COMMENTARY: What’s wrong with righteous indignation?

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS) (UNDATED) There are some that think Sen. John McCain might not be a very good president because he has a problem with his anger. I don’t know all that much about the candidate’s position on many issues, but I’m all for his stand […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS)

(UNDATED) There are some that think Sen. John McCain might not be a very good president because he has a problem with his anger. I don’t know all that much about the candidate’s position on many issues, but I’m all for his stand on anger.


I think we could use more anger.

I’m not talking about road rage or rudeness. I don’t mean people who bully those smaller or less powerful. I don’t even mean snappishness associated with stress. I think we have way too much of that kind of pent-up frustration masquerading as anger.

No, I mean the kind of anger that comes from being fed up with injustice. I mean the kind of tirade that comes after someone says we should just learn to live with an intolerable situation. I mean the wrath that assaults complacency and selfishness.

What this country needs is a healthy dose of righteous indignation.

The Bible is full of illustrations of God’s wrath. It is never capricious or momentary, but is a response to human greed or pride, to domination or degradation. It builds over time and when it is unleashed it is never mistaken for petulance.

The biblical model would serve us well. We shouldn’t waste anger on bad drivers or slow check-out clerks. We should get angry for a purpose.

But for the most part we are way too fat and happy to risk wrath. As long as we have money in the bank and the stock market heading for the stratosphere, we are willing to settle into our recliners and ignore the problems of the world.

Hunger? Heck, we’ve discovered protein diets and are happily reclaiming bacon and steak into our diets. If people are hungry they must be carb-loading.

Poverty? All you have to do is buy into the market and hold on for the ride.

Injustice? Oh just get over it!

But lately there have been some signs that we are not all being lulled into a fat-induced coma.


The demonstration in Seattle awakened latent feelings in some of us. Those of us who once demonstrated against a war and other causes felt a stirring, a faint memory of caring enough to go out and shout.

Rosie O’Donnell got so ticked about gun violence recently that she let Tom Selleck have it right on her show and then continued to speak out until Kmart cancelled her contract.

Even Oprah Winfrey gets riled up now and then and uses her show to take on a cause.

We admire people who have the guts to get angry. And yet we also fear anger because it seems irrational or impolite.

Still, in a world where the gulf between the rich and the poor grows wider and wider, where gunshots rule schools and churches, and where tens of thousands of children die every day from preventable causes, isn’t anger the most rational reaction?

Can we really say it is polite to sit by while so many suffer and die?


Maybe John McCain would make a good president. Maybe he wouldn’t. But I hope whoever gets elected has the guts to get good and angry now and then. And I pray the rest of us grow a little less complacent and a lot more willing to aim some righteous indignation at injustice wherever we see it.

IR END BOURKE

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