The other day a good friend said to me, “You seem really angry lately.”
The tone and delivery of his words implied that this must simply be a perception management issue, a message I was unintentionally sending and that I should and would promptly correct. His words in this way, were a sort of warning that I was coming across as bitter and confrontational—and that certainly this was not my intention.
“Good.” I said to him “I am angry.”
There’s a misconception we’ve fostered in the modern, sanitized Church, that people of faith should be devoid of anything resembling abrasiveness or irritation; that to emulate Jesus somehow relegates us to a docile demeanor, an ever-passive posture that leaves us doing little more than smiling and offering gentle platitudes in the face the horrors we encounter.
Bull.
A trip through the Scriptures paints a very different picture of what it means to be a person of deep spiritual convictions in the world.
Whether it is in Moses’ bold confrontation of Pharaoh, the prophet Isiah’s fierce warnings to Judah, Jesus pointed words to the Pharisees, his violent disruption in the Temple, or the Apostle Paul’s cutting remarks to the church in Galatia—God’s people can be rightly pissed off and still be in character.
The warning from Paul in his letter to his church in Ephesus is not against anger itself, but against a sinful response in that anger. In other words, the furious, passionate not-rightness of our hearts that rises up when we see or experience injustice isn’t a character flaw. It isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t something unbecoming of a believer.
Our anger is not necessarily an error that we need to correct, but can be a sacred prompt demanding a reply.
Often that unrest is a holy alarm within us that screams out “Something is not right!” and calls us to move.
To not fully feel that, to suppress it or push it from view, to dampen its ferocity or to ignore its invitation, would be a conscientious objection to the work of God within us and in the world.
I believe in the inherent value of all people, that each person is an image-bearer of the Divine, that I am part of an interdependent global community—and this yields a diversity of responses.
I’ve come to believe that my greatest calling as a follower of Jesus on the planet is to speak into the places and times where people are being treated as less-than, to confront those who are damaging others especially when they are doing it in the name of God.
Sometimes that involves greeting people with a gentle hug around the neck, and other times with a swift kick in the behind. Both can be redemptive. It’s all a matter of intent.
I want to reflect the character of Christ as accurately as I can. That means reflecting his passion for both people and for justice with equal vigor.
I don’t want to live this life as a perpetually angry person whose bitterness is just a toxic mess for its own sake. I don’t want to use my faith as license to do damage—because that is the very thing my spirit is so resisting in the world right now. I know there’s a fine line between righteous and self-righteous—and it’s me.
But I also don’t want to soften the edges of my convictions so much that I grow comfortable alongside discrimination or bigotry or violence.
I don’t want to normalize assaults against humanity.
I don’t want to kill my calling on the altar of decorum.
I don’t want to shrink from what my faith compels me to say just to give me better P.R.
That too would be a sin.
In response to the suffering we are so often capable of inflicting on others, I would rather be a pissed off activist than a smiling, silent bystander.
While people are being discriminated against, while they are starving, while violence is so very commonplace in this world, I’m not going to be okay with it because I don’t believe God is okay with it.
I’m a follower of Jesus witnessing too many people being needlessly wounded and destroyed in Jesus’ name—and you’re damn right I’m angry about it.
