What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer “Faith, hope, and love”? That sounds beautiful. But I would say – courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature… we lack a holy rage – the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth… a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth, and the destruction of God’s world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the table of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish… but never the chameleon.
– Kaj Munk, a Danish priest and playwright killed by the Gestapo in 1944
Archive for August, 2007
for want of a good dose of holy anger
Published August 11, 2007 The Eternal Journey , Words I Wish I'd Penned 1 Comment
(courtesy of the PostSecret Project)
I remember hearing about an old comic strip back in the days of St. Ed’s. Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, ‘Well, why don’t you ask?’ The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, ‘I’m scared God will ask me the same question.’ Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, ‘You tell Me why we allow this to happen. You are My body, My hands, My feet.’
– - Shane Claiborne
