Anger In Rape Cases

Martha Nussbaum discuss that anger can led to payback or retribution; however, she has two problems. I will address one problem. One problem is that payback or revenge makes no sense; it inflicts pain on the offender since it does not remove the victim’s injury (15). Revenge cannot bring a murdered person back to live or undo rape or severe injury. It becomes permanent. To me, someone who suffers rape, violence, or other negative emotion develops into experience. People cannot escape it; even when they get old, they remember the injustice they suffered when they lost their virginity during the sexual assault or imagine how gangs shot and killed their relatives. In movies, people get angry in order to say to the offender that they get them back
for what they did to their friends or relatives. However, what benefit would revenge be if it continuing to hurt people in order to prevent such evil acts toward one another?
In order to address this question, I want to describe two types of anger: human anger and spiritual anger.
When I think of human anger, I see anger as a way of “expressing negative emotions” towards the offender. What it does is that people who cannot control their emotions shows hostility against their friends or family. One example of showing hostility is when they want to solve the problem without addressing all facts. As a result, they will attack the offender first, then receive the facts last. Let’s look at an example. A rape case sometimes refers to a situation where the woman (let’s call her Jane) came at the wrong time where the offender waited to sexually assault or rape Jane. Other instances could be that Jane may have decided to become a prostitute or that the man suffered mental illness. Without addressing these options carefully, people can have false judgment about a certain people, seeking revenge through violence. This is similar to the topic of police brutality. We develop a perspective of life based on the background, environment, or experiences we have during our time on Earth. From an African American’s perspective, they see that the police killed the man due to his skin color; he did nothing wrong to the officer, but the officer killed him anyway. From a police officer’s perspective, they see it as an individual who broke the law, resisting arrest. These two perspective differ each other; if we listen to one story and ignore the other story, it becomes an injustice because we refuse to listen to the other witnesses of the situation in order to fix the problem. Therefore, human anger address their own opinion about the situation without stating the facts; however, spiritual anger focuses on the facts to do what is
right.
Spiritual anger, or as Christians call it righteous anger, improves on the idea of anger as a passion to do what is right. From cases like rape accusations to police brutality, spiritual anger shows nonviolent tactics to solve problems, in contrast to human anger. Instead of showing hostility, virtues like love, peace, and forgiveness teaches us what the right thing to do. Jesus and Dr. Martin Luther King spread their messages of virtues for their congregation to live for. However, people threaten to kill them, spread lies about them, and eventually taking their lives in their own hands. Despite all the circumstances, Jesus and Dr. King show nonviolence, forgiving people for what they did to them and their love ones and showing compassion. However, many people wonder why God does not want us to seek revenge while he does (Romans 12:19-21). The reason is that we humans do terrible acts when we seek revenge that we cannot control it. People with spiritual anger control their emotions. Like Jesus, he sees his people rather than their differences. If he focused on just the Christians, what about the non-Christians? Jesus develop a relationship with sinners in order to know that he dies for the whole world rather than a part of the world. Like Dr. King, he spoke about bringing peace to not just African Americans, but for every person in the world. Therefore, the best way to show how anger you are about a problem, without seeking vengeance, is to fight evil with good. I understand that being nonviolent is tough to develop, especially when people hurt us badly. However, we have to be rational in how we solve problems; otherwise, our emotions will control us, make us anger without reason, commit terrible acts on people, and leave us in a bigger mess than we were before. That’s why we need to use our anger carefully in order to listen to the facts first, to understand that we stand for every person, and to show nonviolence to our neighbors.