I'm so Angry at the World

 My amazing wife is taking some classes in Spiritual Direction.  In the course of her studies, she has rediscovered the Enneagram.  The Enneagram is basically an ancient personality test, based off of 9 different core focus points or, depending on what tradition you are researching from, core sins.  (I apologize to all Enneagram zealots for the broad strokes I just used for that summary.)  As I have borrowed her books, I have confirmed that I am a 1.  Ones are known as the perfectionists of the Enneagram circle, marked by their excellence and easily recognizable by their anger.  Ones are able to see the world as it should be, working to bring order from chaos, and frequently our efforts are foiled or wasted by the brokenness and darkness of the world.  Our response is usually some form of anger at perfection being ruined.  I am angry all the time.  I have learned some healthy (and some not so healthy) ways to make that socially acceptable, but it is real.

One of the things that I have found over 15 years of ministry is that the sins that we most easily see in others are the ones that most prominently reside within us.  Makes sense; we know what to look for.  I mention  all this because I am continually amazed at how angry we are as a people.  We are filled with so much hurt and shock and disappointment and outrage and expectation and fear that it overflows and comes pouring out of us as anger and rage...especially across the internet.

It doesn't really matter what the subject is, although the last few weeks have provided us with some intense material: Israel, Palestine, Syria, human trafficking, Ferguson, guns, Robin Williams, oil, health care, immigration, politics, gay rights, Iraq...the list goes on and on.  You can look up the comments from the box score of a preseason football game and see people yelling at each other, venom dripping from their posts.

Some of this is simply due to the wonders of technology and the internet.  There is no consequence to trolling online; there are no valuable relationships to be damaged or reconciliation to pursue.  The internet grants us access to information across the globe; events that we would only have heard about days or weeks after the fact are now available to us in an instant.  We rarely know all the facts, but we have visceral first impressions anyway.

Some of our anger is due to the fact that we see and hear what we want to see and hear.  We accept stories and facts that support our beliefs about the world and the people within it.  We complain about the bias of the media and the stupidity of people who are highlighted in the news as we operate with a only a fraction of the information.

Anger is mostly a response to fear.  My Facebook feed shows that there is a lot to fear.  Life is volatile and out of control.  Just about everyone I know is one major tragedy away from being destitute and our hope is that if we could just fix one thing life would be stable and safe. 

• If everyone had guns, we would be safe
• If no one had guns, we would be safe
• If everyone could get married, we would be safe
• If we had smaller government, we would be safe
• If George Lucas had not made Episodes I-III, we would be safe
• If everyone would just smarten up, raise the level of debate and think like me, we would be safe

Here's the thing: this world, this country, this life are never going to be safe.  This is a fallen world filled with fallen people.  If our hope is in people or systems or movements or denominations or rhetoric we will be deeply hurt and disappointed.  If our hope is in the one true God who is big enough to tackle this world's messes and loving enough to hold a single heart in His hand...there may be a chance.

This is not a call into apathy or hiding from the world.  There are injustices and atrocities and systematic oppression that must be opposed...but they cannot be stopped by lashing out in anger.  Anger breeds mobs, not movements.

You want to make a difference?  Outstanding.  Calling someone else stupid will never do that.  Ever.  Try these instead:

• Stop trolling and start looking for ways to encourage people online.  Don't have anyone that you hang out with online that you agree with?  Find some.
• Start spending some of your time volunteering locally.  We rarely can touch the world's injustices.  We can have an impact on the injustices in our community every day.
• Start spending some of your money giving to charity.  Invest in those who are doing good work at home and around the globe.

The world is a dark place, but we need not be afraid.  We know who holds our lives in His hands, both now and forever.