Powerlessness

The Christian, Rage, and Powerlessness

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It started with a lack of bacon.

Too many people at Wendy’s ordered items with bacon, so the crew had to cook more. The bacon lovers in line were told it would be six minutes, so we gathered calmly off to one side and began to chat. EnragedOne man steered the conversation to politics. In minutes, I wondered if a riot would break out.

While people were willing to wait patiently for food items filled with bacony goodness, patience is in small supply when it comes to waiting till November to “throw the bums outta Capitol Hill.” People aren’t just mad at the condition of America 2010, they’re downright enraged.

People are livid at overreaching government, at seeing their tax dollars given to scoundrels, at watching themselves move down the class ranks, at losing their jobs, at losing their homes, at losing out on every dream they once had.

They seethe because the gulf fills with oil while the people responsible for the disaster lie about its severity.  Companies that created the economic mess ask for more aid and then give it as bonuses to leaders responsible for the mess. The country has lost control of its borders. Nuts and flakes in Iran build the Bomb. Corporations lay off hardworking people and reward sloth because the slothful know where the skeletons are buried. Health insurers begin terminating policies, arguing that Obamacare will take care of everyone—some day—leaving the average Joe buried in debt as he pays either outrageous costs for replacement insurance or nightmarish costs for  health care, living in dread that he may one day get sick and need medical attenti0n that will  cost him all his savings, his kids’ college funds, and even his home.

The inability to stop this downward spiral breeds fear. Like a tapeworm, powerlessness eats at people’s guts. They can’t stop the insanity; they can only be carried along with it. And that spawns this stark rage that many feel.

I have known Christians who seem to escape these trials. I have known Christians who have been buried by a relentless series of landslide-like events. Both groups have been faithful, yet one seems to attract trouble like a bare bulb at night brings in the summertime moths.

And it goes much deeper than just calamity or human failings. I was talking with a friend on Monday about the way we live our lives, and it seems to both of us that trying to fall back to a more sane position only creates chaos in the poorly thought-out systems we’ve created for ourselves. Eating locally grown food sounds like a wise idea, but what instabilities are created by a large-scale move away from food trucked in from long distances, instabilities whose ripple effects can’t be predicted easily?

It is one thing to pray that God will deal with the wicked people who knowingly hurt others in the pursuit of cold, hard cash. But what of the janitor who cleans the wicked people’s buildings? Is he in collusion with evil? And is he us?

And how does one pray about entrenched systems that are not so much empowered by evil principalities but by mistaken notions that were innocent five decades ago but which have now bred dependencies from which we cannot escape readily? Are all wrongs rightable? And was that wrong truly wrong at the time of its conception? What do we do when black and white have dulled over time to gray?

If others are like me, then I suspect more and more people wake up feeling inadequate to the task. In simpler days, choices seemed to come easily. Now, though, it feels as if every decision that life presents is like a bucket of murky water with something awful lurking at the bottom out of sight. We have made everything in life so complex that any simple act of deciding is fraught with danger, consisting, in many cases, of wondering whether the potential sea snake hiding in one bucket is more lethal than the possible blue-ringed octopus in the other.

What this means for modern Christians is hard to fathom. Are we immune to bad outcomes? If not, how then do we navigate the complexity of modern life? How does one break out of the system when one is a product of that system? Would Jesus even have us attempt to break out? Or does conformity and relenting not matter in the wider scheme of things? Is powerlessness good or bad? And is numb consent to the downright infuriating aspects of life a sin?

We in America are definitely control freaks; we want everything just so. That’s not of faith. But then the counter to that is to wonder whether simply allowing ourselves to be swept along powerlessly is not of faith either. And if it isn’t, where is the happy medium?

As a Christian, my tendency is to immediately answer by saying that faith,  prayer, abiding in Christ, and Bible reading are the answers. Certainly, faith brings us through all trials. Yet what is the faithful answer to a nuclear Iran that will certainly attack Israel? How do we meet the health care needs of people without bankrupting our country? Does every issue have a solution, or are some problems destined always to diminish us?

And most of all, how should you and I, such small people, live in the face of these issues?

I feel for angry people. I truly do. Jesus has an answer for them. My deficiency is that I don’t always know what that answer might be or how to bring it about. And I believe that if we were honest with ourselves, many of us will realize that more and more issues are harder to resolve than we might think—that is, if we are thinking at all.

Resigned to a Powerless Christianity?

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I talked with fellow believers a few days back after hearing a message about forgiveness. The topic is a standard in Christian circles, but the speaker was well known, so I thought we might hear something new.

The speaker talked about the power of forgiving another person and how freeing that is to the soul. No arguments from me.

But I think that people today don’t need to hear more messages about forgiving individuals. I think many of us realize that we are dust and so are the people who oppose us. How can we be mad at other people then?

When I look around America today, I don’t see people who are mad at individuals. I see people who are mad at systems.

A system is hard to define. It’s more than just a mass of people. It’s a way of doing things. It’s the collective processes that lead to a result, often which is unintended, which in turn causes anger. And sometimes those systems possess an almost palpable malevolence.

Americans today are mad about out-of-control health care systems. I know I certainly am. My health insurance company sent me a note a couple weeks ago saying they will be raising my premium 30 percent March 1. They raised it 30 percent back in September.

Yet to whom should I direct my anger for this? At motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets and don’t have insurance so that my rates go up to compensate their lack of payment to hospitals when they sustain a costly head injury? Or should I blame doctors who order round after round of tests just to ensure they account for that one percent chance at catching a rare disease and thus avoid the inevitable malpractice lawsuit? Should I blame Congress for not removing state-imposed protections for insurance companies, thus preserving high premiums due to a lack of open, national competition?

If I don’t know at whom I should be angry, how do I know to whom I should offer my forgiveness?

Aren’t we all more likely to feel anger at entrenched systems we seem to have no ability to change? Doesn’t that define the corporate anger Americans are feeling right now toward Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and the world at large?

I brought this up with these other Christians. I asked them how we can forgive systems. And if that’s what many people are angry at, why aren’t Christian leaders addressing that anger—and the subsequent means by which we can forgive nameless, faceless systems?

The answer, I was told, is found in the classic “Serenity Prayer” of President Obama’s favorite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

I want to focus primarily on the first section of that prayer.

My issue with American Christianity today is that you and I have somehow taken that idea of acceptance and “gigantified” the bucket containing “the things I cannot change.” In short, our “wisdom to know the difference” between the alterable and inalterable is hopelessly broken.

I’ve had some very sad conversations with young, 5-point Calvinists in the last few years. I’ve never met people so resigned to “fate.” Their concept of God’s sovereignty has gone so far off the deep end that they see no reason to ever wrestle in prayer for anything that seems unchangeable. In truth, they are nothing more than nihilists. I have no idea what they must think of Abraham’s pleading before God in Genesis 18 for the sake of Sodom. They resign themselves to think that God has set the top in motion and nothing can be done to alter its course. They are like the unbelieving leaders in John who asked,

“Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
—John 9:19b

How indeed.

But it’s not only the young Calvinists who seemed resigned that nothing can be done. It’s us other Christians too involved in our own lives to lift a finger to make a difference. Our inaction in the face of evil systems will cry out against us come Judgment Day because we loved our own lives too much to become martyrs for some “unchangeable” cause.

Folks, where is the Christian battle?

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 6:12

Look, you and I can’t change our chronological age, our ancestry, the era into which we were born, and a few things like that.  But nearly everything else is up for grabs. Ours is not a calling to serenity but to go out there and fight systems, no matter how innocuous they may seem.

And we can do it too:

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
—2 Corinthians 10:4

So how is it that so many Christians just roll over and play dead?

If Christians in Rome didn’t fight the prevailing evil Roman system of leaving the old, infirm, and sick to die, how would the Church have grown so rapidly?

If Martin Luther didn’t pound his worthy complaint to the door of the monolithic Roman Catholic ChurchSword-wielding soldier, where would the Church universal be today?

If William Wilberforce rolled over and relented to the seemingly unchangeable slave trade in England, where would our world be today?

If Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t stand up for the cause of civil rights in the face of catcalls, baseball bats, and the ever-present threat of a noose on a tree limb, where would American society be today?

And that list can go on and on.

When I hear Christians telling me nothing can be done, the simple answer is that they don’t want to be bothered. They won’t put in the time, energy, prayer, and faith to help make change happen. They don’t want their status and incomes threatened by standing up against tough, systemic opponents.

Increasingly, resignation seems to be the state of much of the Church in America. Doesn’t matter that the Bible repeatedly says that all things are possible with God. We keep thinking that some things are beyond His ability to change.

As for me, I contend that such a god is not the God of the Bible.

Christian, the Enemy is at the gate. Don’t resign your commission by resigning yourself to the way things are. Stand up and make a difference.