I used to be a Facebook justice warrior. I was awesome at it. Truly. I should have won some award or something. If there was an injustice somewhere in the world, I was going to be bring it to the attention of everyone I knew. And I was going to feel good about it.
I mention this because I do not want this to come across as me judging because if I were to judge anyone, I would have to judge myself the most harshly. And honestly, who wants to have to do that.
But it’s been coming to my attention more and more lately that we are becoming a culture that worships anger. This is most noticeable in the public sphere, but I can’t help but assume it is bleeding over into our personal lives and interactions as well.
I have a tendency to get lost in internet comment threads. I’ll go get all comfy in my bed to go to sleep, and I’ll decide to just check Facebook for one minute and see if anyone has posted any cute baby pictures or something. And two hours later, I’ll have zombie eyes and be filled with indignation at the comment threads I had allowed myself to get lost in. I’ll have fed off the vitriol, and in doing so will have inadvertently fed into it even if the vitriol never flows through my fingers and into the web. One thing that I have learned is that anger grows whenever we allow ourselves to nestle into it. It doesn’t ultimately matter if we have expressed it. Merely accepting it and giving shelter to it helps to perpetuate it.
I didn’t like this about myself, so I tried to switch over the Instagram. But if you try hard enough, you can get lost in anger-filled comments on any social media platform out there. Even the seemingly more innocuous Instagram.
The thing that strikes me though about a lot of the anger that is professionally published and then publicly responded to out there is that we all love and respect our anger so much. We have somehow convinced ourselves that anger is a moral imperative. We have convinced ourselves that it is necessary and productive and good.
Nearly every day you can see comments and hear people talking about how they deserve their anger. Or how they’ve earned their anger. Or how they refuse to give up their anger because they refuse to become complacent or complicit.
To that I say, hmmm.
To that I say, what does our anger accomplish?
Yes, it compels us to speak our truth. Hurrah! We have made our feelings known. But beyond that, what has it really accomplished? Has it changed a single heart or mind? Doubtful. Anger really doesn’t do that.
Has it come to the relief of the injured parties? No – that would require us to actually do something. We are just screaming into the echo chamber of our own social media channels.
Have we eased our own pain – no, anger just keeps us trapped as victims.
Has it eased the suffering that results from hurt or discrimination or prejudice – no. Anger can’t do that. It never has been able to heal pain, and it never will be able to.
Anger can be a helpful thing. Like all feelings, it serves a purpose. It can awaken us to suffering – our own or that of others. It can tell us when something is not right. It can motivate us to action. It can prompt us to fight for what we believe in.
But the trick is that it can only do any of that when we have accepted it, learned from it, and decided to move past it. We simply cannot be productive actors in our world when we are filled with rage because anger, by its very nature, makes us smaller and more alienated.
For those of you familiar with Screwtape, you know that Screwtape wants his charges and his nephew’s charges to be incessed with anger at the politics around him. Because Screwtape (a devil) knows that anger really just leaves us walking in circles, chasing our own tails.
Screwtape is smart because what he must know is that anger feels good. Righteous indignation can be like a drug. We can get an adrenaline high off of it. It makes us feel good about ourselves in the same way that making the weaker kids feel bad makes the school bully feel good. It puts us on a higher ground. It allows us to look down and see ourselves in a better light.
But like most drugs, the high is self perpetuating and ultimately leads to lonely places.
This world is full of absolutely infuriating things. People hurt one another. People are selfish. People are rude. Politicians and public figures and religious leaders can make atrocious decisions and can participate in atrocious acts. There is a lot out there to be angry about.
But there’s also a lot of beauty out there.
If we focus on the ugly, we become ugly. We become part of the problem. Our anger closes us off to action as we convince ourselves that our anger itself or our expression of it is productive and helpful. This stops us from actually being productive or helpful.
Or we can process it and move past it. Then we can go be actors in the drama of life. We can donate money to causes. We can help get quality politicians elected. We can pray. We can teach our kids to love rather than rage. We can read books that help develop our moral selves so that we can be an inspiration in action rather than just in words. We can find people in our neighborhoods and communities to help. We can help the helpers.
We can absolutely refuse to be drawn into the chaos and anger that is out there. We can defend our own peace as tightly as we defend the safety of our families. We can recognize that keeping the anger out is actually a primary way we defend the safety of our families.
The “Our Father,” one of the only prayers that nearly all Christians profess, says right in the middle “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It doesn’t say, “forgive as long as the other party is lovable.” It doesn’t say “forgive as long as the other party has changed.” It doesn’t say “forgive unless it feels really good and productive to be angry.” No. It says forgive. Period.
I want to end this with an email conversation I had a few years ago. I had published an article on a large, fairly well known website. It was a pretty harmless article, but some people had taken it in a very harsh light. I got comments saying that readers felt sorry for my children because they were being raised by such a horrible mother. Some people really disagreed with me to put it lightly.
The editor of the website emailed me and said she loved the article. She said people were brutal, but she said that’s okay because it gets more people engaged with the post. More people read it.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but that conversation has stuck with me, News outlets are very aware of something we might overlook. Anger feeds readership. Anger fuels comment engagement. Anger gives us the rush that will entice us to come back to the website or the radio program or the cable news station. Anger will get us to vote against the bad guy. (or woman.)
The powers that be know how powerful anger is, and they want us to stay angry because our anger is money and power for them.
So please, let’s rise above. Let’s call out anger-bating when we see it. Let’s be brutal when it comes to protecting our homes and our hearts from it. Let’s unfollow those pages that stoke it. Let’s find creative ways to get our news without exposing ourselves to the anger. Let us hold ourselves to a higher standard. When someone tells us that anger is justifiable, let’s agree only if it leads to action and forgiveness.
I recently read an article that stated that not being angry is countercultural. It is. Peace and forgiveness are about the most revolutionary and subversive acts we can engage in these days. So let’s do it.
Anger poisons. It darkens. It closes us in. It’s sometimes legitimate. It’s sometimes necessary. But it’s always something that must be worked through and moved on from rather than protected and nourished and worshipped.
Forgiveness is revolutionary. Let’s be revolutionaries. Viva la revolucion! (Sorry – couldn’t help it. I spent the summer reading Les Mis.)