26“In your anger do not sin”^[d]: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry – Ephesians 4:26

Some of the processing I’ve been trying to do over the last week or so relates back to something that came up after I heard A Current Affair making another effort to further demonise the Muslims in this country – in this case because some Iraqi families in Shepparton didn’t want their children engaging in music classes. And I got angry and loud, mouthing off at the constant push to marginalise this hurting group of people and the irresponsibility of Current Affairs (if you can even possibly call them that) in this country, blah blah blah. Right, the sort of angry tirade you get put through here often enough.

But a conversation afterwards with my mother (who is often right, especially when we agree) got me thinking about my reactions. She was concerned that the anger that was expressed there was not coming from a particularly healthy place, and that the reaction was  excessive, to the point where when I get angry like that, it scares people. Which went on to me trying to justify my standing by referring to Jesus making people scared, which she countered by saying that it was the people who Jesus was angry at that would have been scared, not the (and I’m pretty sure she used a better term) “good people” who would have been scared. I’m not so sure, so we left it at that. (and mum you’ve got a license to correct any factual inaccuracies in the account above )

Where we both agreed was that it was right to be angry about what was happening – the motivation behind the anger has to have come from some sort of compassion for the Muslim community – which I’m going to mark down as a positive – but the question is whether or not by ranting and raving and getting mad, I’m doing the wrong thing. Is it OK to be scaring people in your anger? I guess I’m not really getting anywhere with this, but it’s about time I put down a decent, personalish post, so I think that’s about all I’ve got.