I was watching Fox News yesterday and heard Bill O’Reilly talking about watching the video and the pictures of the VT shooter. As he was talking to a news correspondent, he said that he was just filling up with anger and he could only imagine how those students felt who were there. I had to agree with him. Each time I saw the pictures, I had an anger raising inside of me also. An anger that someone was sick enough to do something like this.
At the same time, I’ll see the video of the group Mika from their song Grace Kelly where a female on a piano says at one point “Getting angry doesn’t solve anything” and see the pianist raise his finger in the air as if that was a powerful point made. Partially, they’re right. Getting angry doesn’t solve anything. It’s what you do with that anger.
This gunman had a lot of anger. Were there some things he was angry at rightfully? Sure. We should all be angry at debauchery and hypocrites. However, the solution to anger is not to play judge, jury, and executioner. Anger can be a good thing when you control it. It is never a good thing when it controls you even if it’s anger for the right reasons.
Yet many of us have an anger. In fact, it’s quite natural in the grieving process. Many of us might not have had much to grieve. We weren’t close to the situation. We weren’t numb with terror. It doesn’t mean that we’re cold. It’s just the way things are. Many people die every day and we don’t spend our days in sadness. We grieve more over a death the closer to it we are.
However, all of us can have that strong sense of injustice. We all have that built-in moral compass that tells us that this was wrong. We look at those images and hear that video and one word that keeps popping up in our minds is “Sick.” We look at such actions as inhuman, and indeed, they are.
I ponder though that many of us don’t allow ourselves to feel that anger. We’ve looked at strong emotion often times in our society as a bad thing. I was at a Christian bookstore tonight where I saw a chapter about what a sex-crazed Christian is to do. The Christian view of sex has been one area I’ve been most interested in so I took a peek at it.
The story was of a group of men together and they were all praying and having fellowship at some Christian retreat. At the end, one 29 year-old bachelor confessed that while he had never had intercourse, he had resorted to pornography and masturbation simply because he had a strong sex drive and he suggested that they pray that God eliminate his desire.
The author of the book then told this guy that that wasn’t really what he wanted. If he had his sexual desire removed, he wouldn’t really be him. I did not get to see past that, but I would say the next thing to ask for would be self-control. That’s what we all need, and that’s what has been lacking.
Our desires and emotions are not bad things. They are there by God. Sometimes, we can have them at the wrong times and sometimes they can be excessive, but they themselves are not bad. As I have said before, Christians are not Buddhists and we should appreciate our mental systems and the wonderful way God made them.
Do you feel anger at what happened? Good! I hope you do! I think we should all be angry! I would suggest though that we remember the words of Mika. Getting angry doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t, though I think I have a different idea drawn from it than what Mika would have me draw from the song.
Don’t just get angry. Do something. I have my own ideas politically what I think should be done, but this is not a political blog so I won’t do that. If anything, I would send my anger towards the moral decadence that is flooding our society. I would also send my passion out in ministry. If there’s one thing that can save this world, it’s the gospel.
So go out, get angry, and make the world a better place through that anger.
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