Laying down my outrage
Do you also feel exhausted from the last two years? I definitely do.
More than just the changing Covid restrictions, the loss, stress, sickness, missing out, and isolation.
I’m exhausted by all the outrage.
I’m not talking about outrage over horrible events, like feeling angry or frustrated with war, violence, or injustice. But outrage that pops up when I disagree with another’s point of view or communication style. It feels all too easy to see something online, hear thoughts from a friend, or see the news and feel immediate frustration, rage, or helplessness.
I catch myself easily distrusting those who don’t agree with me. Barriers go up in my heart and I want to distance myself from them. Even those in my own church community. Even people in my family. Those whom I’ve been friends with for decades.
I’m tempted to allow differences of opinion or thought, rupture relationships––and in my outrage, I selfishly don’t want to try to repair that relationship. Instead it becomes too easy to allow the rupture to grow overtime leading to estrangement.
But if Covid, isolation, and sometimes loss of life has already taken so much from us, I’m realizing I don’t want to allow the temptations of outrage to lead to more loss of relationship.
Here is how I’m trying to actively fight against the feelings of outrage that all too easily rise to the surface of my heart on a daily basis.
1. Controlling my own emotions
Growing up I never felt in control of my emotions. I felt dominated by them:
Speaking out harshly when I felt frustrated.
Reacting in selfishness instead of loving and serving others.
Anxiously ruminating on ideas and fears about the future.
Allowing myself to become exhausted and drained by work instead of placing boundaries on my time or sense of self.
It wore me out and ruptured my relationships.
But I’m learning that part of self control, which should grow and develop in our life if we live alongside the Holy Spirit as we follow Jesus, means control over our own emotions. The work to try to control my own emotions started with identifying my thoughts, and with the help of God, trying to control my own patterns of thinking.
I experienced this powerfully in university and while I was single and dating. I recognized I was prone to circular thought patterns about guys, and I needed to break the cycle. I had to take my thoughts captive: restrain them, confine them, take them prisoner. Not allow them to run away uncontrolled.
I would identify I was focusing on something too much, the thoughts were consuming, and I had to pray and actively remove that thought from the forefront of my mind. I had to distract myself, release it in prayer, and ask for God’s help to focus on other things.
Paul writes this phrase in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”. Paul here is defending his ministry by saying he is in a spiritual battle. His weapons consist of prayer, the Word of God, faith, and the Holy Spirit. Through these things Paul is destroying lies about God and false truths (wrong thinking), and taking these thoughts captive to Christ. By bringing these wrong ideas to Jesus, he is allowing Jesus to judge them and determine their truth or not.
I battle my own thoughts and feelings, needing to bring sometimes wrong thinking to Jesus and ask for his help to discern truth. I need to surrender all of my thoughts and emotions to Christ. It is humbling and sobering because often I want to keep my frustrated thoughts and judgemental perspective even about other Christians whom I disagree with.
If Jesus tells us to love even our enemies, why then does it sometimes feel even harder to love those who are Christians who hurt us and disagree with us? Trying to get spiritual unity in the global body of Christ is a serious spiritual battle. And it starts in my own mind and with my own emotions.
2. Choosing not to be offended
This was a profound moment for me this past fall when I realized I could choose to be offended or not. Maybe other people naturally have this superpower? I sure didn’t for most of my life.
When others would say things, or even post words on social media that were hurtful, my natural response was to feel hurt and offended. Responding overly sensitive can be easy to do. But it ends up orbiting everyone else around myself.
I think: But how could they do that to me? Don’t they see how rude and mean they are? How could they say something so hurtful?
Except I eventually realized that most people aren’t malicious. Just like me, they are mostly self-centred. Which means even though they may say hurtful and ignorant things, they aren’t trying to hurt me. Believing this helps me view them with compassion and not take what they say and do personally. Their actions reflect on them, and don’t reflect on my value or worth.
When someone’s actions or words do not encroach upon my own sense of self, it gives me a healthy separation between them and me. Not necessarily a rupture of a relationship, but choosing to not feel so entwined with them, and reactive to their words.
This isn’t always easy. And often I do initially feel hurt and offended, needing some time to release those feelings to God in prayer and choose to let them go. When I release those thoughts and feelings of personal offence, I ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to embrace compassion, patience, perspective, and grace for the other person. Only God has the power to change and transform my heart and mind toward another person.
3. Allow others space to feel
As mentioned above in point 2, when I don’t allow others’ actions or words to encroach upon my own sense of self, I can allow them to have their own emotional response without feeling weighed down.
They can feel, process, and share and meanwhile, I can feel differently and distinct from them. It’s possible for both sides to feel different things at the same time and still be in a healthy and good relationship with one another. When I don’t feel responsible for managing others’ emotions or reactions, I feel emotional freedom and less attacked personally.
I can share an example from this past December when my household got sick with the Delta variant of Covid-19.
We ended up getting incredibly sick and it was very stressful (baby included). At the time we were connecting with public health and they were walking through potential contact tracing with us––in order to help those who may be sick also get tested to stop the spread.
When we told some people who we had recently visited about being sick (and that they may get sick too), they were frustrated and upset. Both frustrated about being exposed, and also having their names shared with public health. At first, their words seemed to be directed at us––as if we intentionally were trying to ruin their lives. I know firsthand how stressful it can be to deal with Covid and how disruptful getting tested and self-isolating can be.
We debriefed some of their words with them afterwards and were able to see how they needed space to process their own experience and impact the pandemic was having on their family and work. Their initial words may have felt hurtful at first, but when I chose to not take them personally (nor feel responsible for their feelings), it allowed me to focus my energy on caring for my extremely sick household.
What I tried to offer them was compassion and grace for being placed in a disrupted and stressful situation. I offered prayer, encouragement, and support. By responding to their frustration with frustration and outrage towards them, it risked rupturing the relationship. In not taking their frustration personally, I was able to give them emotional space to feel without damaging our friendship.
And thank God they didn’t end up getting sick.
4. Take time to process
We live in a culture of immediacy and instant information. We normalize waking up and spending our day consuming large amounts of content, news, emotions, and online conversations usually within less than 24hours of it being published or shared.
I’m trying to embrace the value and opportunity slowing down offers. It lessens my temptation to feel outraged by others. When I take time to process and talk with family/close friends about issues or news I am able to develop a perspective on the world that’s community-influenced. This is key in being able to slow down, listen to others, process, and pray through our own thoughts and feelings before sharing. Just because we can respond immediately to something, doesn’t mean it's wise. Even if we think we understand something fully.
And yet, silence on a topic (especially really important ones!), can also spark judgement from others. The larger the platform or following you have, the more expectations others can have for you to speak into every issue. Or perhaps if we avoid talking about certain topics with our friends, they can assume we don’t care about it. Perhaps we just feel too nervous or inadequate to hold up a conversation because it requires humility to admit we don’t have an understanding. We may need to walk in courage and speak into issues with a heart to learn and understand, asking good questions of others along the way.
This is tricky because it’s a “both/and”. As Ecclesiates 3:7 reminds me, there is a time for silence, and a time to speak.
Maybe we need to be called out of silence and use our voice on behalf of others or to speak truth.
Maybe we need to be called out of speaking and into silence to process, reflect, and learn.
In my temptation to easily feel outraged by others and the world around me, I’m in a season of being called into silence and using my voice sparingly especially in an online context.
5. Ask before sharing
Recently a friend shared a meme on her Instagram story and it grated against me. I found it rude and hurtful. I was able to process and consider why exactly I didn’t agree with it as I walked my dog before dinner. That time to process my thoughts was really helpful.
Then I sent my friend this message:
“Been thinking a lot about this you posted here. It strikes me in a really negative way. I’m not sure a post like this is helpful, kind, or loving towards those who are really suffering. I’m not sure if you’re open to listening to my thoughts. If not, let me know. Otherwise I can share more.”
Asking my friend if they were open to hearing feedback or another point of view allows them to have the chance to say yes or no. Perhaps they don’t have the capacity to engage in conversation. They may not feel open or emotionally available to hear critical feedback or another perspective. If they aren’t, then sending upset and emotional messages of critique is not going to help them or our relationship. It will escalate defensiveness, wounding, and rupture the friendship.
I’ve shared and posted things on social media without realizing there was a more nuanced way to view the topic. There were elements of the larger conversation I was unaware of. I posted it perhaps because it aligned with some of my views, but I wasn’t trying to hurt those on the other side of the issue. When friends reached out to provide feedback and perspective to me without judgement and condemnation it was so helpful for me to grow and learn.
It turns out my friend was open to hearing my perspective on what she shared. We were able to have a healthy and fruitful conversation.
Refocusing on the gospel
In a recent sermon at my church, my pastor said,
“And to that end, will you hear this challenge? It’s time for us to re-focus our zeal [towards God’s mission]. These last two years there has been lots of zeal expended on lots of different topics, in lots of different directions, and from lots of different quarters.
I’m not saying that what we’ve just come through and what we’re not done sorting out is unimportant. I’m not saying that at all. I’ve communicated with governing officials and prayed for them more these last 24 months than I ever have before.
But what I ask myself, and now all of you, is this: does our zeal for [expanding God’s kingdom] outstrip our zeal for all else? If we scan our social media timelines, if we take stock of our common conversation topics, if we have realigned relationships over these last two years, what would that reveal about our zeal for the gospel?
If we have been more public and passionate about our opinions over these last two years than we have about Jesus Christ, we have lost our way.
Our deliverance from pandemics, from death, from the folly and sin of governing officials, is Jesus. I would suggest the time has come for us to ask God to expend the lion’s share of our efforts on what God is doing through Jesus Christ to bless the nations.”
This sentence really stands out to me: “if we have realigned relationships over these last two years, what would that reveal about our zeal for the gospel?”
I need to ask myself these hard questions:
Have I been allowing my outrage and thoughts/feelings about issues to realign relationships, even amongst other Christians?
Am I easily abandoning the work of Christian unity because I don’t agree with what others say about public health mandates?
Do I pull away from others who need gospel-centred care and ministry because the church they attend makes me uncomfortable?
How quickly do I write people off?
How do I fight the pull towards polarization and keep the gospel the most important thing?
Do I demonstrate that I care about God’s mission and gospel proclamation or do I spend all my time and energy reading and discussing secondary and tertiary topics?
Am I willing to repent from my outrage towards others?
Can I love even those who seem impossible to love?
I think as a society it’s time to lay down our outrage.
I know for me, it’s time to lay down mine.
