Outraged

Speaker 0 00:00:06 Well, good morning and welcome to another edition of thinking it through. My name is Trey Jarvis, and this is a podcast put out by village church East. It's a podcast where we go through the cultural changes that are going on all around us and try and spend some time thinking them through you are here on a good day. Uh, this is one day that I wanted. I've been kind of hanging on to, because I saw a bumper sticker, not that long ago, actually a couple of days ago now. And it got me thinking, here's what the bumper sticker said. If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention. Now, listen, I'm sure that's leftover from the previous, uh, political Speaker 1 00:00:42 Administration, but regardless it got me thinking what kind of a person would put that on their car. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. I looked up outrageous, outrageous, a strong moral emotion characterized by a combination of surprise, disgust and anger. Usually in reaction to a grave, personal offense, it comes from the old French old Trage. What comes from the Latin, all tra meaning beyond. Do you know what an outrage really means? It means beyond rage. Go ahead and look it up on the Google machine, you will find pictures of outrage in the computer, and none of them will, will be something that you would want to see in your own house. Fisk going through computer screens, things, getting thrown across the room, screaming people outrageous is not something that attracts a whole lot of people. And at least it doesn't seem to. And yet we seem to be living in a culture that kind of likes that term a more and more. Speaker 1 00:01:44 I'm trying to think of all the good decisions I made while being in a rage. And I can't think of a very long list. I think of the relationships that I've had to fix because I responded to somebody poorly and in a, maybe in a rage or, or maybe an anger and I've had to go back and fix those things. You've seen this in social media. People respond with being outraged and it ends up creating havoc in their relationships with other people. I think of all the times that I responded to my kids when I was outraged, none of those went well. I re I think of all the times that I spoke while outraged, without thinking first, and I ended up damaging relationships and forget about it. How about driving? Driving is like, if you drive outraged, you're, you've got a major issue. There's a reason they call it road rage. Speaker 1 00:02:32 It's never in a positive sense. The sadly, if you live in Chicago, you know, Lake shore drive is one of those places that draws people to Chicago because it's a beautiful stretch. It's uh, it's right along the Lake. And last, uh, well actually a couple of days ago, a 21 year old baby, 21 month old baby in, in the, um, in the seat in the baby seat was shot in a minivan on Lake shore drive. Now, listen, that's bad enough, somebody shooting in and, and hitting this baby in this baby seat. But the fact of the matter is this was a gun battle going on between a guy shooting into that car with a little baby and the person driving the car with the baby in it for a mile down Lake shore drive these people. These is like the old West. They were shooting at each other all the way down until finally a crash. Speaker 1 00:03:21 This poor baby had gotten shot. The mother crawled out of the passenger window and some good Samaritan took her and her baby to the hospital. To my knowledge, they're still doing surgery now trying to save the baby. It's difficult to live in a world where people are outraged all the time. And, and I think it's a tactic of the culture in which we're in, where if they can get us to be outraged, they can get us to do all kinds of stuff. We wouldn't normally do. Typically when we make decisions while outraged, it doesn't go, well, we call it DWO. I'm going to call it DWI. Decision-making while outraged, rarely without getting a hold of ourselves, are we able to function positively? When we're driving in an outrage to gear, we can't make decisions, good decisions while outraged. I look at scripture and I, I see how many times God compares his nature to one of peace. Speaker 1 00:04:15 God actually calls himself a God of peace. Multiple times in scripture, Jesus comes along and actually says, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give unto you this kind of peace that Jesus gives to those who follow him as a peace that passes understanding when, when we're wronged, when we're angry, when we're enraged, we have this ability not to operate from a state, from a standing of being outraged, but from a standing of having a peace in a situation that that makes others go, how can you possibly be peaceful? When you should be outraged, Philippians four or five to seven, encourages us this way. It says, let your reasonableness another word for that is gentleness. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Speaker 1 00:05:07 Now listen to this and the peace of God. Here's the promise. The peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ. Jesus. Our minds are where our thoughts begin to wander. And we have all these imaginative ideas of how bad the situation is. And our hearts are where the emotions lie. And that's where we, we lose control. God says the peace of God will guard our hearts and guard our minds. We don't have to operate from a vantage point of being outraged. In fact, I think about the sermon on the mountain. I think backward, Jesus says blessed are the outraged for they shall inherit the earth. Yeah, it's laughable because Jesus never says that the outraged operating from a standpoint of being outraged as a good thing to do, instead, he blessed are the peacemakers. Now, does this mean that we should never get angry? Speaker 1 00:06:02 Absolutely not. Anger can sign typically proven, heightened our drive to survive. It can, it can actually be a good thing. We can discharge our RMS anger by we can discharge our rage. When we get angry by calming us, it can be a calming effect like hitting a pillow or screaming into a pillow. Anger can motivate us to solve problems. America was built on this Boston tea party, right? There was a problem they needed to solve. And their anger led to creating a nation built on laws. Anger can make us aware of injustice. There's all kinds of positive things that anger can do. It can even be beneficial. Science shows it, those things experiencing rage usually feel the effects of the adrenaline levels of the body go up. There's high adrenaline levels. All of a sudden being released. And this, this increase in adrenaline increases physical strength. Speaker 1 00:06:52 It increases endurance levels. It's sharpened senses while dulling the pain receptors, more anger causes more rage, which Lee releases more adrenaline. And here's the danger because studies also show that when those levels of adrenaline get that high, where we're outraged, it actually causes cognitive problems. It actually will cause your memory to be impaired. Now we should say anger is actually an attribute we get from God. There's nothing sinful about anger, anger, Jesus got angry and turned over the table in the temples twice. He did that in the beginning of his ministry and at the end of his ministry, but we're given a window into Jesus' heart. He doesn't do so because he's outraged. The adrenaline is flying and he's not thinking about what he's doing. He only seeing red. This is his passion for God's house that compels them to throw these thieves out. There were people in there that were ripping off a bunch of other people as they come to do sacrifices, they were getting rich off God and Jesus wouldn't have any part of it. Speaker 1 00:07:52 That there's a difference between being angry and being outraged. We can be angry according to Ephesians five and sin not. I get angry when kids are abandoned at the border by coyotes. When these people paid to take these, these, these kids over the border, over the Southern border, and then they drop them like so much luggage over the border fence. I get angry when those kids are sold into sex life, sex trafficking, which a lot in the Mar I get angry. When I find out that every year more children die from abortion than Americans died in the revolutionary war, the civil war, both world war one and two, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war in Iraq Wars, all of them combined, more children die from abortion. Okay? Every year I get angry. When I hear have to deal with the sin in my kids' lives, that's tearing them up and I can't do anything about it. Speaker 1 00:08:45 I get angry when I see it justice and I can't fix it, but be careful because there are people out there will feed off our anger and use it to their ends. They just need us to be outraged so that they can manipulate us to do what they need us to do. People will try to get you to spring into action by getting you so angry that you only see red. And if somebody is encouraging you to operate from a place of outrage and not a place of sense, a place of reasonableness, be careful. They can get you to do a lot of things. You would not normally consider. If they can get you to stay in an outrage mode, God never does this. And he never encourages it. So don't get engaged in DWO decision making while outraged DWO. Instead. How about DWC? Decision-making while controlled Romans eight 13 says this. Speaker 1 00:09:41 If you live according to the flesh, that means the passion of the flesh, the desire of the flesh, the drive of the flesh. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death, the deeds of the body, you will live for all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. The goal is to be led by the spirit of God, just as Jesus was. And as passionate as Jesus was, we never see him breaking God's law, burning down buildings, hurting others in his pursuit of passions. If anyone had reason to be outraged, listen, it was Jesus. He was mocked and beaten and scorned and rejected and lied about when all he did was show love. And yet even when he was nailed to the cross, he was not outraged. Instead he prayed father, forgive them. Speaker 1 00:10:27 They do not know what they're doing. So when you see the bumper sticker, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. My, my hope is that you'll just see it as a whistle call for those who need purpose for living. And we do not need that because we find that in Jesus, if you want to follow a cause don't follow a cause built on the level of outrage. Somebody can get you up to not DWO decision-making while outrage, but DWC decision-making while controlled. Well, listen, I've enjoyed being with you today. As we have thought through, spend some time thinking through the place that rage Speaker 0 00:11:05 Has in our lives. I hope that it has the right place in yours. I hope that your life does loves more fines, more peace offers more peace than outrage. Listen, you'll definitely keep more friends that way. It's been a privilege to spending some time with you thinking it through. And I hope you'll join us again. As we spend time, next time thinking it through.