Last night, one of my dogs pooped all over my bed.

I am not exaggerating this: She started out sleeping calmly under the covers, but after a while she began to meander all over the bed, quite literally “dropping her load” as she moved. It wasn’t until I encountered something wet on the pillow that I realized what was happening. There wasn’t a layer of bedding that remained untouched! I plucked her up, hosed her down, and thrust her into the kennel, closing the door with a bang. I then had to carry all the bedding to the laundry room. At midnight. In the basement. When I was exhausted.

Boy, was I mad!!!

After the use of a few choice words not appropriate for a family column, I returned upstairs to finish cleaning. I looked at the kennel on my way, only to see her big brown eyes gazing forlornly at me. “Dog,” I said, “you are in BIG trouble.”

I swear I could see her wilt.

I paused, my anger draining away. She hadn’t chosen to get sick. It’s not like she could control herself under those conditions. How could I take my frustration out on her? Especially after I realized that my anger wasn’t really anger at her, but at the situation and the irritation I felt at having my sleep interrupted.

I bent down and gave her little nose a rub. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, girl,” I apologized. She licked my hand and curled up on her blanket to sleep.

I lay awake thinking about what had happened. How often do we human beings default to anger as our first response in stressful situations, even if anger is not what we really feel? I thought of parents who yell at their kids in the grocery store more out of embarrassment than anything, of shoppers who treat service people rudely because they have had a bad day, not because the clerk has done anything wrong, of myself and the times I have spoken harshly to my father, who has dementia, when what I’m really mad at is his disease, not him. And I thought of the anger of groups of people who lash out at other groups of people not because they hate them individually, but out of the fear of what they represent.

God’s justice definitely doesn’t look like the unjust ways in which human beings use anger as a release valve or a weapon. God’s justice asks us for another way. It requires emotional intelligence on our part: understanding how we are really feeling and why. It requires self-control, the ability not to act or speak on impulse but on careful, considerate thought. Most of all it requires love—the kind of love in which we put ourselves in others’ shoes and try to see the situation through their eyes, that love of neighbor that demands compassion. Maybe then we can bring more of God’s justice into the world instead of just more anger.