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Why Are We All So #@%^&$! Angry?

If your eyes are open you can’t miss it: We are an angry people.

There is a thick and tangible bitterness marking our daily exchanges; the freeway middle fingers, the vile comment section rants, the cutting kitchen table tirades.

We all seem to live either a hair’s breadth from explosion or shell socked in its bloody aftermath.

Stepping back from the fray long enough to see it clearly, and this caustic animosity that has so settled into our collective hearts feels more and more like a swiftly metastasizing cancer that we’re doomed to succumb to; bringing all the dread, all the hopelessness, all the helplessness that comes when a sickness feels unstoppable.

The Internet seems to confirm this diagnosis.

Lately our news feeds look more like killing fields. Not just the horrible stories of violence and bigotry and atrocity alone (which would be enough to overwhelm most decent folks) but the viciousness that frames our retelling of those stories; the way we use them as weapons themselves to wound and injure and retaliate. Our hyperlinks and reTweets and meme shares have become deadly daily ammunition in the hands of hateful online crusaders, where we meet another’s outrage with more of the same.

The question is, why are we so damn angry and what, if anything can we do about it?

My Christian tradition tells me that Sin is the culprit, that it is the very soul disease that causes us to be forever afflicted here, always mired in a profound unrest, forever in a state of enmity with the world, perpetually conflicted. While guests on the planet (that tradition says) this is how things are going to be—this is our bitter lot in this life. To be honest, at this stage of my journey, this feels inadequate. It feels like a convenient religious cop-out or at best a resignation to an earthly awfulness that God is allowing.

I feel myself straining for a better answer, even if it comes down to semantics.

I want to believe that beneath all of this corrosive cruelty is Humanity; that the anger is a desperate coping mechanism for the daily hell our souls endure. I want to believe that it is our inherent decency in the face of unfathomable violence that gives rise to the rage.

I want goodness to be there valiantly fighting to find a fitting response to injustice. I’m praying that love is there trying to push back the darkness and that this vitriol is just a protective callous formed on our hearts over time.

I’m banking on that for myself too or I’m not sure how else I can reconcile the mirror much of the time.

You see some days I’m absolutely certain that my anger is most righteous, my cause is pure, that this is all indeed a noble endeavor against evil. Just as often though, I feel like another pissed off prophet who’s lost the plot. The difference between these two often feels microscopic.

Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you too struggle to evaluate the true contents of your heart as you argue and advocate and navigate the war zones around you. Maybe you too are asking why you’re so angry all the time and if it’s a good enough reason to be so. Perhaps you too are wondering if you are responding to the darkness or just perpetuating it.

I think most of us want to believe that we are better than our worst behavior. I think we all have a hopeful bent toward humanity. I think we believe that goodness is our default setting (or at least it’s supposed to be) and we want to be marked by this.

Friends, there’s no way around it: Life is hard. The challenge, is not to be permanently hardened by it as you live. The greatest fight we all face here, may be to retain our softness; to cultivate gentleness despite all that is jagged and piercing around us.

I’m OK with my anger, I just don’t want to be defined by it. I don’t want it to own me.

There’s a subtle, yet critical difference between being a good person who is angry, and simply being an angry person.

I’m striving to remain the former.

 

 

 

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