Understandable, but not Justifiable

Sometimes, I feel absolutely certain that I've blogged about something, but then I can't find the blog post that I'm sure I've written. This is one of those times. Between how much I admire Captain Moroni and how many times I've blogged about the War Chapters, I'm surprised I've never blogged about Captain Moroni's anger issues.

Moroni's anger is mentioned several times in the Book of Mormon. He gets angry at the Lamanites, at dissenting Nephites, at the Nephite government, and possibly others. One thing that I find interesting is that almost every time his anger is mentioned, the reason for his anger is also given. Lately, I've been highlighting the places in the Book of Mormon where Captain Moroni gets angry, planning to blog about the reasons he got angry, though I thought I had blogged about that before.

However, I'm not sure I'm quite ready to blog about that just yet. I have more verses to find, highlight, and ponder. In the meantime, I'd like to blog about the reasons for Captain Moroni's anger in a more general sense. The thing is, I'm pretty sure he always had fairly good reasons for getting angry, but I also think that no reason he had was actually good enough.

Anger is a sin. Even if it's not written in the "Thou Shalt Not" format, we have certainly been counselled to control our anger, and I'm not sure how well Captain Moroni did at that. It seems to me that, even though  Captain Moroni always had good reasons to be angry, that doesn't mean that it was the right thing to do. His anger was understandable, but perhaps not justified.

There's an important distinction there. A lot of what people do is understandable, and forgiveable, but still wrong. When people give in to human weakness, like getting angry when others are frustrating, we should remember that that's perfectly understandable and very human, but it's not something that they or we should do. We can and should forgive such behavior, but we shouldn't condone it or emulate it.

I look forward to learning why Captain Moroni got angry so many times, but I don't plan on allowing myself to get angry as often or for the same reasons. I plan to continue to try to control my anger, no matter what I learn from studying and blogging about his.