"An Angry Community"

"There is great need in the contemporary world for more Christian anger. We human beings compromise with sin in a way which God never does... If God hates sin, his people should hate it, too." ~ John Stott

This winter, Shawn and I took a Sunday School class that covered the book "Unfashionable" by Tullian Tchividjian. It was a great class - I learned a lot and loved the book. I think "Unfashionable" was a good follow-up to "Crazy Love." It goes a little more in-depth.

Last week I was reading the chapter entitled "An Angry Community" and I just wanted to write down what I got out of it.

Our world needs more God-centered anger (and less self-centered anger)... The world needs to see our anger at evils such as racial violence, genocide, child abuse, drug and sex trafficking, divorce, low educational standards, corporate greed, adultery, and pornography...

God is angry when justice is not sought, when the opressed are not rescued, when the orphan is not defended, and when the widow is not pleaded for. When we see how sin causes human beings to treat each other in undignified, unjust ways, we should be incensed, not indifferent! Since God is angry at sin's devastation, God's people should be, too...

God's anger is a grieving anger. It grieves because it sees the devastation that sin has on human life...

It's as if He asks, "Why do you continue like this? Don't you see that you were created and designed for so much more than this?"

God is grievingly angry when our sin causes us to become less and less of what God created us to be, because we were fearfully and wonderfully made to live for so much more. **Cue Switchfoot song**

This hit me really hard. I am not one for confrontation. I will go out of my way just to avoid it - which often means hiding what I really think and truly feel No, this isn't saying we need to get in people's faces, but it does mean we need to speak the truth in love. People need to know that they are loved with an everlasting love - that God loves us SO much that He sent His one and only Son to die for us. That isn't a small deal. It's HUGE! We need to let them know that this isn't all there is. There's more. More than you, or I, or they can even imagine and comprehend. They need to know that God is angry with the way they are living. Don't offend or hit them over the head with it (ok, sometimes we might offend, but it's all in the way the truth is presented), don't fight them so much that they have no interest in who God is and what He wants for them.

Godly, grieving anger is far different from the kind of anger commonly associated with Christians. Lots of people think of Christians as embittered, angry people, especially in relation to highly charged social issues such as abortion and homosexuality. They view Christians as being frustrated by our culture because things just aren't going our way; our conservative political agenda is being thwarted...

The world so often senses our anger, but do they ever sense our grief? They think we're angry simply because we're not getting our way, but I'm afraid they don't feel our sorrow over sin's negative, dehumanizing effects. We fail to communicate our anger in a way that says, "You were made for so much more than this." They assume our anger is only because we're not getting way we want. No wonder they tune us out.

And to that, I say a resounding, "AMEN!"