I don’t post very often. But today, I want to talk about something I struggle with right along side you.
This morning, my mentor/friend/supervisor combo-person, MJ, posted on her blog about choosing to be thankful. A back-to-school prayer service, that this community has participated in for the last bajillion years (I can’t remember if it’s 17 or 27, but it’s a long time), and that the superintendent and many school leaders participate in, was sent a cease-and-desist letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Let me clarify that this event was called in to being by MJ and Miss Joan (our church’s resident prayer lady- if you need prayer, Miss Joan has got you), it is supported and run by local churches, and no one is obligated to participate.
Having said all that, I agree that it will probably be the best attended service they have had in a while. But I worry that it will be the worst prayer. I worry that it will be prayer that comes from anger, from hate, from feelings of vengeance and wanting to show “them,” whoever them is for you. We know that in Ephesians we’re told that part of our armor of God is prayer, and “to pray in the spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests.” But I think it is good for us to remember, especially in these days of the internet and presidential campaigns, that there is something tricky and dangerous about outrage.
You see, the problem with outrage is that it feels holy whether it is or not. We are so sure that those people are wrong, wrong, wrong, that hating them a little bit feels SO good. Whether we’re hating on those “Bible thumping conservative bigots” or those “Godless liberal leeches,” our outrage often causes our hearts to harden and not only that, it feels justified in its hardness. We are entirely sure that God would have our backs on this. We convince ourselves that Jesus probably hates the people we hate.
The problem for us is that he doesn’t. The problem for us is that God still sends the rain upon the evil and the good. The problem is that Christ didn’t head to a cross for our ability to feel superior to other people. Outrage may feel holy, but it is only self-righteous, and it’s eating us alive.
We want to be people with righteous anger, but righteous anger is not the same as outrage. Righteous anger often slow burning, and sits in our stomachs while we consider and pray how we should respond. Outrage is quick, it hits us in the chest and tempts us to act instantly with little regard or consideration, let alone prayer. Righteous anger is still loves people. Outrage alienates us from people, it cares more about ideology. Righteous anger has a plan and a vision for the long term construction of the kingdom of God on Earth. Outrage flits day in and day out about the myriad of things that are so wrong in the world, but does not create lasting change toward any of them.
Maybe the hardest verse in the Bible is “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” But living in to it means we have to let go of our addiction to outrage. We have to choose to see the others, who ever they are to you, as beloved children of their creator, each one fearfully and wonderfully made. We have to guard our hearts, so that this world cannot make them hard. And when we find we are too far gone, that hate has consumed us, come back to the God who makes us new. We pray not that God would “get them back,” for us, but that God would give us hearts with enough love to hold them.
Ocean Springs, I hope you pray your knees off tonight- but I hope you do it in love.
Love for your community.
Love for your schools.
Love for your kids.
Love for that lawyer.
Love for the God, who has never stopped loving you.
God, yarn, and food 