A Little Outrage About Outrage

Uhg. If I feel outrage toward anything, it is our media.

And even as I write that, I realize the irony of grouping something as enormous and varied as “the media” into one category. There is good journalism being done every day. But there is also an outrage-driven media culture that twists and highlights and chooses its narrative. It tells us the worst moments of the “other.” It gives us language to condemn, stokes anger and plays on our fears. And we participate in it every time we take the worst example of a group and use it to define the whole.

Sometimes I feel as though we are frogs in boiling water, slowly being simmered in messages of fear and hate until we allow ourselves to be consumed by one or the other.

I have the privilege of having friendships with people who hold vastly different worldviews. More than ever, however, I hear the anger and fear within people’s voices. I am not talking about the very real outcry against injustice. There are things to be angry about. I am talking about the loss of being able to see others as human, the labeling of entire groups as “them,” “they” or “those people.”

Quite a while ago, I was asked by a major network if they could interview me about my faith. It was part of a much larger piece they were doing on different faiths. I said yes. The cameras followed me around for a day, filmed my activities and interviewed me. I was nervous to see the final piece, but I wasn’t too worried because, honestly, my life is pretty boring.

But when they played the final production, to literally hundreds of thousands of viewers, I was mortified.

There was one phrase that I had said about my faith activities that they played on repeat. I had said they were “fun.” They latched onto that phrase and played it over and over throughout the segment, creating an entire image of a shallow, even deceptive faith. I was struck by how even such a small, benign phrase could be twisted into something so very different.

That experience has made me more aware of how little we actually know about the people we see through a screen.

So what sparked this little essay this morning? I read a verse this morning that I found almost crazy in both its simplicity and its wisdom:

“So whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

This is a profound verse!

To be able to sum up the Law, all that God gave us as a beautiful structure for our lives, into these words: Just treat others as you long to be treated. Give others the respect, the grace, the assumptions, the benefit of the doubt that we would also want for ourselves.

I wondered what that might mean for the way we consume information about other people. We need to know what is happening in our world. And I hope that we never stop seeking information that will help us live in more just and equitable ways. But I also think we need to ask ourselves: If a phrase out of my mouth were publicized to the entire world as the only representation of who I am, how would I hope others would respond?

I am grateful for both the acts of mercy shown toward me and the honest rebukes I have received. But there is something important about those experiences: the people who showed me mercy and the people who rebuked me knew me personally. Those who watched that widely broadcast television special never will.

I would hope they could recognize how far removed they were from “me”, that what they had been shown was a piece of me, selected and arranged by someone else. They may never know the full truth because they are simply too far away. Distance makes it so easy to turn people into categories: “They.” “Them.” “Those people.” Proximity makes that so much harder.

Before I allow myself to hate or judge someone I have never met, I can acknowledge how far away I am from them. Before I accept someone else’s description of an entire group of people, I can ask what I actually know. And when proximity is possible, I can choose it. What if I spent some of my outrage energy attending city hall meetings, showing up in marginalized spaces or having coffee with a neighbor who might be very different from me? Could I find more truth by getting to know people personally?

Jesus doesn’t put a disclaimer on this verse. He doesn’t tell us to treat others as we would want to be treated only when they deserve it. He doesn’t limit it to people who share our values, behave reasonably, or extend the same grace to us. He says, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

I think it is important to note that treating others this way doesn’t remove accountability. If I were causing harm, I would want someone to tell me the truth. If my actions were hurting others, I would want someone to intervene. If I were wrong, I would want someone who cared enough to help me see it. But I would also want to be seen as a human being. I would want someone to know more than my worst sentence. I would want grace for my careless words and loving accountability for my careless actions. I would want someone to resist assuming that the worst thing they had heard about me was the whole truth about who I am. And if I refused to acknowledge how I was hurting them, at my core, in the best version of myself, I would want them to walk away from me.

If this is what I would want for myself, Jesus’ words are profoundly simple about what I am called to give to others.