Outraged

“I just feel angry all the time.”

So shared a Christian friend of mine last week. “I feel like I’m going to snap. There’s so much wrong in society right now,” he continued.

I can sympathize. Maybe not about all the specifics - my political views don’t quite align with his - but certainly with the general sentiment. Over the last eighteen months in particular, there’s been a lot to feel angry about. And a lot of people have snapped:

• On July 31, an airline passenger allegedly assaulted and groped three flight attendants. He was duct-taped to his seat to get him under control.
• On July 6, a woman allegedly tried to exit an airplane in midflight. She was duct-taped to her seat to restrain her.
• In May, a flight attendant lost two teeth after being assaulted by a passenger.
• Nearly half of McDonald’s workers were verbally or physically assaulted over the summer of 2020.
• At least four employees have been killed in fights over masks.
• Domestic abuse rates have spiked since the pandemic started. According to Time: “300% in Hubei, China; 25% in Argentina, 30% in Cyprus, 33% in Singapore and 50% in Brazil… 18% in San Antonio, 22% in Portland, Ore.; and 10% in New York City… One study in the journal Radiology reports that at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, radiology scans and superficial wounds consistent with domestic abuse from March 11 to May 3 of this year exceeded the totals for the same period in 2018 and 2019 combined.”

I could go on for quite some time. And that’s without getting into the deeper fault lines over race, politics, religion, and economic differences. There’s so much to be angry about. To quote Heather Heyer, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” (Heather Heyer was herself a victim of the anger of the last five years; she was killed when someone drove a car into her during the Charlottesville, VA protests in 2017.)

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on the cause of your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity.” - Eph. 4:26-27

By itself, anger is just a feeling, right? And feelings are simply part of being human; they aren’t automatically good, bad, moral, or immoral, any more than being tall or short or breathing oxygen or drinking milk or any other facet of being a human. Dallas Willard defines anger:

In its simplest form, anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life. As such, it is not wrong. It is a feeling that seizes us in our body and immediately impels us toward interfering with, and possibly even harming, those who have thwarted our will and interfered with our life… The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance, before I even have time to think about it. (The Divine Conspiracy, p. 147-148)

This clarifies the situation: the reason everyone’s so angry is because there are so many obstructions to people’s wills right now. We will to go to restaurants and social gatherings without restriction or fear; to know that those around us are taking appropriate health precautions; to not have unreasonable health precautions forced upon us; to read the news without seeing the latest Democrat or Republican outrage; to work a stable job; to not lose loved ones. These wants and so many others have been repeatedly dashed over the last eighteen months.

“O Lord, do I not hate those who hate you and despise those who oppose you?” - Psalm 139:21

Add to that the deeper causes for anger. We will for there to be racial harmony and justice; for sufficient resources for the poor; for a society that correctly balances and exercises freedom and responsibility; for political leaders who demonstrate moral character and promote moral policies; for freedom from natural disasters like Haiti’s earthquake and Hurricane Ida; for peace and justice for war-torn countries like Afghanistan and oppressed peoples like the Uyghurs of China. And, as Christians, we will for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on an earth where it so often isn’t. All of these wants, too, are repeatedly dashed. Righteous indignation is a natural response: to respond, like the psalmist in Psalm 139, with anger toward the enemies of God.

“The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has fully carried out his intended purposes. In future days you will come to understand this.” - Jer. 30:24

And righteous indignation has a place. And it can be rather intoxicating: the rush of being angry, combined with the moral certitude that we’re right and the pleasure of being able to judge others. But the critical assumption behind hating God’s enemies is that we can correctly identify who God’s enemies are; we too often forget that, in present days, we may not yet understand his intended purposes. Because racism and poverty and political leadership and foreign policy are all wicked problems, and just maybe some of the people we think are God’s enemies actually have better ideas about how to address these temporal problems than we do, and just maybe some of the people we think are God’s enemies are actually appointed by him (for example, Isa. 45:1) for purposes we may not yet see.

The psalmist said in Psalm 139:21 that he hates God’s enemies, but that was only after Psalm 139:1-18, where he meditates on the mystery of God’s omniscience and the limitations of the psalmist’s own ability to understand him. And David demonstrated this attitude in his own life: when Absalom rebelled against him and David fled Jerusalem for his life, he refused to take action against a man who cursed him, because he realized that it was possible that he was in the wrong and that this opposition was from the Lord (2 Sam 16:5-12).

“The Lord passed by before him [Moses] and proclaimed: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands [of generations], forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.”” - Ex. 34:6-7

And, however much righteous indignation we may experience at the state of the world, however much we feel anger at having our will for the world thwarted, God could be said to experience even more. Not that his will can be meaningfully thwarted (it would be wrong to suggest that of an omnipotent God), but there’s a great deal that he has said is contrary to his will, and he knows all of it - every cutting remark and broken relationship and falsehood of our political partisanship, every story of every suffering person who we see only briefly in photographs and newscasts from foreign correspondents, every hunger pang and addict’s craving, every act of greed and selfishness and bigotry and rage. And it does make him angry - in fact, the Bible talks quite a lot about the wrath of God - but, as shown in God’s glorious self-revelation to Moses, his love and forgiveness outweighs his anger hundreds of times over.

“Where do the conflicts and where do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, from your passions that battle inside you? You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight.” - James 4:1-2

Because the other aspect of the problem is that our “righteous” indignation isn’t nearly so pure as God’s. Our hearts are deceitful (Jer. 17:9), and that includes deceiving us into mistaking our warring passions for righteous anger. And modern society encourages and accelerates this: social media divorces people’s words from their actions and lives, so that all we can judge are the words. Technology has made sharing these words effectively free, so the supply becomes effectively infinite, and the constraint - what determines whose words are consumed - becomes people’s attention. And the easiest way to attract attention, in both traditional media and social media, is to be extreme, inflammatory, to rile up the emotions of the people on your side and to provoke inflammatory responses from people on the other side, because that just draws more attention. And so voices that are calmer, more moderate, more loving get crowded out. Pundits and politicians keep adding fuel to the fire - some of them because they’re deliberately quarreling and fighting and spreading falsehoods to get what they do not have, and some of them because their hearts, too, have deceived them. And, too often, we willingly participate, by joining in the debates and listening to the pundits and politicians and giving platform and fame to those who inflame and divide.

“Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” - James 1:19

If anger is merely my response to my will being thwarted, then the Bible offers a different way of dealing with it. If I’m humble enough to recognize the limits of my own agenda and let go of my own ego, if I remember that there are things more important than my task list, then I can let go of my anger when my computer doesn’t work or I’m stuck in traffic or I get a frustrating work email or my kids don’t do what I want. If I pour my love and attention into my relationships with those around me, then I can accept when their wills interfere with mine. Remembering that “this present world is a perfectly safe place for us to be” (Dallas Willard, echoing Mt. 6:25-34) helps me take the losses of the pandemic in stride - not that it doesn’t hurt, and not that we don’t feel anger, but we put it in its place, because we know the bigger picture and how it all ends. If I remember that it’s the Spirit’s job to change people and that God is still working on us (Phil. 2:12-13, 3:15), then I can accept when people don’t agree with me. I can choose to prioritize Christian community over social media tribalism; I can place my hope in God rather than in politics; I can seek truth and understanding instead of seeking for my side to win.

“For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.” - James 1:20

Anger has a place. There are things in life that are contrary to God’s will, and that’s something that we need to care about. But, even at its best, I’m not sure that our righteous anger does much to accomplish God’s righteousness. And, ultimately, God’s own anger did not accomplish his righteousness: that was done by his love, poured out on the cross.

So let’s follow his example. “Be angry and do not sin” when the situation calls for it, but grieve and lament as well - those are also biblical, and they’re too often neglected. Relax our grip on our own egos and desires so that we can accept when our wills are thwarted. Take a step back from the warring passions of contemporary media and spend more time in true community. And love one another.