will feel anger. The question is, what will anger become in them? Will it turn inward and harden into shame or anxiety? Will it explode outward and damage relationships?
Michelle Moujaes:Or can it be understood, guided, and even transformed, kept in its proper place? We're gonna find out. I'd assert that anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions in Christian homes. We're often not sure if it's something to shut down or punish or ignore, or maybe even fear. But the church offers us something better, better than suppression or chaos.
Michelle Moujaes:She offers wisdom, healing, a path toward freedom. And today, we're gonna get really honest and really practical about what this looks like for parents. Joining us in the conversation is one of my favorite mentors and dare I say cherished friend, Father Ted Pulcini, beloved Orthodox priest, pastoral counselor, college professor, and one of the church's most trusted voices on the inner life. Father Ted has spent decades walking with families, parents, children, as well as ministry leaders like myself, helping them understand what's happening beneath the surface and how Christ meets us there. Father Ted, welcome to Orthodox Christian Parenting.
Father Ted Pulcini:It is a pleasure to be here with you and to share you some thoughts about the whole issue of anger, which I think permeates our society to such a point now that it's almost impossible to avoid this as an issue. Interestingly enough, Oxford chose its word of the year it's actually two words as rage bait. That was their choice for the word of the year, to show that so much of what we encounter day in and day out is actually designed, put together, in order to incite anger, to incite rage. And we as Orthodox Christians, I think, have the added responsibility not just to trust it, see that it's a psychological problem or a political problem, but it's a spiritual problem, and it has all kinds of repercussions on us every day of our lives.
Michelle Moujaes:Why do you think that we are so prone to respond to anger and just indulge in it so quickly? I mean, as humans, not just our children or us as parents, but anger causes such a strong reaction in us and we so often are prone to indulging it?
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, I think it's because we really are insecure about so much in our lives. And when you're insecure, you're automatically defensive. And one of the first manifestations of defensiveness is anger at the other. You meet other people, you see them not as allies, not as people who are co strugglers, people who are standing by you, but you almost see them as a competitor, as an opponent, and that opponent draws out anger. And you know, if you look at the scriptural references and you look at the patristic references almost universally, there's a fear of anger as an emotion that gets out of control way too fast.
Father Ted Pulcini:And when that happens, it produces a whole succession of very destructive behaviors that go from individual to individual and then gradually infect whole societies. So I think one of the reasons we are so prone to anger, and I'll sort of turn to a more pastoral view here, is I think, to be quite honest, we expect way too much out of life. We expect way too much of our spouses, of our friends, of our leaders, of our clergy, I daresay, and we have these expectations, and we feel sometimes we're being shortchanged, or trying to be tricked by someone else, and that incites an oppositional reaction. And that oppositional reaction is what anger is all about.
Michelle Moujaes:Is it fair to say that's probably happening more now than ever before? Yes. This kind of misalignment of expectations?
Father Ted Pulcini:Yes, because to be quite honest, we all think that we have the right to whatever we want. I think our grandparents and our great grandparents did not have that kind of very, very deep seated illusion. They were very grateful for a lot of what they had. They know they wanted better. They wanted better for their children, and usually their children had better than they had.
Father Ted Pulcini:Their grandchildren had even more. But now we've arrived at a point where we think we're entitled to whatever we want. And I think that entitlement is a constant source of incitement of anger. So I do think it's become more prevalent now than it was in generations past. And when you look at what we consume day to day in entertainment, it feeds this idea that if you're not getting what you want, something is amiss and you have to express anger at it so you can manage to get what you want.
Michelle Moujaes:I think that's so true. And because so much of what we do online kind of has us in an echo chamber of everybody who thinks like us, that's what we get into our algorithm, Into our feed is people that think and talk about whatever it is we think or talk about. So anybody who's not in that world, it's almost like we've been duped into thinking, well, of course, everybody feels exactly like I feel. Yeah. And if they don't, then they're the other, they're wrong, and there's that combativeness.
Michelle Moujaes:So what do we do about that?
Father Ted Pulcini:The first thing we have to do is stop othering people who don't quite agree with us. I mean, we give lip service to this idea. We get together, we exchange ideas, we have a meeting of the mind, and we come up with the best solution to problems that benefits us all. Well, that's very nice to say that, but in practice, we tend not to do it. What happens in our culture is we create our own little tribe, which we see as the only group of people who really know what they're talking about because they agree with me, and then we make everyone else the opponent, the other.
Father Ted Pulcini:And so really, I think people have to admit that in our society today, we're not quite as open to a range of ideas or feelings as we say we are. We're not. We want to drive home our point of view, and the idea is, you know, I have my point of view. This is right, and the only people I really want to talk to is people I could possibly convert to my way of looking at things. And to others who don't, well, we vilify them, even demonize them in some cases.
Father Ted Pulcini:So
Michelle Moujaes:let me ask then, for a parent who's trying to help their children grow in appreciating different perspectives and not vilifying those people who don't think exactly like we do. I mean, the first thought that comes to my mind is some people think some really wacky stuff. And I want to keep my kids away from that kind of divergent thinking. It's certainly not in alignment with what the church teaches to be true. So how can we move towards kind of an openness of ideas or understanding others' perspectives or looking at the human in front of us while at the same time keeping our kids safe and not letting them go down a road that we really don't want them to go down?
Michelle Moujaes:Like what practically do we do to even begin in that?
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, know, it's interesting because, you know, I've been teaching at a college level for over thirty years now. So the age group that I'm most familiar with working with are the 18 to 22 year olds. And I find out that people who have solid sense of identity, who they are, are much better able to listen to people who are different from themselves. If people come into college, for instance, and you know, colleges sort of market themselves as a place where people expand their vision and they grow in their understanding of the world, well, that happens with people who come into that college environment with a solid sense of who they are, and they know how they feel about things, and when they meet other people, if they have a strong sense of their own identity, they're able to listen dispassionately and openly to others. Their identity is weak, they feel defensive from the outset and they begin to, you know, attack everyone who is not them.
Father Ted Pulcini:Now, you said, how are parents supposed to deal with this? Well, I think parents have to have their kids understand that who they are is a justifiable expression of being an educated human being in the twenty first century. But that doesn't mean that everyone else who doesn't think the way you are doesn't have an identity that deserves to be understood. You know, I taught in the Department of Religion, alright, and of course, what topic sort of generates more hostile reaction in a lot of people than discussing other religions. And I remember one student asked me, Professor Pulcini, do I know when I've studied another religion enough?
Father Ted Pulcini:I said, whenever you are able to see the beauty in that other tradition that the adherents to that tradition see, if you are able to understand that beauty, I'm not saying you have to make it your own, but you have to understand that there's a beauty there that other people see and appreciate, and when you understand that they see a beauty there that you might have to learn to see, that their identity is formed by that beauty in the same way that you feel your identity is shaped by a beauty that you see in your worldview. In other words, if people have a strong identity, they are less challenged by people who differ from themselves. If they have weak identities, they rush to the fight to destroy the other, to vilify them, to bring law cases against them. I mean, it's so apparent in our society that people who have very fragile senses of identity become very oppositional with almost anyone else they deal with.
Michelle Moujaes:I'm assuming that we can agree, making an assumption, that the goal for us as parents is that our children would see themselves first and foremost as children of God that are loved by him, that were created on purpose and for a purpose. Can we take that for granted or is there anything we would adjust about that language?
Father Ted Pulcini:Let me take it back even a step further. I think what forms identity in children are the gentle rhythms of life, religious life in the home, where it's not presented as a set of rules, a set of obligations, a set of required activities, but there's a gentle rhythm to prayer, to fellowship, to learning, all of these things. And these gentle rhythms make an imprint on the soul. Rather than what is said explicitly about what the teaching is or what the desires of the parents are for the children and so forth, what really sticks with you through your life are those gentle rhythms in the home. I mean, I think of my grandparents.
Father Ted Pulcini:I mean, my grandparents were illiterate, you know? They couldn't go to chapter and verse or cite patristic texts or anything like that, but there was a rhythm in the household that gave their children, my parents, a sense of who they were and how to live a life that makes sense and that is loving. People didn't talk about love. They just experienced it in these gentle rhythms of Christian life in the home. And that's why I think it's so important for those rhythms to be established and not just be an endless set of activities and boxes to check off.
Father Ted Pulcini:And I think that's what ultimately sticks, is those gentle rhythms of love.
Michelle Moujaes:So then to take it from establishing an identity of love in the Christian home, where can we begin as parents to move our children towards an appreciation, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a safe appreciation of those around us and understanding it. And just to kind of drill down on my hesitation, I think there are so many structures in place that other people or keep people as kind of in the opponent lane, right? Like that's not us. We are different. We are called to different.
Michelle Moujaes:So it's very hard to show the same kind of open handed love that maybe Christ did because the identity feels a little bit I don't know if the word's shaky, but it's so different from other people. So for example, if I see someone who has an opinion that's different than mine, maybe I decide not to comment. Maybe there's no reason for me to engage in the conversation. But if it's too far from mine or if it starts to impact who I am, then I do have that kind of visceral anger reaction. How can we help our kids kind of think about that a little bit differently?
Father Ted Pulcini:You asked a very good question. And I think the first step is rather than giving your reaction to that person you somehow see as threatening the worldview you want to impart to your children, ask your kids what are they feeling about that when they encounter that opinion? What is it that jumps into their mind? What do they feel when they hear that other worldview that you might consider dangerous or somehow distasteful to you, what are they feeling about it? Let them ask the questions.
Father Ted Pulcini:The first thing I think we all have to learn is that I always joke with my friends, I said my first basic rule of life, something it took me years and decades to learn, is never give answers to questions you haven't been asked. I think in a lot of ways, when we're raising our children religiously in the homes or in the parishes, we tell them, these are the questions you should be asking, and these are the answers you should give. And you know, when you go to college, especially, and people say, those external authorities that were forcing you to say and think certain things, well, they ain't here no more. And so sometimes kids reacting against that kind of external authority throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think on the other hand, if we train ourselves to listen to what the reaction of our young people, whether they're children in your home or students in your class, the questions that they ask.
Father Ted Pulcini:Ask them what their feelings are, their reactions are. And once you hear the questions they themselves are generating, then you can come up with some answers that maybe will reverberate in their minds because people don't think about answers to questions that they haven't asked. But if someone gives them an answer to a question they have asked, they'll really consider that that answer.
Michelle Moujaes:Father, if you were to define anger, is there a given? Because when I think of anger, I think of a lot of the kind of symptoms of anger. But from a Christian perspective, like, what's actually happening in us?
Father Ted Pulcini:Anger is, I think at its base, a way to demean the other. In other words, to make the other lesser, and so that the only real way that you can deal with them is to minimize them, and what minimizes something more than directing anger at them. You know, it's funny, the word for anger in Hebrew is af, which is also the word for nose, believe it or not. In other words
Michelle Moujaes:Nose like the nose on your because
Father Ted Pulcini:I think anger was identified to the flaring of the nostrils when someone was angry. And I think anger is at its root a basic self defensive impulse and that has a physical aspect. You know, heart starts to beat faster, you can feel your muscles tensing, and you feel that. And it also has an emotional aspect where you want to demean what the force of the person is you consider to be angry. And that's why if you look at scripture, God, we refer to the anger of God.
Father Ted Pulcini:God never gets angry. God doesn't change. God is. Alright? In other words, we have projected our sense of who, what anger is to us, namely this defensive reaction that protects us against others, we say that's the way God acts towards us.
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, that's not true. To say that God absents himself from us because he's angry with us, That's like saying that the sun hides himself from the blind. The blind do not see, not because the sun hides itself, but because the person himself has some kind of predisposition that doesn't enable him to see the light of the sun. Well, I think that's what, when we let our emotions and our physical reaction to being threatened affect what we do, we project that onto everyone else, including God. So I think at the base of anger, there's a self protective kind of impulse that we feel is quite not going in our way, in our direction, and so we use anger to sort of defend ourselves.
Father Ted Pulcini:The best way to avoid anger is not to have to be so defensive, and that means that ties back with what I said earlier about the strong identity. Identity is the issue in our culture that needs to be addressed much more carefully. I think we have to really understand that God is not angry with us the way we get angry with other people, and we have to stop projecting that onto God because God, believe me, does not have any sense of being threatened by us. There's no reason he's threatened by what he sees, so we have to feel that we are not being threatened and in danger all the time.
Michelle Moujaes:Tell me if I'm hearing that correctly. So you're saying that for a lot of us, we come to the church and we kind of say, well, we hate this ideology, that ideology, that's not in alignment with anything we know to be true. Therefore in the church, we're kind of projecting that onto God where that's not God isn't spending his time in hate of anything. Is Exactly. That what you're
Father Ted Pulcini:And I think, I mean, how many people do say, well, I mean, what I as a believer in this particular religion believe in is what I believe God believes. So we sort of project our anger onto our opponents, onto God, and he says, well, he opposes them, so that's why we oppose them.
Michelle Moujaes:How do we not do that?
Father Ted Pulcini:I think the same way that you have your kids in your house not to sort of react to anything with anger, and that is by giving them a sense of security of being loved. You know, I was at a Bible study recently on campus, and it was an evangelical Bible study, and I was visiting. They wanted to ask questions about Orthodoxy, and you know the first question they asked me? They said, Father, what is your favorite Bible verse? I was surprised, first of all, that they asked that question.
Father Ted Pulcini:I didn't expect it. Secondly, I was surprised at my answer because my anger, and I said without thinking twice, my favorite Bible verse is Philippians chapter two verse three, which says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourself. In other words, if you are able to deal with other people in a way that your initial reaction to them is love, you're not going to have to try to deal with them in a way that anger becomes important. You have to say, This is a person on this earth who occupies a square foot of space, and that person is worthy of that space as much as I'm worthy of mine. Let me try to understand that person and hopefully dispose him or her to understand me.
Father Ted Pulcini:And I think that's the way to sort of undercut the whole process of opposition that inevitably involves anger and the desire for retribution and vengeance.
Michelle Moujaes:Let me ask you, is anger always a sin? I mean, we hear about, you know, be angry but do not sin or righteous anger. Tell speak to me a little bit about that, father.
Father Ted Pulcini:Some fathers will say anger is always destructive, and therefore you should root it out wherever you can. Some people will say there is righteous anger. In other words, Jesus overturned the tables in the temple out of anger for people making the temple into a den of thieves. And my response to that is, you know, I'm not a perfect human being. Christ was.
Father Ted Pulcini:And so he knows what anger can be directed at something with a certainty. I don't have that certainty, and so the false say for us is not to react in anger at all. And if anger does happen, we have to immediately begin to sort of rectify in ourselves what we see as the source of that anger. Elder Paisios said something very interesting. He said, The only anger that is justified is the anger against the old man in ourselves.
Father Ted Pulcini:In other words, all of us as Christians have been a new creation. Baptism promises to make us a new creation. But the old creation, the old man within us, is constantly trying to disrupt what we know to be right or to disrupt us in our pursuit of what is good and just and holy. That old man in us is what we can direct our anger toward and realize that the anger that we ultimately direct at others is somehow a function of that old man in us prompting us to be angry with others. He says, don't be angry with others.
Father Ted Pulcini:Be angry to that old man in yourself that gives rise to that anger and that sense of vengeance and desire for retribution against others.
Michelle Moujaes:And I mean, goes back then to that entitlement that you talked about that how dare I be, you know, affronted or someone come against what I deserve. So keeping that in check and kinda keeping that as part of the old man makes perfect sense.
Father Ted Pulcini:Right. I wonder I just wanna answer a question you brought up earlier. I don't think I answered it directly enough or appropriately thoroughly enough, and that is what about this anger that rises up in us naturally? Well, I mean, you can't if you're feeling anger about something, it's best not to deny that you're feeling anger. You know you're feeling anger, and nothing is worse than you're angry at someone and they say to you, Oh, you're angry with me.
Father Ted Pulcini:You say, Oh no, I'm not. But you are. Okay, there's nothing worse than that.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah, yeah.
Father Ted Pulcini:My answer, and I think the patristic answer to this too, is for the person who is being perceived as angry or might really be angry to ask what's the source of that anger. And the source of that anger is really the old man in us that we need to be addressing. And we need to be angry with that person and root that out.
Michelle Moujaes:I find that to be something important to balance because, you know, I think you could be pretty passive aggressive if you're like, no. No. I'm fine. My poor husband, I do that all the time. He'll be like, you okay?
Michelle Moujaes:I'm like, I'm fine. But I'm really not fine. But also, there is, a tendency I think so many of us can fall prey to which is indulging. Like, there's a lot to be unsettled about and there's a lot to be angry about. People who are kind of pursuing their own wishes or wants or desires or opinions, if those do kind of bump up against yours, if you don't kind of silence that tendency to be angry, you could be living in a lot of that kind of discomfort a lot.
Michelle Moujaes:Like, things will well up. Right?
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, is there a way to disagree without making it an angry?
Michelle Moujaes:How how do you do that? I wanna know how to do that.
Father Ted Pulcini:Okay. Well, that's the really the in other words, when I look at someone who is spewing something at me that I think is absolutely wrong, I think it's false. I think it's based on a very sort of fallacious understanding of the world. My view is to show how I think that's affecting that person, not how it's affecting me. You know, in other words, I'll say, you know, to have an opinion like that and to be expressing this view of life, it seems to put you in a position where you're always going to be opposing other people and always, always going to be in a position where you're reacting against others as your enemies.
Father Ted Pulcini:That must become very tiresome after a while. Wow. In other words, show them that the fruit of anger is destruction. It is not something positive. And so I think that, you know, Saint John Cashion said that anger is never against others is never justified.
Father Ted Pulcini:Wow. But I think caring for the other person and letting them know that their worldview is one that is self destructive, that's something you can point out to them and say, isn't that the case? Let them, you know, present that to you. But if you're let me tell you, when there's something happening in society and we protest against it, okay, there might be horrific things happening in the world and, you know, people, college students who are particularly good at this, holding a protest, all right, to argue against this particular development which might be absolutely destructive and deadly to people. But you know, what do those protests do?
Father Ted Pulcini:Those protests usually excite the opposite opinion to then counter protest, and it even makes the people you're initially protesting dig even deeper. They double down, and they become more angry that you're daring to question them about what they think. And so your anger at their stance or their approval of a certain behavior becomes their opportunity to double down and become even more insistent against what made you angry in the first place. Right. Right?
Father Ted Pulcini:So I think there always has to be a third way where it's not just my opinion versus your opinion, and we end up going back and forth and doubling down against each other. But isn't there a way out of this dilemma that we find ourselves in? That's what a good counselor does, by the way, and I think that's what a good politician does, by the way. Unfortunately, think we have fewer fewer good politicians these days, but that's beside the point. The fact is if there's a way out of my view versus your view and your view versus my view, is there a common ground that can help to neutralize the asset of anger?
Father Ted Pulcini:And that is usually, I think, how we can react to people who we think are articulating ideas or doing things that are very, very dangerous.
Michelle Moujaes:Right.
Father Ted Pulcini:But to just attack what they say or they do usually just brings on a more intense expression of what you found destructive and anger provoking in the first place.
Michelle Moujaes:That's true. That's true. So combative. Alright. Let me ask you.
Michelle Moujaes:We got some questions in the inbox. And Susie is a mother in Nashville. I have five children, and I want to know what should I do in the moment when one of my children is angry? Praying sounds like the right answer, but it doesn't always deescalate the situation.
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, don't angrily tell them that they have to stop doing what they're doing.
Michelle Moujaes:Oh, I do that all the time. I'm like, don't be angry. I'm so angry.
Father Ted Pulcini:But ask them the thing. What do you think you're accomplishing by being angry? Mhmm. What do you want to accomplish by showing anger, like to your sibling or whoever else you're angry at? And get them to express that and say, Do you think that what you're saying or doing is actually having that effect on your sibling or the person you're angry with?
Father Ted Pulcini:And if they say no, I say, well, maybe there's a better way to go about this. I mean, I think we're all self interested. Even kids are self interested. And if they see anger, which I think initially they think is in their own self interest to express, if they see it as not being in their interest, maybe they'll consider another approach.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. I love that.
Father Ted Pulcini:Let's be honest. Okay, good. I mean, listen, when you were a kid, I mean, you you have brothers and sisters and the first thing as a kid, learn is if someone irritates you, I mean, you want to hit them, and kids do that. They hit each other. And we sort of get them away from that even when they're adults.
Father Ted Pulcini:We say you can't be violent. You can't be punching someone in the face or knocking them to the ground. Well, we have to take that a step further. We understand that we don't attack other people physically because chances are they're going to attack us back physically, so it's best not to be physically violent. Well, we have to take that another step.
Father Ted Pulcini:Even to be verbally violent or emotionally violent usually has a very unsatisfactory result on us. It's not in our self interest to do it and I think that's the way we have to break out of this combative dynamic that anger sets up.
Michelle Moujaes:Is the idea though that not only do we obviously not want our kids to be physical and we don't want them to even be verbally angry, but is the transformation at a heart level where we want their heart posture to be first one reacting of love, or is it first, I mean, acknowledging that self protection is a part of what our kids need to know, like, that's not what we believe. Like, how do we think about that?
Father Ted Pulcini:Anger is normal, but the question is how do you then make it into something that can work to your benefit? And I think that that becomes very difficult to do, and so I think that the stability of compassion brings about the ability to identify with the other to the point where your first and most pronounced reaction against that person is not going to be to destroy them, but somehow to make them your ally rather than your enemy. Don't know. Think that that's the only thing you have to do. You know, I think that when we get angry with someone because they feel that they're threatening us or something that we think is valuable, we have to understand what is valuable to them that they feel is being threatened that we have to address.
Father Ted Pulcini:And we have to ask them, why is it that you're feeling so threatened by us that you have to so angry at us about this? And sometimes you don't come to an agreement. You don't come to a meeting of the minds, but you can come to a meeting of coexistence. Not going to agree on a lot of things, but that doesn't mean we should let our anger result in such a destructive violence that you make someone a constant perennial enemy and only increase the presence of violence in the world.
Michelle Moujaes:It makes me think my grandmother used to say this all the time. Michelle, it takes all kind of people to make a world. She used to say that all the time. It takes all kind of people to make a world. And I think that's true.
Michelle Moujaes:We don't want everyone to be just like us. There shouldn't be a
Father Ted Pulcini:God forbid.
Michelle Moujaes:Yeah. God forbid. Could you imagine?
Father Ted Pulcini:And I think that too that you have to we have to agree. I think in ideal times we always sort of say that when we disagree, we listen to each other and come up with a solution that benefits us both. We've stopped doing that now.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right. You know? That's right.
Father Ted Pulcini:Let me give an example. I don't want to get into politics here, but one of my political science colleagues at Dickinson, I was saying I don't believe in a two party system anymore because it seems that, you know, whatever party X has, party Y is negative X. Other words, two party system just seems to be setting up a dynamic of anger and expression of hostility between opposing parties. And he said something to me that made sense. He says, you know, the only reason the two party system worked in The Americas is that in the old days, if you were a Democrat or a Republican, there was enough common ground between the parties that they share.
Father Ted Pulcini:So if you lean more to the right, you might be a conservative Republican. If you lean more to the left, you might be a more liberal Democrat, but you had a lot of common ground in between that you knew the other party wasn't out to destroy you and everything about you. Right. What's happened is that common ground that used to be shared between different viewpoints has evaporated, and now opposition is always one extreme against another.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right. That's right.
Father Ted Pulcini:And that's exactly what's happening in our personal relations as well. And I think that we have to stop that because anger is destructive not only of the other, but of ourselves because it isolates us from the other.
Michelle Moujaes:My husband always says that because I'm I'm good at anger. I'm really good at it, and I'm good at holding on to it for a while. So my husband always says, when there's a disagreement or somebody offends you, it's like they hand you a hot coal, but you hold onto it. Don't do it. Throw it.
Michelle Moujaes:Throw it away. Let it go because it's burning you. It's not burning them. But I I think there's much wisdom in that, which is, you know, we have to find that common ground and teach our children to find that common ground because the extremes, I mean, it's not working.
Father Ted Pulcini:Saint Paul uses the hot coal thing, the image about the hot coal. He says, when you show kindness to someone who is angry and potentially verbally or maybe even physically hostile to you, if you show kindness to them, it's like heaping hot coals on them. In other words, the violence of anger and the hatred that underlies the anger is sort of neutralized by an expression of kindness rather than just needing opposition with more opposition. I just think that's why the fathers are so adamant about the destructive force of anger. By the way, this is shameless, but a new booklet's coming out on anger in the patristic tradition, the biblical patristic tradition that I have co written with a very good layman, John Creighton is his name.
Father Ted Pulcini:It should be coming out soon, and it looks at the evolution of the idea of anger from the Old Testament period to the New Testament period to the Patristic period to the contemporary period. It goes through, and you know what the trajectory is, that people were able to say that anger was acceptable because God is angry. And so, that makes our anger a righteous reflection of God's anger, when in actuality we projected our very human flawed anger onto God and then used that as a way to justify our own anger. So, you look through the Old Testament, you'll see a gradual softening of the idea that anger is acceptable. And when you get into the books that we Orthodox have in the Bible, the deuterocanonical texts that the Protestants don't have in their Bible, you find that those later texts are much more negative about Anger's productivity, its acceptability.
Father Ted Pulcini:Then, when you get to the New Testament, it becomes, Let not the sun go down on your anger, you know, where anger is seen very negatively and it is not seen as something that should be expressed at all. And then you have, as I said, Saint John Cassian says that anger is not justifiable toward another person, and you have modern spiritual masters like Elder Saint Paisius. He says the only justifiable anger is against the evil in us, not against someone else. By the way, it's always easier to be angry at the evil in someone else than it is the anger in Absolutely. In fact, there's quote that I love, thinker who says, even where anger is, God is not.
Father Ted Pulcini:And even if someone can raise someone from the dead, if he is angry, he is not acceptable to God. Wow. All right? So anger is worse than killing in that regard because it gives rise to this dimension of hostility which does result in sometimes it results in wars. Yeah.
Father Ted Pulcini:I mean, and it's still to this day resulting in wars. That's So I think that the patristic idea of anger is that it's an evil to be therapeutically treated spiritually. And that's the whole purpose of spirituality, to deal with these vexations, these sins in us therapeutically to eliminate them so that we as human beings can become what we were truly created to be. The idea of anger is something that's part of the human condition. It's not something that was created to be that way.
Father Ted Pulcini:God did not create us to be angry. Anger happened when the fall occurred and the balance and the perfection of human nature became so distorted that anger became a central issue of concern. And so that's why, I mean, you know, the perfect human being, Christ, you know, was one who showed us the only way out of anger is love. That's it.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right.
Father Ted Pulcini:And the world still can't accept that.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right. Father, what a joy to be with you. Thank you for giving us such generosity of time and where can people find your book? When should we expect that and how can we point people to that?
Father Ted Pulcini:Well, it will be put out by Ancient Faith. It's right now, they just decided on a title if I but I don't know exactly it's coming out. Well, I'll keep you in touch and I'm sure we will promote
Michelle Moujaes:it when you give us the info but I have heard some of that content and had some conversations with you and I can promise our audience it's going to be good.
Father Ted Pulcini:The best thing to do about anger is to really reflect on it and not to accept the world's stance right now that everyone's angry, you should be angry, if you're not angry, there's something that's missing. Whereas the Orthodox principle is anger is not something is ideal to the human condition. It was not meant to be. And we, in the spiritual hospital of the church, have means to heal the wounds that give rise to anger in us. And that's what we should be concentrating on.
Michelle Moujaes:Oh, I love it. Father, thank you for your time.
Father Ted Pulcini:Okay. Thank you for the opportunity.
Michelle Moujaes:As we close, I want to invite you to download the free digital guide that accompanies today's episode. It's there to help you keep this conversation going through prayer, reflection, and very practical next steps for family life, especially when anger shows up in your home. Here at Faith Tree, and especially on Orthodox Christian Parenting, our hope isn't simply that you listen to another podcast or collect more information. No, our team's mantra is transformation, not just information. So in other words, our deepest desire is that what you hear here today carries you back into your local parish, where healing and formation happens best, side by side with others who are also raising children, managing emotions, repenting, growing, and learning to love more deeply.
Michelle Moujaes:You can find this guide at faithtree.org/parenting, or you can find it in the show notes below. Thank you for spending this time with us today. And remember, you are not alone in the holy work of parenting. None of us is doing this perfectly. We're all learning and stumbling and repairing and pressing forward together by the grace of God.
Michelle Moujaes:May the Lord grant you peace, wisdom, patience, and courage as you guide the hearts of the children he's entrusted to your care. I'll see you next time.