(Un)Righteous Anger

Have you ever noticed that righteous anger isn’t ever all that righteous?  Instead it’s usually a blend of being hurt and feeling ashamed, with more than a little dash of afraid that we’re being a little stupid or appearing foolish.  There’s also a little bit of I need to be right thrown in, even as we know we’re probably oh so very wrong. And very little righteousness.  Very little about trying to restore a right relationship with them.

I know this, because I’ve had some great moments of righteous anger in my time.  I used to get mad at my roommate all the time for something he said or did that hurt me.  The funniest of these usually involve doing the dishes.  I would get furious when I would come home after a long day and see a huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink - knowing he had cooked a meal for his fiance and they hadn’t left me any - knowing that I would begrudgingly be the one to do the dishes.  

So I would bitch and moan to my best friend, who would give me about 30 seconds to feel sorry for myself before promptly saying, “What’s really bothering you?”  And of course all the hurt that the anger was hiding came through.  And at no point was my anger righteous.  It was just a defense mechanism used to hide the hurt that something in our friendship was changing.

But it’s this righteous anger, this feeling of being right even when you know you’re wrong; this feeling like God is on your side, this trying to avoid the really hurt and the real break in the relationship that has just occurred - this refusal to acknowledge sin as a very real presence in our lives - that I think of when I was reading this text from James.  And it’s that one line, the one that says, “Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”

Yeah, that righteous anger doesn’t have much to do with God.  Or righteousness, the restoration of relationships to what they should be.  In fact, that anger does more to break the relationships than whatever it was that actually caused us to first be angry.

And as I spent the week thinking about it, wrestling with this anger that does not produce God’s righteousness, the more I thought James really could have been writing to many Christians in America today.  Of course, he’s not, we can’t forget that we are reading someone else’s mail - these words weren't originally written for us.  But at the same time, they speak to us, through the Holy Spirit.  

But I mean, how many Christians, both liberal and conservative alike, that spend all their time directing their anger at the world.  They get outraged over race relations, same-gender relationships, climate change, gun control, the power of women, healthcare, and the list goes on and on.  It’s like they, err...we, think that we can use our anger to make God change what’s going on around here.  Of all stripes, we start beating the Bible to our particularly favorite weapons, I mean verse, and then we get angry at what the world is doing to change or not change.

We get angry and then we stop listening.  Because of course we do.  It’s almost impossible to have a genuine conversation when you’re angry.  Emotion clouds the way.  We’re spending so much time and energy on avoiding the things our minds are whispering to us that we have no other option but to block out other people too.  Because of course they’re wrong too.  And if we’re not listening to others, there is no way that we can be in a real relationship with them. These real relationships require communication and some humility to be genuine and God-centered.  And there is no way that we can be a part of God’s righteousness, of these right relationships, while we’re angry.  It can’t happen.

So what then, are we to do about this?  Especially because unless you are especially patient, this righteous anger is a reflexive response that we don’t really get to control.  It just kind of happens upon us, especially when something hits a little too close to home.

I think the answer lies in this reading from James this morning.  It’s pretty much the first verse where he tells people to hold their tongues and shut up.  Listen for a while.  Listen to your neighbor, listen to yourself, listen to God.  Just take a few minutes, step off your high horse, close your mouth, and start listening.  For it’s by listening that you begin to restore relationships.  You begin to see how the other person feels, you begin to hear how your own feelings are hurt, you are able to listen to the hurt/fear that’s inside, and then you can also hear God calling you to make things right.  

Listen for a while...listen to God.

Of course this is speaking from a position of privilege, right?  There are people who are oppressed and have every reason to be angry.  The victims of systemic racism in our country?  They should be angry, because they’ve been ignored.  White people who don’t like hearing that racism still exists in our country?  Their anger is more of the pseudo-righteous anger that arises to keep them from hearing the truth.  Women who are mistreated in the workplace or treated as less than equal?  They have every right to be angry because laws are being ignored.  Men who think that women are just being uppity or bitchy?  They don’t really have the right to be angry.  Big difference.

And sadly, whether we want to admit it or not - and I think it’s time we admit it.  Many in our Lutheran church are speaking from a position of privilege.  We tend to be white, and a part of this shrinking middle class.  And not just us, but most Christians in America fit this category.  And people who are not Christians are looking to us to see how we’re going to respond to the violence and real problems facing our country.  And so when we hear about #BlackLivesMatter or #YesAllWomen, or when there’s yet another mass shooting, people who are not Christians are looking to us to be the example.  They want to see how we are changed by our relationship with Christ through baptism.

And sadly, when these things happen, most Christians start going on and on about how it’s not us or they rally about how our freedoms are being taken away.  And then the world sees more of the same old, same old righteous anger that’s not actually right or righteous.  

But what if, what if in the midst of these things, we responded by shutting up for a little bit.  What would it look like if in the midst of yet another tragedy we put a hold on the anger the world has come to expect from us and started listening to the victims?  What if we listened to those who commit these crimes and understand how the system pushed them into making these choices?  What if we listened first?  Then we thought about it, then we decided to actually do something about it?  What if when people looked at us, they saw us as how Christians are supposed to be seen?  Those who listen to the cries of the oppressed and then answered God’s call to help them?  What if?