You can help to defuse public anger

Tune in to a radio talk show on any given day and you're likely to hear people venting their outrage against this official or that circumstance. Anger is apparently widespread, erupting in racial conflict, violence on the freeway, and in community factions that won't cooperate.

It seems clear that while anger may be considered by some a natural, even therapeutic, reaction to injustice, it doesn't provide any genuine solution. A frustrated, stirred-up state of thought only tends to cloud reason, the perception of possible solutions and steps in the right direction.

There's nothing truly novel about the animalistic thinking that generates hatred and conflict, or about the fearful view of life that sees man as a perpetual victim, subject to forces outside his control. Whatever the new forms of today's challenges, their common denominator is the same as it has always been. St. Paul described this as the carnal mind, which he told the Romans is "enmity against God." Fortunately, there is a remedy, and it's as powerful today as it was in Bible times. It's probably best summed up in Paul's advice to the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

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