The Outrage

One of the oddest things about social media, at least the media that pours across my consciousness daily, is how very angry some folks seem about everything.

Some share life, simple and plain.  They offer pictures of children and the reality they inhabit.

But left and right, progressive and conservative, across the spectrum, I encounter souls who choose to use this new form of media to stir themselves to anger.  For them, it's an endless fountain of umbrage and disagreement, critique and attack, chasing after The Thing To Be Angry About Today.

It could be anything, something huge, or something trivial and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.  It's the conservative, chasing down some violation of someone's rights somewhere, or some intolerable impurity of belief.  It's the progressive, finding an injustice in some small town somewhere, or something offensive said by someone on a blog read by five people.

It is as if some souls are in an endless quest to find something--anything--to be enraged about, someone-anyone--to become furious with.  It's a source of energy.  We feel alive when we are angry.  Our wetware floods with hormones, our hearts race, and we forget the aches of our bodies.  We are in conflict, we are doing battle, we are fighting the good fight.

Of course, we're also being sold things by professional provocateurs, being drawn in by our hunger for a sense of relevance.  So we're angry about things in communities where we do not live, and about people we do not know.  This is...unhealthy.

Decoupled from meaningful relationship, anger can have no constructive expression.  Our raging yarps into the chaos of social media become just an infinitesimal part of a great howling din.

That makes the anger easier, because we don't really have to do anything but be angry.

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," they will say.  Perhaps.  Sometimes anger is helpful, and healing, and necessary.  But if we are always angry, our anger is meaningless.   And attention?  We choose where to place our attention, if we are to be free beings.

This morning, I walked, and the fall air was cool.  It nipped at my arms, and I drank it like spring water.  The moon was full and fat and bright on the horizon, pure as snow, washing out the stars around it.  Around that moon, high clouds ringed it with a double halo.  The dawn was coming, and the morning light of our rising star touched the tops of trees, tinged with the first colors of autumn.

It was beautiful, and I was paying attention, deeply and completely.  I did not feel angry.

Not at all.

Fake It 'Til You Make It

A few days ago, I found myself sitting around with a bunch of Jesus folks, talking about the impact of the prosperity gospel on folks who are struggling.  If being "blessed" is best understood in terms of material prosperity, then if you aren't visibly and materially prosperous, there must be something wrong with you.

We shared about folks we'd known who'd been presenting themselves as wealthy, when in fact they were financing their apparently comfortable lifestyle through credit card debt and an endless string of ever more punitive loans.

"Yeah," said one of my good sisters.  "You got to fake it 'til you make it."

The others in the group laughed and nodded.  The idea, as it got bandied about, is that if you project the image of prosperity, you are much more likely to prosper.  People will assume you're successful, and from that assumption, will treat you as if you were.  Work will come your way, and connections will be made, and you'll be in like Flynn.

That's the idea, anyway.  What happens with greater frequency is that our expectations of how we must appear to others drives us to make decisions that are ultimately our downfall.  Our debt-financed lives crash down around us.  The lies we tell the world about who we are back up into an unsustainable mess, and we crumble into nothing.  The only people this mindset serves are the folks who own us.

If the appearance of wealth and material prosperity are our goal, then our efforts to "fake it" will destroy us.  Just ask former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell about how that whole "fake it" thing worked out for him.

Then a day or so later, I found myself sitting around with another bunch of Jesus folks, talking about how we struggle our way through the relationships we have with those around us.  Those people who make themselves really hard to love, who are hateful and hurtful to us, who betray our trust and beat us down?  How are we supposed to deal with them, if we're serious about how Jesus taught us to love our enemies?

We all shared stories, about other church folks who'd done everything in their power to tear us down. How could we love those people?  How could we forgive those folks, when we don't really even want to try?

"Yeah," said one of my good sisters.  "You've got to fake it 'til you make it."  At which the others in the group laughed and nodded.

It was an interesting conjunction.

And I wondered, in those times where I've dealt respectfully with human beings I would really much rather have punched full on in the face in that moment, whether I was faking it.

I don't think so, not really.  In those exchanges...and I have had those exchanges...I recognize that my rage and my anxiety are a legitimate reaction to a broken thing.  I also recognize that the actions of the person in question aren't to be justified or glossed over.

But I also recognize that my primary allegiance is to my faith, and to the path that Jesus taught.  Even if I am required to discontinue relationship with someone, I cannot allow myself to imagine that they are irredeemable or that the possibility of their restoration is impossible.

If I rage at them, not just articulating my anger but being ruled by it, then I am acting in a way that would impede their healing and their growth.  I am reducing the probability of their transformation.

And given my commitment to the Gospel, I just can't do that.

It's hard, but it's not false, any more than duty is false, or faith, hope, and love are false.

Hell Hath No Fury

It's been coming for a while.

Following a recent leadership transition at the tippy-top of my wife's organization, things started shifting in ways that augured poorly.   Despite an amazing work ethic, a deep knowledge of her field, and a track record of turning around a struggling area of her organization, the missus found herself today on the wrong side of a restructuring.

A new CEO brought in a bevy of highly paid restructuring consultants, with the idea of totally changing the entire business model of the organization.  Everything about the organization, or so this new CEO overtly told everyone on staff, has sucked.  I'm going to save it by being the powerful transformative leader you poor pathetic sods have needed all along.

Lord knows that's not ever a good sign.  In congregational leadership literature, that's an almost guaranteed mark of a pastor who's going to leave wreck and ruin in their wake, but the corporate world hasn't clued in to that reality yet.  Nor have many churches, not to mention the board of one particular nonprofit membership organization.

So my wife's reward for years of dedication, long work hours and demonstrated excellence in delivering the core competency of the organization?  A pre-holiday pink slip, one of dozens done today in a typically corporate style, with the CEO hiding away while their flunkies do the firing.  

That, of course, leaves our household with a nontrivial 75% drop in income.  Not being fools, we've prepared for this possibility, and have a healthy war chest stashed away.   And my wife is a remarkably competent and capable human being, who will find an organization that appreciates that.  Still, it stings, and the anxiety of not knowing where things will head is deep, despite the kind whisper of my Master's voice in my ear.

It also leaves me pondering the spiritual challenge of the day: forgiveness.  Having a heart of forgiveness towards those who have harmed you is absolutely central to the Christian life, and it's something I find I can practice without too much strain.   If you strike me, turning the other cheek is easy.  It is an act that defies both your anger and my own, and that refuses to let brokenness define being.

What I have found considerably harder is finding that heart of Gospel forgiveness for those who have harmed others, particularly those I love.   When someone harms my wife, or my child, I find forgiveness...harder.  Having watched the tears and the dismay of the last few months, my reaction is more primal, more feral.  Mess with my family?  I want your bloody head on the end of a pike.   I want the sky above your driveway to fill with eagles, which descend upon you in a shrieking cloud with razor sharp talons extended.  I want there to be a thunderclap, and a smoking pair of shoes where once you stood.  I don't feel merciful.  I feel as forgiving as a slighted Roma matriarch.  Even the fires of hell seem somehow inadequately hot.

Which is why it is good I am not God.

I remind myself, of course, to think systemically, and to understand the complex underlying dynamics that go into every human action.  I remind myself of the importance of looking towards the future in hope, and letting go of the things that cannot be changed.

And I remind myself that, not being God, I am not the one who is the measure of justice.  It is not for me to understand the balance.  That is best left to the Maker of things, whose capacity for both grace and justice...thankfully...exceed my own.