How (Not) to Lose Your Soul by November
Outrage is not a fruit of the Spirit. Does that make you angry? In a culture awash with fury, it may as well be added to the running list of grievances we all seem to have right now. Jesus got angry, we argue. Jesus, the divine embodiment of love, got angry enough to fashion a whip and roust other human beings out of the temple like he was a cattle driver up against a tight schedule on his way to Kansas.
Odds are, you’re angry. I haven’t a study to cite or an experiment to reference to prove it, but you are. We all are. It’s as ubiquitous and common as breathing for our species. And it’s getting worse. As the U.S. election season sputters around a dark corner and lurches toward us with all its machinations, we can all feel it in the air as we are invited to go for a ride. It’s no secret that anger and outrage are the fuel that this particular car needs to get it where it needs to go. The question then becomes, “What does such a trip do to our soul?”
Paul had taken that ride before. Only his vehicle of choice was religion. Standing over heretics who had been bludgeoned to death with rocks, his anger allowed him to look at murder as a good thing, a necessary thing, to preserve his people and his tradition. Despite the fact that not murdering was central to his Constitution or Bill of Rights, he gave full authorization to the killing of those he perceived as a threat. Because that’s where you’re going when anger is at the wheel, and Paul knew that all too well when he composed the list of virtues we now know as the “fruit of the Spirit.” But what a lot of us miss is the list before this, a collection of items known as “the acts of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19-21). Of these 15 acts, at least eight have anger as a dancing partner. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy. And the other seven, it could be legitimately argued, are connected in some way to anger as well. So what does it say when a great deal, if not the majority, of the attributes antithetical to the life God desires for human beings are connected to anger?
A couple of passages in Scripture are instructive. The first is Jesus’s teaching on anger in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21-26) where he compares anger to murder. Not only that, but he also seems to claim that a life consumed by anger will lead to a type of hell. A place of fire and ash, cursed and cast out. That’s what anger does, Jesus says. That’s where it leads. A life, a people, a country that looks a lot like a barren hellscape where lives are burned to the ground, and endless smoke chokes out any hope of reconciliation. And it all starts, he says, with the anger that leads you to call a fellow human being who is made in the image of God “stupid.” Let that marinate for a minute. Hell starts with us calling each other stupid.
Yet, Jesus gets angry. In fact, one healing story doesn’t just insinuate that Jesus might have been angry; it outright says it (Mark 3:1-6). There, Jesus is furious that the Pharisees are more concerned about him breaking Sabbath by healing a man than they are that a man in great pain needs healing. So Jesus gets angry. And then he heals the man. And that’s it. That’s how the story ends. No hell appears to have been visited on anyone despite Jesus’s own teaching about anger. How can this be?
It turns out, anger is not a sin. It’s what you do with it. Jesus felt anger, but his anger led to healing. It would then, by proxy, be safe to assume that anger can lead to good things. Maybe even the best things. Maybe even the fruit of the Spirit? But if anger is fuel, then it matters what sort of machine you put it in. That’s what determines whether you end up in hell or heaven, now and later. Because anger can power a righteous desire to battle injustice, providing you with a highway to become more like the person that God wanted you to be, or it can drive you further away from yourself than you ever imagined, fighting petty battles with misplaced convictions on platforms built around a fire that burns instead of providing light.
That’s the thing about fire. It can warm, but it can also burn out of control. It can be a source of light that illuminates anything near it, or it can produce smoke that blinds and chokes. That’s anger, too. Anger over injustice can provide warmth to the forgotten and the hurting in a cold world, but it can also burn down everything in its path if not marshalled properly. Studies have further shown that anger can produce greater focus, optimism, and creativity. [1] Anger, then, can be a friend to the person who is willing to let it shine a light on them. It can reveal what a person values, what they are passionate about, and, if the person is mature enough, areas within that need work. But it can also provide a smokescreen that keeps a person or a people from growing and seeing their neighbor with any love or accuracy. If we’re honest, which seems more likely to happen these next two months?
Christians thus stand at a crossroads over these next few weeks. That they will feel anger is not up for debate. What they will do with it is. Will they let their anger be directed by the power of God or by the power of politics? Will they provide light in the darkness or add to the confusion with more smoke? A fire burns in us all, but the question is whether that fire is going to help heal or hurt. That’s the choice. There are no others. And that’s the question to ask before you act on your anger. Maybe some tables need to be turned over. But never forget that Jesus died for the same people he drove out of the temple. The Christian is called to the same. Even now. Even here. Unchecked anger won’t change the world, but that will. We have forgotten ourselves and our world-shaking calling otherwise, choosing instead to resort to the type of name calling that Jesus says brings hell on earth. Which truly would be an outrage.
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[1] Kashdan, Todd. The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self—Not Just Your "Good" Self—Drives Success and Fulfillment. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
