Peace and Joy; Fear and Anger

Peace and joy are the default emotional statuses of the flourishing human being, where we are intended to live in communion with God and other people.  But there are other God-given emotional states that alert us to danger and injustice, when something is not quite right in our world—the emotions of fear and anger. Fear and anger interrupt our equilibrium—they trigger our defenses and ready us for fight-or-flight.  They are intended as short-term motivators for change.  We were never intended to live indefinitely in these states, and doing so can cause serious damage to our souls.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of fear and anger in the current climate of American Christianity, and it’s unrelenting. And while this is a generalization, it does seem that the Religious Right is mainly motivated by fear, while the Religious Left is mainly motivated by anger.  It’s important to consider this and the implications of each.

The Religious Right, who label themselves conservatives, wanting to conserve the status quo or even return to what they perceive as the past, experience fear in two very distinct ways.  First, they fear a God they perceive as angry, who takes personal offense at the sins of the world and whom they must appease in order to avoid being horribly punished.  I used to believe that God was that way, but through a long journey have come to know him very differently.  I have come to know that God is like Jesus, kind and loving and self-sacrificing to the point of death, and that Jesus came to show us what God is really like.