Following Jesus = love and righteous anger

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper
​darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” --MLK

I’m a hateful person. Really, I am. I love to feed my anger. I have done awful, embarrassing things while I have been angry. I once almost keyed a car until my rational side kicked in (that rational side only having to do with jail, not some moral high ground). I won’t tell you what else I’ve done. It’s too shameful.

I am also a follower of Jesus. And that guy has a lot to say about retributive justice, forgiveness, and love. He also has a lot to say about how we treat the poor and most vulnerable.

Since I decided at 18 to seriously follow Jesus, I have been doggedly working on my anger. I’m still naturally an angry, hate-holding-on-to sort of person. Yet I have made progress as I have sought to increase the love I receive and share in the world. Love has always been the best antidote to hate.

Along with this surge of love, however, there has also been a surge of righteous anger. As I have opened myself to love, I have become increasingly vulnerable to those whom Jesus calls the least. This vulnerable love has ignited my righteous, God-rooted anger. It is this anger that has pushed me to write checks, carried me to protests, opened my heart to painful stories, called me to eat meals with the homeless, and in my less that sterling moments released strings of obscenities as I read the latest news.

One of my great spiritual heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., proved through his life work why Jesus had it right. Retributive justice doesn’t work. Answering violence with violence changes nothing. But still, like MLK, I am righteously angry, especially these days as I watch children indefinitely separated from their parents. And not just any children, but poor refugee children who have seen horrible trauma in their life before they even entered the U.S.  These, the least of God’s children, are in detention centers, sleeping on floors under silver blankets. God have mercy.  

So what do I think about Maxine Waters? I think she is probably like me. I think she is righteously angry. I think she shouldn’t have responded to hate with hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. I think Michelle Obama is right: when they go low, we must go high. But still, I understand. I recognize that anger. She did what Jesus commanded her to do-- fight for the least. She did what our democracy demands us to do-- protest injustice.

Maxine Waters also didn’t tell anyone to use violence. She encouraged the crowd to push back, to “create a crowd,” to protest wherever supporters of Trump’s separation of children happen to be. That said, she teetered on a thin branch that bent too far toward anger, and not enough toward justice. Sadly,  not much good was accomplished through her righteous anger, since it was unchecked by love.

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But this isn’t really what troubles me. We disciples are always imperfect, always stumbling, always carrying our baggage of human hurt. Maxine Waters is imperfect like the rest of us. What mystifies me is our nation’s timing: Why now are we offended that a politician has unleashed her anger? Why did Paul Ryan call on Maxine Waters to apologize, but not President Trump, who started his Presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists? I cannot make sense of any of this.

• Does President Trump get to say anything he wants because he is a white man?
• Are we angry with Maxine Waters for speaking her mind because black women are still not supposed to speak up in America?
• Does President Trump receive a pass on his vile descriptions of whole classes of people because he is talking about the least-- the poor, the brown, the immigrant, the forgotten, the vulnerable?
• Why has no one pointed out what Trump tweeted after Maxine Water’s speech? Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max! Is his name calling and suggestion of retributive violence different because it was tweeted, not passionately delivered at a rally?
• Are so many white and Christian men on my FB coming out to express their disapproval of Maxine Water’s words, but not Trump’s, because they feel threatened?  Why have they been silent about Trump’s hate?

We will not learn from this moment in history if we simply point a finger at a black woman for letting her righteous anger go unchecked. This moment is about race, about gender, about injustice, and about power. We must engage in a larger conversation.

I’m righteously angry. My anger is rooted deeply in the teachings of Jesus. That anger will carry me to the Boston City Hall Plaza on Saturday. (Learn more.) Yet, most of the time, my anger has arisen from love. I am angry because I love the least of God’s children. Currently, they are refugee children separated from their parents, sleeping under silver blankets,  instead of being safe in bed, in the arms of their family.

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