Anger, Embarrassment, and God’s Irritating Grace

I saw something on Facebook this morning and, as I was getting ready to make a snarky comment, I felt God urging me to erase what I was writing and pray for the person who posted it instead.

I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but God can be so irritating.

I tried to explain to Him that I was just defending Him.

He reminded me that He is the Almighty God and does not need defending.

I reminded Him that when He was walking around here on earth as a human, the self-righteous Pharisees made Him angry and He let them have it on occasion.

He reminded me that He always acted in love and that since He was the perfect Son of God, He could craft an emotionally appropriate response, whereas, I would probably make matters worse (humph!).

I tried to tell Him that “reasonable” believers needed to be more vocal and less passive and that I’m tired of seeing a bunch of angry, hyper-sensitive “Christians” parading their self-righteousness in the media.

God firmly told me that if I begin arguing with angry, hyper-sensitive Christians, then I’ll just become an angry, hyper-sensitive Christian.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Finally, with great humility (not), I told God, “Fine! I’ll let it go, but give me a minute to stew.”

Angry, judgmental Christians aggravate me beyond description. And thus, they are the people that God is constantly challenging me to love. And He does this in very stealthy ways. (watch out – if you invite Him in, He will be all up in your personal space)

Remember the ridiculous Starbucks red cup controversy? Crazy Christians got all sorts of airtime for accusing Starbucks for being anti-Christian because the company was using plain red cups (apparently, lack of festive decorations means they hate Jesus or something). In an act of defiance against this sort of nonsense, I bought myself a beautiful red Starbucks mug.

But an annoying thing happened . . . I was ready to cozy up with my hot cup of coffee in my beautiful red mug and feel smug about my little act of defiance. Instead, every time I used the cup, God began to prompt me to pray for angry, easily offended, Biblical-contortionist Christians.

God turned my act of rebellion into an opportunity for humility which, let me be clear, is NOT what I wanted.

But God doesn’t give us what we want. He gives us what we need. And He knows that my heart would be just as misguided as the angry Christians, if He let me have my way. I don’t want to become the very thing I detest. At my core, these Christians make me feel defensive because they make me feel embarrassed to call myself a Christian. They represent an angry, divisive god that I don’t recognize, and yet the world lumps us into one big Christian category, and it makes me angry that I can’t do anything about it.

I won’t dignify the words from the Facebook post in this blog (it originated from a page called “Stop the War on Christianity and White America” — I almost threw up while writing that), but basically the author was tired of seeing Christians smeared and mocked and he was encouraging people to stand up against those who are disrespecting Christians. (And I need to add that the person who forwarded the post is a good person with good intentions — that complicates things because I can’t just put the person in the “crazy Christian” category.  We are all a mixed bag.)

The first thing I thought of is that American Christians don’t even understand persecution. We might get our feelings hurt, but we can attend church and read the Bible and openly talk about our faith without fear of jail time or being beaten or killed. This is not the case in other places in the world – people literally risk their lives to love Jesus.

The second thing that came to mind was that Jesus was mocked, and smeared and disrespected (not to mention beaten and crucified), and He was the perfect Son of God. If Jesus was misunderstood, I’m not sure why we, as His followers, think we can or should escape this.

We get bent out of shape over the slightest thing and yet Jesus’ example for us was just the opposite. As He was hanging on the cross, He asked God to forgive the people who were killing Him because they didn’t understand what they were doing.

Christians are supposed to be followers of Christ, and yet it seems we rarely look at the life of Christ when we are considering our “way” in the world.   If we did, there would be a lot more love and a lot less anger.

But here’s the most disturbing thing . . . God wants to take things even further. He’s not satisfied just stopping me from self-righteous retaliation, and He’s not satisfied when I (begrudgingly) pray for people that make me mad. No, He wants to dig around and help me figure out why these particular people bring up such an ugly side of me.

I don’t like it when God decides to “dig around.” But I’m always better for it, and frankly, there are times when, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “Sometimes Jesus just hunts your ass down and there’s nothing you can do about it.” (Accidental Saints)

For years I’ve been reading about how the ego (also called the “shadow person/self,” the “hustler”) is always in competition with God and that’s why the Bible is full of counter-intuitive messages (the idea of “dying to self,” the last will be first, to be great in the Kingdom you must be servant of all, power is made perfect in weakness . . . I could go on and on with this list). Our ego is SO powerful and it is a master of disguise. It’s greatest and most destructive disguise is religion. That’s why certainty and the desire to be “right” are so at odds with God’s command (and living example) to love.

Knowing this, I have to pay attention when I get too “torn up” about something. It might feel like anger, but it’s usually a disguise for fear or some part of myself that I’m trying to avoid. “Invariably when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed.” “The True Self, you see, is very hard to offend!” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

I think the day when I can encounter an angry, judgmental, victim-playing, Bible-contorting, looking-for-a-reason-to-be-offended Christian, and react with compassion instead of self-righteousness, then I’ll know that I’ve allowed God to fully transform my fear and frustration (and most of all, embarrassment). I am not sure that day will ever come, but I’m a little closer. Letting go is a process.

A few nights ago, Lela prayed, “Dear God, I hope everybody had a good Christmas, even the bad kids.”

As usual, my kids humble me and make me think.

Maybe my prayer for 2016 should be something similar . . . not for “bad Christians” (because I’m leading the way in that category) . . . maybe something like, “Dear God, help everyone to know and share your love, even the “good Christians” who can’t see that they are really “bad Christians” saved by grace.”

“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.” Colossians 3:13-16