Anger and Fear

March Madness has worked its way down to the Final Four for 2012. One of those final four teams is the University of Kentucky Wildcats. Kentucky's coach, John Calipari, was asked about one tournament game which was a rematch of the only game they had lost during the regular season. He was asked if he was seeking revenge and emphasizing that with his team. He had an interesting response:

"I don’t ever teach anger," the Kentucky coach told reporters Tuesday. "Because the physiology of that is really close to fear. So if you try to make your team angry, and things don’t go right, it turns to fear within their bodies. So I don’t do it."

While anger and fear may not work for basketball, it certainly seems to be a popular motivator among religions.  The news is often littered with storied of some Imam riling up his followers, or some preacher sounding an alarm for the faithful to heed.

Are anger and fear effective ways to explore spirituality and faith? Or, like basketball, is it counter-productive? Join us for the discussion about faith, anger, and fear.

We will meet, Wednesday 7pm at Short's Brewing Company.