Honoring Christ in an Age of Outrage

By Chad Ragsdale

In the pivotal scene of the blockbuster movie The Avengers, when the defense of New York City seemed to be a lost cause, Dr. Bruce Banner arrives as a reinforcement. Banner, of course, is a mild-mannered academic who transforms into the Hulk when he gets angry or agitated.  

After some battlefield banter, Captain America tells Banner that it’s time for him to get angry.  

“That’s my secret, Captain,” Banner responds. “I’m always angry.” Banner then transforms into the Hulk.  

The “I’m always angry” line sounds good until you actually think about it. While we probably shouldn’t think too much about the internal logic of a superhero movie, Banner apparently discovered the best way for a person to control his inner invincible rage monster is by giving anger free rein. It’s hard to lose your temper if you’re always angry. You can’t lose a battle with the vices in your life if you chose to surrender the fight. Makes perfect sense! 

A Culture Fueled by Anger 

This isn’t particularly good advice from Banner, but it seems like a decent description of our culture. I sometimes wonder what people will say about this era decades from now. Surely, they will talk about the pandemic. Historians will mention our politics and the introduction of new technologies like social media. I wonder if they’ll also talk about our anger. I wonder if future generations will note that many people lived lives of constantly simmering rage.  

CBS News reported on a poll taken just before the pandemic that found 84 percent of people think Americans are angrier today than a generation before and 42 percent admitted they were angrier themselves. We are so angry. As I’m writing this, campuses across our nation are being wracked by protests and counterprotests about the war in Gaza. I’m struck by the level of unrestrained, almost giddy rage in many of the protests. This may be an extreme example, but it’s hard not to see a reflection of our age of outrage.  

I started a list of some of the things that make people angry, but I gave up because it seems most everything makes people angry today . . . including arguing over what to include or exclude on a list of things that make people angry.  

Living in Outrageous Times 

This challenges us to ask an important question as disciples of Jesus. How should we live in times like these?  

The first thing we should recognize is that Christians have contributed their own fair share of outrage, and this outrage is not necessarily inappropriate. After all, we live in outrageous times. People of God living in a dark world should not be so calloused or fearful that we are incapable of being moved to anger at the sight of injustice and evil. We shouldn’t confuse Christ’s call to universal love as a call to benign niceness.  

Where We’ve Gone Wrong 

Outrage is sometimes called for, but we tend to make three mistakes in our outrage.  

First, we identify the wrong enemy. We forget that those who we think are our enemies are actually just victims of our common enemy. It is a seductive lie to simplistically look at the world as a battle between “good” people and “bad” people (and of course we can always tell the difference). We know better. We are all broken and subject to weakness. No matter how tempting it is to lash out at those who we believe are the source of our outrage, we must always remember our battle is not against flesh and blood. This means, in part, that we must be relentless about showing each other grace during our disagreements. We allow ourselves to be overcome by outrage when our anger sours to resentment and leaves no room for forgiveness or understanding.   

The second mistake is identifying the wrong battles. Christians, of course, will not always agree on which battles are worth fighting. Not every issue matters in the same way to every person, and that’s OK. “Concern policing” especially in the church is, frankly, just annoying. Wisdom demands that we show discretion in what battles are worth fighting. Some of the battles we choose to fight are futile, some are foolish, and many are distractions from more important kingdom concerns. As citizens of heaven, we must be careful we don’t become mercenaries for worldly concerns.  

A mark of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is this: The things that made Jesus angry make us angry, and the things that moved Jesus similarly move us (Matthew 9:36). We must also be careful we don’t reserve all our outrage for what is happening “out there” in the world while we shrug our shoulders at the plank protruding from our own eyes. Remember, much of Jesus’ anger was reserved for inauthentic religious folk.  

Finally, we also make a mistake when we fight in the same power as the world. Paul wrote, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Paul didn’t hesitate to say we are waging a war, but in this war, we fight with different weapons, different strategies, and different goals than the world.  

Modeling the Alternative 

Our anger should look different than the anger we see in the world. Our anger is conditioned by faith, hope, and love. It’s an anger that grieves deeply because of sin but trusts in the divine power of God. Sometimes our anger is born out of defensiveness and fear. We feel insecure so we lash out instead of resting in God’s sovereignty over the affairs of this world.  

So, one answer to the question of how we should live in an age of outrage is to make sure that we are not misdirecting our anger. Another answer is that we should be disciplined about those things that only add fuel to our outrage.  

I can’t perfectly explain why our culture has become so angry, but I think there are two mutually reinforcing realities of modern life that significantly contribute.  

First, we spend a great deal of our time plugged into technologies that are designed to bring about powerful emotional responses—particularly anger. And second, we have become highly fragmented. Community life has frayed, leaving many people feeling alone and vulnerable. These fragmented people will turn to cable news or social media to experience connection, but what they often experience is more reason for alienation and outrage.  

It would be healthy for Christians living in an age of outrage to unplug from those sources of outrage, not because the issues aren’t important, but because they may be producing a highly distorted picture of reality. At the same time, we should plug into our communities, living lives of mutual encouragement and service with real, flesh and blood people. 

This leads to a final suggestion for how to live in an age of outrage. The church in this moment has an opportunity to represent an alternative to outrage. In 2 Timothy 4:5, Paul admonished Timothy to “keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” Some translations use the word sober in this verse, which seems appropriate.  

In a time when so many are drunk with rage, Christians—and leaders in particular—must be sober-minded. Don’t forget that we’ve got essential and eternal kingdom work to do. Don’t forget that peace is available in upheaval, but it isn’t found in joining in the agitation. It is only found in the Prince of Peace.  

I know it sounds simple, but what we need, and no one more than me, is to be pointed over and over again back to Jesus. There is nothing more important in an age of outrage than for the church to worship with gusto. And the things of earth, including all our squabbles about politics, culture, education, and the economy, will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.  

Chad Ragsdale is executive vice president of academics and professor of New Testament and Hermeneutics at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri.