When We Feel ‘Angry Enough to Die’

SEVERAL OF THIS month’s lectionary readings deal with the tensions of navigating wrongdoing, judgment, vengeance, and forgiveness. They call readers to forgive — and forgive again: not just once, twice, or seven times, but at least 77 times and counting (see Matthew 18:22).

These texts have been used throughout history to trap people in positions of disempowerment, abuse, and enslavement. Consider, for example, how victims of intimate partner violence have been pressured to forgive and return to their abusers, who then proceed to hurt them again. Or how entire marginalized communities are expected to “get over it,” whether that is the colonization of Turtle Island, enslavement, or generations of misogynist, queer- and transphobic policies, laws, and violence. In light of the rampant misuse of these texts, we’re right to be wary of biblical interpretations for how to handle conflict that reinforce domination. The texts tend not to deal directly with inherent interpersonal and structural power dynamics. We must do that work ourselves. Any of us preaching the lectionary this month must also be careful.

Attending to the power dynamics of these passages doesn’t mean we dismiss them as useless. Rather, such attention helps us discern how these texts invite and bear witness to God’s presence in processes of interpersonal, intergenerational, and even international healing. They call us to attend to what our own pain has to teach us and to seek hope through community life. And they promise that throughout our attending, God will abide — waiting patiently to see us through.

September 3
Beyond Being Nice

MY SISTER ONCE told me that I have a superpower: When someone is getting under my skin, I can turn it around by being so nice that I quickly get under theirs instead.

“That’s actually biblical,” I recall responding, “Paul says that if we’re super nice to people who piss us off, we’re basically pouring hot coals on their heads. Plus, God’s going to avenge us anyway” (see Romans 12:19-20).

It’s possible I missed Paul’s point. The stories of wrongdoing, vengeance, and forgiveness in these readings rarely name the wrong the apparent wrongdoer has done. Rather, they start with the presumption that wrongs will continue to occur. There will be evil, Paul says, so hold on to the good (verse 9). People will persecute you, but bless them, don’t curse them, he adds (verse 14). There’ll be weeping and rejoicing — so prepare for both (verse 15). And finally, you’ll have enemies. Who knows why? You just will. So, you may as well feed them (verse 20). You can’t control the wrong that’s done to you, I hear Paul saying, you can only control how you respond.

My kindness to supposed enemies didn’t stem from divine love, though. Rather, my patriarchal conditioning trained me to interpret Paul as saying to “just be nice” — because aren’t girls always told to be nice? I internalized that patriarchal wound and longed for my hero God to inflict punishment on others for me. It has taken years of feminist engagement with my faith to realize that God doesn’t want to hurt my enemies any more than God wants to hurt me. Rather, God wants — and always has wanted — to heal the patriarchal wound that warped what I wanted in the first place. God wants to liberate all of us — as God wanted to liberate me — from the desire for retaliation so we can develop shared capacities for responsive empathy instead.

September 10
Disagreeing Together

THEOLOGIAN KATHRYN TANNER describes Christian identity as a “hybrid, relational affair,” meaning that when it comes to figuring out what we believe, engagement with each other is more important than agreement. Disagreement, therefore, isn’t necessarily an impediment to a community’s shared spiritual practice. Rather, it can itself be a spiritual practice of community formation.

Tanner’s insight helps frame Jesus’ promise in this week’s gospel: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). Sure, verse 19 indicates that agreement can bring about divine gifts. But there are no divine gifts for false or coerced agreement. More importantly, verse 20 requires no agreement at all: It’s simply a promise that throughout everyday Christian life together — in all our “hybrid, relational affairs” — Christ is among us. He hangs in there with us, helping us hang in there with each other.

When we read Matthew 18 as a policy statement for handling church conflict, we disconnect it from this fundamental promise of Christ’s presence. The point isn’t that we need to do a) then b) then c) in the right order to address conflict in a Christian manner (though sometimes that might be good advice). Rather, whether we’re in a one-on-one situation, with witnesses, or before the whole church body — whether we’re gathered as two or three or more — Christ is there with us, inviting us into deeper individual and communal practices of faith.

September 17
Fundamentally Finite

I’M EASILY AFFRONTED, I’m embarrassed to admit. I can experience the classic example, road rage, before someone even cuts me off. If their car just looks like it might veer into my lane, I’m already muttering, “What a #%@&?! that driver must be!”

This type of reaction is so common that social psychologists have discerned two insights from it. First, snap judgments are typically biased toward negative conclusions: Whether that person would have cut me off or not, I react as if they already have. Second, snap judgments usually result in a “fundamental attribution error,” which is when we interpret someone’s actions as revealing who they fundamentally are, rather than arising from their context. For example, the driver’s kid isn’t choking on a Cheerio in the backseat, but rather the driver is — fundamentally — a #%@&?!

We all do this because we’re all finite, a finitude exacerbated by our fast-paced world. We call God the eternal judge because God is the judge for all time, but perhaps also because it takes an eternity to judge justly. God’s omniscience makes fundamental attribution errors impossible. Perhaps omniscience requires time to walk every mile in every last person’s shoes to figure it all out. I’m being playful, of course; God doesn’t take meandering temporal strolls through atemporal reality. (What would that even mean?) Still, this idea can reframe Joseph’s response to his brothers’ repentance in Genesis: “Am I in the place of God?” (50:19). Joseph didn’t have the eternity required to judge justly, but he did have enough time to figure out who does. And that’s the kind of time I too often lack in my overscheduled life: not enough time to judge but, rather, enough time to not judge.

September 24
Pain Under Anger

I STRUGGLE TO know whether my anger has righteous or ridiculous motivations. When my motives are ridiculous, my spouse will playfully say, “How angry are you?” Before I even finish huffing Jonah’s words, “Angry enough to die!” my anger gets giggled away (Jonah 4:9).

On the surface, the prophet Jonah sulking under a bush about a worm is ridiculous (verse 7). But, as we’ve seen elsewhere in this month’s lectionary, what seems ridiculous can reveal hidden pain. What if, beneath his whining, Jonah is hiding a Divine attachment wound?

“Attachment” is psychology-speak for how, if a caregiver consistently meets an infant’s needs, that infant becomes an adult who can make secure attachment bonds with others. When infants’ needs are not met, though, they instead carry an attachment wound into adult relationships, which can ignite feelings of betrayal or abandonment at even the slightest of slights. Attachment wounds create trigger points that can make us feel “angry enough to die” because they carry into the present the infant’s early sense of existential threat.

What if Jonah’s overreaction occurs because God’s indecisiveness has triggered that existentially threatening sensation? These readings about wrongdoing and forgiveness aren’t calling us to ignore such sensations. Rather, they invite us to pause for a moment with Jonah under the bush, perhaps meditating on the worm as it snacks. We can admit, alongside Jonah, that we too sometimes — for reasons that might seem ridiculous — feel angry enough to die.

Sitting in the tension of that sensation with Jonah, I’m reminded that God doesn’t force forgiveness. Rather, God wants to bring us to the healing place where forgiveness starts to feel possible. And, best of all, God has all eternity to wait for us to get there.