Truly Radical
How to Stay “Orthodox” Without Getting Angry
by Kevin Offner
Liberals and conservatives agree about one thing these days: something is seriously wrong with American culture. Hardly a week goes by when some pundit does not decry our shocking “lack of values,” “sleazy ethics,” or “inability to feel shame.”
I’m not even 40 years old, yet I often find myself repeating the “I-can-remember-when” refrain: I can remember when my neighborhood was safe and I felt comfortable walking at night. I can remember when public schools disciplined students, and when parents generally trusted that their kids would be taught a modicum of truth and morality there. I can remember when the majority of people thought that divorce was wrong (as a child I remember knowing only a few people who were divorced), and that one, committed, life-long, heterosexual spouse, was right. I can remember when you could leave your child alone for an hour in front of the TV, relatively confident that he would not see Opie cuss out Andy, Barney gleefully shoot someone’s head off, or Aunt Bea take off her clothes.
So how ought an orthodox Christian respond to our culture’s deterioration? First, there are three tempting responses that must be avoided.
Three Wrong Responses
The first wrong response is a fly-off-the-handle anger. How many of us would not admit that our silent (or audible, depending on who was with us) response to Pat Buchanan’s 1992 speech at the Republican National Convention was something like, “Damn right, Pat! It’s about time someone said things clearly and boldly. Those damn liberals are ruining our country!”
I remember vividly my visceral response to Madonna’s book, Sex. Sitting in my favorite coffeeshop—one of the combination bookstore-coffeeshops that are so delightful here in Cambridge—I noticed people huddling enthusiastically around a “New Books” table. When I discovered that the object of their glee was Madonna’s racy book, I was tempted to rush over and hurl the books off the table, shouting as I went, “This stuff is trash! How can you guys gawk at this pornography? Don’t you realize what this junk does to your soul?” When I heard of Paul Hill’s murder of an abortionist, I shuddered, for I understood and empathized with his anger.
Of course in one sense anger is good and right. God is a God of wrath, whose anger is kindled against those who repeatedly disobey him. We are to “be angry but sin not.” It is right to hate sin. Surely one aspect of being created in God’s image is that we have sensitive consciences that are revolted by evil.
But in my experience it often seems that our anger is less a zeal for God’s glory or a righteous indignation at evil than a frustration over our Christian loss of cultural hegemony. We sense that we are losing the culture wars and we frantically want things to return to “normal.” The public dam that holds back external sins leaks in more and more places, and it angers us that those in power—the government, the media, the entertainment industry—are gaining in strength almost daily.
Yet what long-range good does a reactive anger achieve? It merely fragments and polarizes, and increases John Doe’s fear of the Far Right. The moral wrongs of our country will never be righted by angry conservatives who find new avenues in which to force their views on others. Any lasting cultural change will be accomplished through persuasion, not anger.
Kevin Offner is on the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He has written for Re:Generation Quarterly, Critique, Student Leadership Journal, and First Things. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Amy. They are members of the Presbyterian Church in America. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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