look of anger and fear

A humble alternative to anger and fear

It’s been a rough month. A friend recently reflected on it all by observing that she’s never had to rely so heavily on the “angry” and “sad” Facebook reactions. I haven’t been blogging much, because it’s been hard to know what to do with that anger and fear, other than talking about it all amongst ourselves on Facebook.

Let’s take Brock Turner. I’ve got nothing to add to that conversation. The stories that need to be told now are going to come from those whose voices have previously been silenced. I believe that the gospel message can have life-saving relevance to sexual victims. But I am not the one to offer it to them.

Or Pulse Nightclub. That was a hate crime against the marginalized… the very situation in which Christ’s words should be most relevant. But so many others have used my sacred texts to beat up those same people for so long, how can I now use them in the ways they were intended, for comfort and compassion and healing? It’s like the Billy Joel lyric, “If I only had the words to tell you, if you only knew how hard it is to say, when the simple lines have all been spoken, and the radio repeats them every day.”

I haven’t wanted to speak recently, because, if I’m being honest, it’s just easier not to. So many see the calm, gentle messages of the gospel as clueless: out-of-touch when confronted with actual pain or suffering (that, for example, is the entire plot of the hit musical “Book of Mormon“) as if Christ’s death and resurrection had included no taint of pain or suffering.

Loud voices today are shouting that given our reality, other than total disengagement, fear/anger is the only possible response. But that is a lie. Other engaged responses exist. Better ones. Ones that have power for good instead of evil.

Christ on trial was not afraid or angry, but silent. That doesn’t mean he didn’t understand what was happening.

Christ on the cross was certainly alone and in agony, but even then he chooses words— not of fear/anger— but of forgivenessreconciliationredemptiongrace.

If the Bible is wrong, if we were never made for other places than this, if the notion of heaven is mistaken, if the notion of God is mistaken, then by all means: be afraid if you like. It makes sense if this world is all there is.

But for those who agree with me that God is real, we cannot be the leading voices crying out for personal safety. Anyway we have no control over that, and meanwhile we have more important things to do.

However bad the neighborhood may get, however few we may become, however cold the love of most may grow, some of us at least will always be here crying out the gospel message: peace not anger, love not hate, good not evil.

I look around me, and I see the love burning quietly in so many hearts, and believe the promise of scripture: the light will always shine in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it.

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