are you angry?

a question we often ask when we’re trying to figure out what on earth we’re here for (if that is a question you entertain), or what am i going to do with my life is - “what do i love?”

or

“what can I see myself doing forever?”

these are clearly worthwhile questions. but another question we could/should be asking, a question that i’ve found drives me is - “what makes me angry?” i don’t mean the petty insignificant kind of anger that happens at the ball game, or at work, or in the line to the bathroom, but the kind that could lead to healing.

-2.6 Billion (this is 40% of the world’s population) do not have proper sanitation.
-1 billion people use unsafe drinking water sources.
-114 million people do not get basic education.
-584 million women around the world are illiterate
-800 million people go to bed hungry each night (300 million are children)
-there are 2.2 billion children in the world 1 billion of them live in extreme poverty.
-5 million in Sudan have no access to health care or a school.
-every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger a majority being children under 5
-a woman in North America has a 1 in 3,700 chance of dying in child birth in south Africa it’s 1 in 16.
-there are more slaves alive now than in any other time in history, 27 million.

do these things make you angry?

so many times we get furious about things that don’t really matter. we often fight about the most trivial of things; sports, politics, religion, etc. we get angry about the silliest stuff; a bad waitress, a slow stop light.

see anger is in essence a neutral thing (do a basic greek word study). Jesus for example gets angry (mark 3) after he sees commercialization and rampant consumerism in the temple (he drives everyone out)… that anger then leads to an incident of healing and restoration.

do any of those stats listed make you angry?

i’ve heard someone describe anger as a “nuclear force.” what if the nuclear power of our anger could be channeled? what if the church started to get it? what if the church started fighting less about biblical trivia and more so against the oppression and pain in this world, more against the statistics that were listed above?

"we live in a world where people get angry about the things that don’t matter, and we don’t get angry about the things that do matter.” ~r.b.

the things you get angry about, are they things that actually matter?