Holy Discontent
One of the problems with developing a concern (or anger!) over biblical equality is that it can hang over you like a cloud and drag you down in the dumps, make you feel moody, put other people out of sorts against you. How much more safe and sane to just attend your sweet little evangelical church, don’t make waves, and float in the old familiar music and words. But is that right? As Hope said so well on my blog [permission sought and granted]:
I feel frustrated for being grieved about this too. I keep waiting for it to pass. I think, I’ll get over it, forgive and forget. It won’t bug me, etc.. hasn’t happened yet in the last 2 years. If anything, it’s intensified. I heard Hybels of Willow Creek talk on a topic called ‘holy discontent’. He said, if there is some issue out there that you can’t lose, there is probably a reason. It’s your ‘holy discontent’. God wants you to use it to do something. Don’t let it embitter you, use it for his glory. So, I rest in that. Perhaps it’s not so awful that the issue is staying with me. Perhaps it will make me more sensitive to people who are oppressed, judged, stereotyped. Perhaps, it will make me a better Christian.
Jon Trott has a recent posting of his struggle with anger in a post called Cornerstone Festival and Christians for Biblical Equality and he says it quite well:
In my own case, my anger seems more often to end in something destructive, esp. when I think I’m right about something. But after listening to Sarah, and then during Q and A offering what I (and not Julia, so she doesn’t get in trouble) called “the evangelical enablement of a rape culture,” I was left thinking about anger’s positive aspects. As one friend (a woman pastor, appropriately!) told me later after listening to my reflections, William Barclay writes regarding Jesus’ words on anger in the Sermon on the Mount that (her words), “When we are angry on behalf of someone else, there’s a much better chance that anger is constructive, godly anger, than when we’re angry on behalf of ourselves.” Yes, something like that.
How hard it is to think of others. But if we do, we not only satisfy Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, but we also better channel our anger. God might even change it to joy because we’ll be in the center of His will along with our holy discontent.
