I have not written in over a year. The noise that Katie Roelofs wrote about earlier this week has been too loud. Each time I sit down to write, something new and egregious has happened, and my files are littered with abandoned ramblings. I am constantly conflicted between rage and compassion, grace and judgment.
Today, it is rage.
Today, it is this graffiti banner I snapped a picture of last November while walking the streets of the Santurce neighborhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The translated graffiti art reads like it’s straight out of Isaiah 24: “Cursed be ICE.”
Outraged that just yesterday, ICE targeted parents dropping their kids off at a bus stop a few streets over. Outraged that my Honduran host brother had to lock his whole family in the house for two weeks while ICE strutted around his town. Outraged that school lunch funds have been threatened from my school administrator friends, all while we pick new places to threaten with our billion-dollar war toys.
Outraged.
You are too, I have noticed.
Outrage may be needed for this particular moment. Prophetic rage is all over our scriptures, and well-directed rage seems to have halted ICE terrorizing more migrants in Minnesota.
My spouse wrote about rage in 2020, “They say if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention, and I pay attention.” She continued:
“I know that in part, people also don’t want their day ruined by me spouting off about the ways the electoral college was designed to protect enslavement in the antebellum South. It’s a real buzzkill—to hear that what you’ve always been taught was right and good or honestly just fine, and therefore did not require your attention or have moral demands on your conscience or your vote, is, in fact, pretty sinister. Maybe that’s why I’m angry. I feel like I was sold a story of America, and a story of my people and who we were, and it turns out that it was mostly a lie, a lot of people are suffering, and the people who aren’t—and a lot of people I trusted—don’t seem to care.”
Anger can be a catalyst for change and for learning.
But I am writing to remind myself that I also have permission to not be outraged today. And so do you.
Outrage is the most visible response to a crisis, but also one that drives the most likes, makes the most profit for Mark Zuckerberg, and feeds the egos of those who thrive on anger.
I wonder about the psalmists who called righteous curses on their enemies, going so far as to wish their enemy’s babies were dashed on the rocks—this is an honest lament, but was it a persuasive tactic? Did that anger keep them up at night as their blood pressure rose? I wonder about Moses, so fed up with his people’s ignorance that he slammed his staff on the rock. Water rushed out, but his anger kept him from the promised land.
It’s ok to not choose rage today. Some of us may be called in this moment toward compassion, another persuasive force for good. Compassion tends to be where I land more often: compassion can spiral into spinelessness, so it’s probably why my wife and I make a compelling team. I respect those who can shout in the face of ICE, but my resistance work trends more in the contemplative direction—centering, listening, and bending over backwards to try to see another perspective.
My life’s work—a short work so far—has been building multi-racial communities that can serve with and listen to each other: communities that can enfold and equip those who are angry, those who are listening, and those who want to listen but don’t know where to start. Our foundational theology is God’s Hesed love: the unconditional love that God has for us, the love we are called to have for each other. Love that needs both righteous anger and compassion.
I sometimes see anger and compassion hand-in-hand: one of my good friends, an alum of our Cohort community, often quotes James Baldwin, “to be Black in this country and to have a conscience is to be angry most of the time.” Though he names this inner anger that he feels daily, he is also one of the most gentle and compassionate voices for justice that I know.
Another good friend shared that after seven years in Detroit, she realized heaping judgment on the unjust can only go so far to bring change: grace must surround it.
What I think I am trying to say is that anger can only move us so far before it consumes us or those around us.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, Austrian monk who lived through the Nazi occupation in his country, said, “You must question authority, but you must also have tremendous compassion for these authoritarians, because this is their last hurrah. They are collapsing. When someone yells that loudly and is that entrenched in power, they are gone. They are gone.”
Often that compassion can be kindled first toward the victims: I see compassion in the Midwesterners bringing a hot dish to shut-in immigrants, the abundant giving to non-profits and other orgs like our local faith-based immigrant’s rights org, clergy who drove to Minnesota to listen to migrants’ stories, friends calling politicians daily to share a human connection.
Then, our anger might at times give way to compassion for those who haven’t heard the whole story yet, who are still learning, who will need to be forgiven seventy-times-seven, whose lives still look like the apostle Paul pre-conversion.
To be angry is to believe that people must change, and to be compassionate is to believe that people can change. We need both voices, the justice and the grace.
These ICE agents deserve to be met with the raging shouts of protesters, to receive full justice for their actions. But if you have somehow been gifted with compassion today: they probably need that too.
10 Responses
Very good.
Thank you for this. I’ve also observed that outrage serves as a kind of virtue signal for progressives, hence the slogan: “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Outrage is certainly justifiable in many circumstances but alone is unlikely to lead to dialogue or reconciliation — especially when one asserts that if others do not share their outrage, they must not be paying attention.
Tom, I appreciate your comment. But for some context: my understanding is that this particular phrase came following the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, as a way to try to call attention to what many were ignoring. One friend phrased it this way: when suffering people begin by saying, “this hurts,” quietly, we ignore them. When they cry louder, we still ignore them. Finally, they need to shout! And the we respond with: “stop being so angry!” Our history is full of people failing to be outraged at the over 4,000 lynchings that have happened, often getting mad instead at the “angry rabble rousers,” MLK among them. While I wanted to add nuance to rage here, rage has so often been the needed wake up call for those of us who are calloused to suffering, and so while it can be co-opted at times into virtue signaling, it is more often a needed alarm system.
Yes, there are many times where we need mercy and compassion. However, if we as believers, do not step forward now we will not ever stop this.
The silence of believers is deafening and probably because they have not been personally affected
Well stated.
Hi Nathan, thanks for writing. It’s always good to discover where you and I share common ground, and we certainly do here. Christians should neither be filled with, nor controlled by rage!
Yes, there are appropriate times for righteous anger for sure, but even in such moments the Christian ought not be consumed by it. You mention Moses, whose continually struggled with the rage that kept him from crossing the Jordan. Psalm 2 captures the futility of rage so well: even as the the nations rage against God and His Messiah, the One enthroned in heaven laughs and scoffs at the ridiculousness of it all. As the old hymn writer put it so well, and though the wrong is oft so strong, God is the ruler yet!
Our confessions beautifully summarize scripture as a whole here: My almighty God and loving Father will turn to my good whatever adversity He sends me in this sad world (QA 26). We can be patient when things go against us, knowing that all creatures are so completely in His hand that without His will they can neither move nor be moved (QA 28). Our Father orders and executes His work in the most excellent and just manner, even when devils and wicked men act unjustly (BC 13). It’s hard to maintain rage in the light of this truth, isn’t it!
And perhaps, freed from the blinders of rage, we can see more clearly that there are actual reasons – good, solid, and yes even Biblical reasons – that other people – even ICE agents whose perspective you make little effort here to “bend over backwards” to understand – have come to different conclusions about these difficult subjects. Solutions that are best discussed apart from screaming.
I’d add one component to the awesome paragraph that you began: “To be angry is to believe that people must change, and to be compassionate is to believe that people can change.” And to be meek (the opposite of rage-filled) is to realize that maybe I’m the one who needs to change.
Thanks again for writing. Looking forward to pushing back on the next one! 😉
Thanks for reading and replying, Chad. Some common ground, indeed. ICE agents just made a public spectacle of arresting more parents in front of their children yesterday about a mile from here, and so I’m including my raw anger in this piece. I think Jesus would treat those arrested and those arresting with love, but I believe he would be angry in this moment. I won’t bend over backwards today to sugar coat that today. Even so, this needs to give way to compassion. It might be yours for today, and mine for tomorrow.
Thanks Nathan,
I feel like your article is mixing emotions or confused by their differences and then leading us in places we shouldn’t go.
You say we have a right to be outraged or to be filled with rage in light of the injustice that is being captured by phones and video. To be frank, this sort of injustice has always existed in America. We just have phones to capture it, and white people are suffering from it, so it’s easier to pay attention to and be “outraged” by it.
Aristotle teaches that virtues are a golden mean between two vices. So “Anger” is a virtue that lies between “rage” and “apathy.” Rage is not Anger. It is anger burned out of control (There may be a time for rage, but I doubt there ever is, and it rarely if ever persuades anyone). Apathy is to feel nothing. Anger, as a virtue, is founded on empathy both for the oppressor and the victim. The first is trapped in a vision of inhumanity that is ripping his/her soul apart. It is making him/her act less than human (maybe at worst being less than human, though I doubt that). The second is being trapped in the oppressors’ vision. So people are shot in the street, rounded up for concentration camps, killed/murdered in those camps, including children, etc. We must be angry, because everyone’s humanity is being stripped away.
I think because the root of anger is founded in empathy, it MUST be fueled and begin with compassion, not sappy emotional love (which you are not calling for), but clear-eyed, Christ filled compassion for the whole mess.
Do you notice how quickly someone who is masked and never asked to name their humanity (FACE and NAME) start acting in an inhumane way? It’s as if we’ve never read the story of the “Invisible Man.”
Anyway, I think if we define our terms well, we come to realize that being angry is the virtuous path. It includes all of what you are calling for.
As for what to do, an anger that is rooted in empathy and compassion, organizes, campaigns, draws people together to see each other’s humanity, serves each other, prays for those who are persecuting them (to stem the tide of anger turning to rage), and works to change the reality of what is to what it should be. If we pay attention to what is actually happening in Minneapolis, that’s what you’ll see. Neighbors organizing food, rides, protection, whistles, etc. and meeting each other, some for the very first time. That’s the sort of anger building activity (filled with compassion) that is Christ-filled, and makes a real difference, rather than rage and yelling in the streets. It’s also the kind of organizing that lasts and can change the world in real ways. It’s the point of anger. That’s why Jesus turned over the tables in the temple. That’s why he went to the cross. That’s why he gathered disciples around him. Because he was angry, and he needed to do something about it.
As for Chad,
I agree. Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” I think this is another way of leaning on the providence and saving grace/will of God. But Jesus also tells us to take up our cross, to follow him, to “be angry.” Not rage filled, but filled with empathy/compassion that will never stop burning until the world moves from what it is to what it should be. That’s what taking an active part of bending the moral universe looks like.
Or as the great philosopher, Albus Dumbledore, said, “It is important… to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated.” I think our confidence in the providence of God and saving work of Jesus Christ thrills us to keep up the fight, though it may never end in our lifetime. Who knows though?
Maranatha
(Sorry for the long post!)
Responding with a short note to say thank you for taking the time to think through this with me! I appreciate that distinction.
Thanks for this. And thanks Rodney for the distinction between anger and rage. Anger without compassion is only destructive.