RIGHTEOUS RAGE

"A personal confession is necessary for me to write this: Sometimes I battle precursory road rage. There are just too many idiots on the road. Whoops. A symptomatic indication of possible road rage just slipped out. This week a driver on an intersecting road did a rolling ""stop"" before pulling out right in front of me and then only putt-putting at a snail's pace causing me to decelerate and brake markedly. At that moment a seminal thought occurred to me which I just couldn't leave alone: Was the rudimentary road rage I just experienced akin to the anger I felt when hearing the news of the blatant immorality and idiocy that is being promoted and adopted by our government, politicians, and populace? Was it like what I felt upon the decision to legalize same-sex marriage, the applauding of transsexualism as courageous, or the demeaning haranguing of our country, constitution, and founders? So many conversations and posts by Christians in response to these and recent inroads of socialism/immoralities/anti-Christianism/anti-Americanism can only be described as rants--rants of rage. I understand the sentiment. It is alarm, frustration, hurt, despair, all rolled together and manifesting itself as anger. We Christians would quickly justify this anger as righteous indignation (an anger over wrong done.) So, what we are experiencing is righteous rage? The problem with righteous rage is that it is most usually more rage than righteous. That is evident by the vitriol of the language, the nastiness of personal attacks, the lust for political vengeance, the desire to tar and feather the media. Here are a few observations that percolated up when I mused on righteous rage: First, it is very difficult to be both righteous and wrathful at the same time. Truly, only God or God expressed through a human can accomplish that. (God's indignation is a true wrath and never a rage). Our wrath becomes a rage, and with rage righteousness vanishes. It is kind of like a preacher speaking on humility and somewhere in the middle of his message telling himself, ""You are doing a great job preaching on humility."" We tell ourselves that we are righteous because of our rage. At that moment what happens to the righteousness? Second, rage is awfully selective. Where was the rage over the proliferation of divorce? Over fornication? Over materialism? Third, rage is counterproductive. Much can be said here, but James summarizes it well. ""For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."" (James 1:20). Lastly, to not respond with rage is not to suggest Christians should not respond, or should be political pacifistic or apathetic or unconcerned. Not at all. Christians should be deeply stirred. Christians as Americans should be fully engaged in combating in politics and with patriotism this advance of evil . But, Christians as Christians should first respond with true mourning over our nation-mourning over, first, personal sin, then, the Church's sin, then, our nation's sin. Mourning over sin leads to repentance, which leads to revival, which leads to reformation. Rage will never have that effect. Second, as Jesus prayed for His own crucifiers, we must pray for these our ""enemies."" This is not religious, flakey, gobbledygook. It is God's way. In the end will we rage or repent? Will we rant on social media or weep ""between the porch and altar.""? (Joel 2:17).

RIGHTEOUS RAGE

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