Angry and Loud

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.

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4 Comments

  1. Joe
    Posted 4 September, 2006 10:52 pm at 10:52 pm | Permalink

    How can you possibly refer to the muslim community in Australia as victims? Sure you should have compassion for them, as they follow a false god and are therefore unsaved. But to consider them victims in a country like Australia is quite absurd.

    Spare a thought for Christians in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan etc. who face persecution from these so called peaceful people.

  2. Paul
    Posted 4 September, 2006 11:31 pm at 11:31 pm | Permalink

    That’s just pathetic Joe.

    1. You can’t put all Muslims in the ‘persecutor of Christians’ box.

    2. I think Geoff’s point was that it’s pretty hard to dialogue with a culture (even for the purposes of evangelism) if the media is fueling the “us and them” mentality and widening the divide for cheap ratings.

    For God so loved the world…

  3. geoff
    Posted 5 September, 2006 12:10 am at 12:10 am | Permalink

    Thanks Paul, you took the words out of my mouth. (or off my fingers, or whatever the typing equivalent must be).

    Our call is to love, regardless of what someone might be, or might have done, recognising that it is only by grace that we are saved. Our sins come from the same root cause as anyone else’s – choosing to rebel against God. We’re all in the same boat. But I appreciate you commenting Joe, thanks for your opinions, even if I disagree.

  4. Paul Teusner
    Posted 2 October, 2006 5:22 pm at 5:22 pm | Permalink

    Geoff,

    I live and work in Shepparton, as a minister, and among many muslims, being mainly refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. One of my colleagues, and close friends, was one of those muslims interviewed by A Current Affair.

    He told me that the behaviour of the reporters was nothing less than harrassment. They gave him no preparation (they called him, asked where he was, and requested that he showed up at the school in five minutes, and didn’t even tell him the topic of the interview).

    Then they repeated one set of short questions repeatedly, each time interrupting him so he could not finish an answer. I assume they did this so they could check if he would change his answers, and so choose which answer they would actually show on television, or call him for debate on not being consistent.

    We made a complaint to channel nine and submitted a call to Media Watch for follow-up, but dodn’t get any response.

    From what we saw, it was a definite slow news day, where A Current Affair had no purpose but to fuel racist sentiment about refugees and their “imported cultures”.

    Great post, mate, so happy you brought it up.