Proverbs 15:18 Tongue-Tied: Angry Discourse (Outrage)
Backlash to the Backlash
On September 14, 2019 the ESPN College GameDay crew was in Ames prior to the annual rivalry football game between the Cyclones and the Hawkeyes.
It’s common for fans to gather behind the GameDay set and wave attention grabbing signs. On this particular day a 24 year-old Iowa State fan named Carson King held a sign declaring that his funds for a certain beverage were running low and giving his actual address on a cash-sharing app. After the show aired, a few friends texted to tell him they saw him on TV and a few donations started showing up in his account. By the end of the day, it was several hundred dollars, and he told his mom he didn’t feel it was right to keep it. He told her that after keeping $18 to buy himself one case, he was going to give the rest to the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital. His Mom thought that was a great idea, so she wrote a social media post about her son’s plans, and it went viral.
Now, as I’m sure you know, the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital holds a pretty unique place in the hearts of most Iowans. One of College Football’s coolest traditions is the Iowa Wave–the end of the first quarter of every football game when all the fans and players in the stadium turn towards the hospital and wave to the patients and families gathered at the windows. So when King, an Iowa State fan, said he was donating to the University of Iowa hospital, that was something all Iowans could get excited about. The money started rolling in, and within about 4 days he had raised over 1 million dollars.
Soon, the corporations got involved. The beverage company promised to match all funds raised. So did the cash sharing app. Moreover, the beverage company started printing cans with Carson King’s picture on them, calling him an “Iowa Legend.” Other corporations made donations. The University of Iowa invited King to their next home game to lead the “Wave.” ESPN and other national news outlets did interviews. I’m sure many of you remember it. It was a huge, feel-good story.
About 8 days in, the Des Moines Register decided to do a profile of Carson King. They sent a young, first-year reporter who wrote up a nice interview complete with several photos. In the course of writing the article, however, the reporter looked through King’s social media accounts and found two posts, from about 8 years earlier, when King was 16, where he quoted a popular comedian. The posts were, at best, in bad taste. At worst, they were utterly offensive. The reporter called King to tell him what he found, and told him the paper was going to mention the posts in the article.
King immediately called a press conference–even before the article was published–thanked the paper for calling the posts to his attention, took responsibility for them, apologized for them, and took them down.
But the damage was done, and the backlash was swift. Social media posts began to criticize King. They accused him of being a fake, a publicity hound, and a closet bigot. The beverage company and other corporations backed away from him, promising to keep their commitments to the hospital but ending any plans to work with him in the future. For many Iowans, it was a disappointing twist to what had been an enjoyable story.
But it wasn’t done yet. There was still backlash to the backlash. While some on social media criticized King, others felt he had gotten a raw deal. So they started looking through the old social media posts of the reporter and, wouldn’t you know it, they found some things that the reporter had posted in his teen-age years that were just as, if not more, offensive than what King had posted. Now the collective outrage of Iowa’s online community was directed towards the reporter and, within days, he was fired; even though he was simply doing his job as his editors had asked him to do it.
I vividly remember the roller coaster of those two weeks. It seemed like everyone in Iowa had an opinion on this story. Looking back on it, it serves as a case-study for the power of collective outrage and the way public opinion can change in a moment. The good news is that over $3 million was raised for the children’s hospital and Carson King began his own charitable foundation. The newspaper reporter, however, moved to Vermont and basically had to start his career over.
The Age of Outrage
Today’s sermon is about outrage. We’ve been doing a series called Tongue-Tied about the various ways our mouths can get us in trouble. We’ve been talking about the Bible’s teaching that our words are a window on our heart, and the need for us to surrender them to Jesus. And today, I want us to think about not just the words we say aloud, but also the things we might type and post and consume. I want us to think about how we participate in what is known as the cultural discourse. In particular, I want us to think about what happens when that discourse becomes angry.
A pastor named Scott Sauls writes this in a book called, A Gentle Answer:
In our current cultural moment, outrage has become more expected than surprising, more normative than odd, more encouraged than discouraged, more rewarded than rejected. Outrage undergirds each day’s breaking news. It is part of the air that we breathe–a native language, a sick helping of emotional food and drink to satisfy our hunger for taking offense, shaming, and punishing. Outrage has become something we can’t get away from, partly because we don’t seem to want to get away from it.
I’ll put this part of his quote on the screen:
Instead of getting rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger as scripture urges us to do (Ephesians 4:31), we form entire communities around our irritations and our hatreds. Tribes and echo chambers form, social media feeds grow, political pontifications multiply, book deals prosper, podcasts rant, and churches split. On some level, we are all engaged in the seemingly insatiable, ubiquitous theme of us-against-them. (p. xxii)
We live in an age of outrage. We are surrounded by angry discourse. Sometimes we participate in it.
But as Christians we are called to be different. As Christians, we are called to respond to anger in a gentle and life-giving way. As Christians, we are called to treat those we disagree with with kindness and respect. Because Jesus has loved us at our worst, we believe that we can love others at their worst. Because Jesus has forgiven us of our wrong, we believe that we can forgive those who have wronged us. Because Jesus offered a gentle answer to us when we sinned, we believe we can offer gentle answers to those who have sinned against us. (paraphrased from Sauls, p. xxv)
In the sermon today I am going to cite several Bible verses, but for a starting text I chose Proverbs 15:18:
18 A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict,
but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.
I also could have chosen Proverbs 15:1:
1A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Patience in the face of conflict. Gentleness when confronted with wrath. That’s what we are called to. Scott Sauls puts it like this, and I’ll let this quote be our big idea today:
Because Jesus has covered all of our offenses, we can be among the least offensive and least offended people in the world. (xxv)
Let me repeat that, and let this idea grab you: because Jesus has covered all our offenses, Christians can be–and should be–the least offensive and least offended people in the world.
Here’s the plan. I’ve got 5 suggestions for how we can live this out. 5 suggestions for how we can live as Christians in an age of outrage.
Anger Can Be Addictive
First: Beware the Algorithm. We need to be aware of just how addictive anger can be, and be wary of outlets that are striving to keep us angry.
Let’s face it: social media has changed the world. There are many, many good things about social media. It has made the world smaller in many ways, it has given everybody who wants it a platform for expressing themselves, it has made communication easier and faster and cheaper.
But social media has its dark sides, and one of the darkest is its tendency to make us angry.
The goal of the social media companies–the business model, if you will–is to hold our attention as long as possible. The more we scroll, the more advertising the companies can sell, the more money they can make.
And to hold our attention they have created algorithms. Algorithm is a word that most of us had probably never even heard of 10 years ago, and I’m not sure I can even define it today. But, as I understand it, algorithms are the computer programming that decide which posts and videos we are going to see on our social media feeds. Many of these programs are self-learning, and run with very little human oversight.
The algorithms don’t care what we look at on the social media sites, as long as we keep looking. So if it learns that we like to look at cat videos, it will show us cat videos. If it learns that we like basketball highlights, it will show us basketball highlights. If it learns that we like Irish clog dancing, it will show us Irish clog dancing.
Over time–and a lot of research backs this up–the algorithms have learned that the kind of content that keeps us engaged the longest, that gets us to reply and repost and click for additional information, is content that makes us angry. When our social media feeds show us something controversial; something that supports our worldview while exposing the flaws in other worldviews; something that gives us someone to blame or ridicule or distrust; they have learned that we hang around longer. And so they feed us more and more and more.
It’s not just social media, of course. Newspapers have long known the power of the outrage inducing headlines to sell more copy. So have radio and television news outlets. But social media seems exquisitely designed to feed our need to be angry.
And we do have a need to be angry. Scientists talk about the chemicals–dopamine is one–that release into our brains after certain activities. Laughter can release dopamine. So can hard exercise. So can certain drugs.
Our brains like dopamine, so when we find a way to get reliable doses of it, we go back again and again. That’s the physical root of addiction. And, of course, as the social media algorithms have learned, one of the most reliable ways to get that dopamine hit is anger.
Tim Kreider, a political cartoonist who is not a Christian, wrote what is now considered a classic essay on anger back in 2009. He said:
A couple of years ago, while meditating, I learned something kind of embarrassing: anger feels good. Although we may consciously experience it as upsetting, somatically it feels a lot like the first rush of an opiate — a tingling warmth on the insides of your elbows and wrists, in the back of your knees. Realizing that anger was a physical pleasure explained some of the perverse obstinancy with which my mind kept returning to it despite the fact that, intellectually, I knew it was pointless self-torture.
He goes on to say:
Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure. We prefer to think of it as a disagreeable but fundamentally healthy involuntary reaction to negative stimuli thrust upon us by the world we live in, like pain or nausea, rather than admit that it’s a shameful kick we eagerly indulge again and again. (https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/isnt-it-outrageous/)
And so, we need to beware the algorithm. We need to recognize the addictive nature of anger and be wary that our social media consumption, our cable news watching, our podcasts or our radio listening, may be pulling us into patterns of outrage. In Titus 3:9 Paul writes this:
9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.
There can be something so alluring about the latest scandal to hit the newscycle, something so satisfying about hearing the latest updates and forming opinions and deciding who’s to blame. There’s something about the solidarity of joining with thousands of others (or what seems like thousands of others) in condemning and ridiculing and denouncing those we disagree with.
But constant engagement with controversies and arguments and quarrels is unprofitable. Useless. And if we find ourselves looking for those controversies, maybe we need to take a sabbath from our social media feeds or shut off our news programs.
HotTakes
Second: verify before speaking. Before wading into the angry discourse, before sharing our opinions with family or friends or even posting or reposting online–if we really feel it is necessary to say anything at all–we should first be certain that what we are talking about is true.
Proverbs 18:13 says:
13To answer before listening—
that is folly and shame.
And Proverbs 18:17 says:
17 The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him. (ESV)
It’s known as the “HotTake”. Opinions and judgments that are based on first impressions, or emotional reactions to news. We all know what it is like to hear a story and respond based on who is sharing the story or the way the story is framed; only to find out later that we didn’t have all the information or things were not as clear cut as they seemed.
I read a book about social media called The Chaos Machine. In the book, the author tells about an interesting experiment where researchers took a group of people who identified with one political party. They showed them a social media post with a headline about a current issue on which their political party had a clearly defined perspective. The headline fit into that perspective but was worded in such an exaggerated way that it clearly could not be true. The researchers asked whether it seemed like an accurate headline, and most said it appeared to be false. Only 16 percent thought it was accurate. Then they were asked how likely they would be to repost or share the article, and most said they would not.
But when the researchers repeated the experiment with a different group of people from the same party, they skipped the question about accuracy and simply asked how likely they would be to repost or share the article. In this case, the majority said they would.
The conclusion: when we take a moment to engage the rational parts of our minds we are more likely to spot inaccuracies and will be slower to pass the information on to others. But when we engage with the emotional or social parts of our minds, we are more likely to pass on information that validates our identity than we are to think through things like truth and accuracy.
“Most people do not want to spread misinformation,” the study’s authors wrote, “but the social media context focuses their attention on factors other than truth and accuracy.” (The Chaos Machine, p. 151)
Our mothers’ advice holds true: we need to think before we speak.
We are All Image-Bearers
Third: We should emphasize what we have in common more than what divides us. When we are faced with people who hold to different worldviews, or have beliefs that we significantly disagree with, we must always remember that they are still people made in the image of God.
Matthew 10:2-4 lists the names of the 12 disciples:
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
What I want you to notice is that there are only two names listed that include what we might call a “job title.” Matthew the Tax Collector. And Simon the Zealot. We don’t know much about Simon, we know a little more about Matthew, but these two job titles tell us a lot about how they saw the world.
The Zealots were one of the most radical groups in Israel at the time. They were completely opposed to the Roman government, and advocated violent revolution. They had a completely hands-off view of government.
The Tax Collectors, on the other hand, were the complete opposite. They were collaborators. Not only did they support the Roman government, they were helping the Roman government stick its hands into people’s pockets.
And yet, despite these profound differences in their worldview, both of these men become a part of Jesus’ inner circle. I’m sure they both had their views softened quite a bit around Jesus, but some of the differences had to remain. Still, they manage to work together, to serve together. It’s even Matthew that is listing them here. Because their shared identity in Jesus is greater than their differences.
Another story. RC Sproul was a significant American theologian in the second half of the 20th Century. He was known for being a staunch Calvinist, that is he believed in the sovereign, electing grace of God. Other contemporaries of Sproul–Billy Graham, the famous evangelist, is one–were known more for being Arminian, which meant they emphasized human free will. While Dr. Sproul would say we chose God only because God first chose us, Dr. Graham might say that God chose us based on his prior knowledge that we would one day choose him.
This is a nuanced theological debate, and it is one Christians have been having for centuries. It can, at times, provoke strong feelings among the various sides.
One time, when Dr. Sproul was doing a question and answer time, he was asked if he believed he would see Billy Graham in heaven, to which he replied, “No, I don’t believe I will see Billy Graham in heaven.”
Of course, there was a collective gasp! But then he continued, “Billy Graham will be so close to the throne of God, and I will be so far away from the throne of God, that I will be lucky even to get a glimpse of him!”
What RC Sproul demonstrated is that sincere believers can disagree on certain matters, sometimes quite strongly, and still maintain great respect and affection for one another.
And even if the person or group we disagree with is not Christian, we still believe that they are men and women made in the image of God. No matter how far they are from us in our beliefs, we still believe every person on earth possesses an eternal soul which–if they come to believe in Jesus–can be brought to heaven.
Our goal in any interaction then should not be to win an argument but to lead to Jesus. We are far more likely to do that with patient, gentle and kind words than we are with anger, insults and ridicule.
The Preacher and the Pornographer
Fourth, we should love our enemies. Even when our differences are so great... even when we differ so profoundly on theological or political or cultural issues that we can do nothing other than to conclude that those we disagree with are enemies…even then Christ calls us to love.
Here’s how Jesus puts it in Luke 6:27-31:
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Surely Jesus cannot actually mean that?
Here’s another story. In the 1970s Jerry Falwell became one of the most well-known preachers in America. He was a pioneer in putting his services on television, and he also got involved in politics with a movement known as the Moral Majority.
A frequent target of Falwell’s criticism was Larry Flynt, founder and publisher of Hustler magazine, a pornographic magazine known for stretching the limits of decency and free speech. The public war of words between the two was deep, insulting, and personal. At one point Flynt ran a parody interview of Falwell depicting him in the crudest and most offensive ways possible.
In response, Falwell filed a libel suit against Flynt in federal court, leading to a 5 year legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court. To the surprise of both men, Flynt and Hustler won the case. Offended by the outcome, Falwell publicly criticized the decision and called Flynt a “sleaze merchant.”
But ten years later, the relationship between the minister and the pornographer took a different turn. Being high-profile, public enemies made them perfect ratings material for talk shows, and they were invited to continue sparring with one another in front of 8 million people on Larry King Live. It was the first time the two men had been in the same room at the same time in years, and Flynt came with a ready-made list of insults. But at some point in the middle of the interview, Falwell did something no one expected: he leaned over and gave Flynt a warm, affectionate hug.
A couple of days later, Falwell showed up unexpectedly at Flynt’s office and the two talked for several hours. They decided that day to travel the country together discussing and debating their views on college campuses. According to Flynt, in the years that followed their tour, the two men stayed in regular contact. They got to know one another’s families. They exchanged cards and gifts at holidays. They supported one another as they grew older and declined in health.
When Falwell died in 2007, Larry Flynt published a eulogy in the Los Angeles Times. He titled it: “My Friend, Jerry Falwell.” Here’s part of what he wrote:
Every time I’d call him, I’d get put right through, and he’d let me berate him about his views…I’m sure I never changed his mind about anything, just as he never changed mine. I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions…but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends. (Story summarized from Sauls, p. 93-95)
Maybe this is the sort of thing Jesus had in mind when he told us to love our enemies. Even when people see the world so much differently than we do, is there a way for us to bless them and even befriend them?
Scott Sauls writes:
If Christians don’t go first in offering a gentle answer to those who oppose us, can we ever expect those who oppose us to make a similar move? And if Christians don’t take the first step to humble ourselves and become less testy, less defensive, less easily offended, and less vindictive when we experience… opposition and criticism…who will? (p. 95-96)
While We Were Still Sinners
If this all sounds nice in principle, but far removed from the way things really work, there’s one more thing we need to keep in mind. Fifth: Remember the Gentle Answer of Jesus to Us. As Christians, we should handle outrage differently because God, who had every reason to be outraged with us, turned that outrage away at the cross.
Romans 5:8:
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We say: “Jesus, you don’t know how hard it is to love our enemies.” And Jesus answers: “When you were my enemy, I died for you.”
We say: “Jesus, you don’t know how angry I am about things happening in our world.” And Jesus answers: “I bore the wrath of God for you.”
We say: “Jesus, you don’t know that I have every right to be mad.” And Jesus answers: “I gave up my rights for you so I could carry the cross.”
Because we sinned against Jesus, He had every justification to turn us away. Because of our sins, we were enemies of God, alienated and living in darkness (Col. 1:21).
But Jesus responded to us with a gentle answer. Jesus turned away anger with love. And it is because we have been treated with such kindness, such grace, and such gentleness that we can live in an outrageous world without being outraged ourselves.
Remember the big idea from the beginning of the sermon:
Because Jesus has covered all of our offenses, we can be among the least offensive and least offended people in the world.
