Janie B. Cheaney: The beast within

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Finally today, WORLD commentator Janie B Cheaney says there’s a beast within each of us that’s ready to pounce.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: Anger may be the most powerful human emotion. For that reason, and mercifully, it’s hard to maintain. Few of us have the energy to stay boiling mad for long. But given the number of angry people online, I wonder if they're taking some kind of emotional steroids. If I had to choose the distinguishing public vice of our age, it would be not lust but rage.

Righteous indignation has its place and time. God himself righteously feels and expresses wrath but graciously holds back for the sake of Christ and his church. On the other hand, human anger is the first sin specifically identified as sin. It led to the first murder. “Why are you angry, and why is your face fallen?” God asked Cain in Genesis chapter 4. “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

God seems to be offering a choice. The terminology is striking: “Sin is crouching at the door.” Not standing upright and knocking like an honest man. Not picking the lock or peeking through the keyhole. The image is that of a wild beast ready to spring. “Its desire is for you. It wants to eat you alive, Cain; swallow you whole. You're on the brink of something that you can't even imagine yet. You don't know what you're capable of, but unless you throttle that beast right now, you soon will.”

Cain did not throttle the beast and soon found out what he was capable of, when his brother's mangled body lay ominously still in its own blood. Sin got through the door—but where was it to begin with? I used to imagine it outside: sin is trying to get in, to devour us. But knowing what we do about ourselves and human history, the metaphor works better the other way: sin is panting to get out. It doesn’t whisper in our ear, like a cartoon devil; it hammers in our heart, coils in our stomach, churns in our gut—let me out! You can watch it happening when your toddler throws his first tantrum.

I’m not talking about Charlie Kirk’s murderer, whose gut-level motivation may have been rage. Or could have been the soul-sucking emptiness of nihilism. I’m talking about us, and how we respond.

John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, wrote an interesting post about how all of us have murderous thoughts, but generally restrained them until the advent of social media. It goes back to Adam, who chose to let sin in. Since then, all his descendants struggle to keep it contained. It’s justified to feel anger at unjustifiable acts of violence, but “in your anger, do not sin.” Here’s the situation, as God laid it out for Cain: will you allow this inner beast to overpower you, or will you control it? There’s no choice about where sin resides; we know it’s in our hearts. But will we be its master, or its meat?

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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