Marilu Thomas, “Our Angry and Unruly Will”
Karen in Phoenix, Preston in Georgia, and Alex in Manila. What do these three people have in common? I talked to each one of them for over an hour in the past month. What could make me talk to someone in the Philippines for over an hour, you ask? The answer would be my cable bill. Let’s call the cable company “Saucer” to protect the company that canceled our service for no apparent reason. Accepting the challenge to rescue our cable, I called and got Karen in Phoenix. I related how Arizona is where our youngest daughter was born so Karen would know I birthed a native Arizonan and therefore deserved her very best service. But Karen’s promise of service promise was not kept. Next call, I called Preston in Georgia. I told him I was a Georgia Bulldog and was counting on him to treat me right, which apparently didn’t mean anything to him because we didn’t get service again. So, I called Saucer back and got Alex in the Philippines for an hour and a half. I made sure he knew that we had been paying customers for over 22 years. At this point, Alex told me he had forgotten my name and put me on hold. The end product-- our cable was cut off during March Madness, which now has a new meaning in our house. It still is not on. Alex promised me Tuesday April 5th.
My cable story is emblematic of our collective daily experience. We feel we have been treated wrongly and we get angry. As a book I like says, “That other people were wrong was about as far as any of us got.” These are, as our collect for the day reminds us, examples of our unruly wills. We think we have free will, but we are very much affected by everything around us and all the baggage within us. Our wills are not free because they are angry, afraid, disaffected, self-righteous, hurt, and scared. The world acts and we react, these days, most often in anger.
Anger is energy—a feeling of power and we like to hold onto it. We feel large and in charge. But it also uncovers a spiritual reality that leads us to despair. We believe we have earned something by living a good life. We are good people! I’m a good person! Why is this happening to me? I deserve better. The hubris of self-righteousness, of self-will, of ego. Edging God Out. We all suffer from it.
It reminds me of an airline joke. A crowded flight was canceled due to weather. A single attendant was rebooking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, ‘I HAVE to be on this flight, and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS’. The attendant replied, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll be happy to try to help you, but I’ve got to help these people first, and I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.’
The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, ‘DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?’ Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: ‘May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please,’ she began – her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. ‘We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If any of you can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14. Thank you!’
Other times, we think we know exactly who we are and what we believe, and then our world is turned upside down. Taylor Harris, who is a writer who lived in Charlottesville with her Professor husband and two kids, talks about this in her memoir, This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics and Facing the Unknown. At 22 months, their son, Toph, started having symptoms that were both terrifying and mysterious. On Kate Bowler’s podcast last month, Taylor shared, “I thought, if you follow the rules or get the right specialist you will be rewarded with an answer. Pray the right prayer, have enough faith, and you’re sort of on God’s good side, and he’s going to take care of you. Do X, Y and Z and no harm will come near your tent—your house or your family. But harm does come to your tent. It comes from outside your tent. I had to make some sense of doing the things I was supposed to do and not getting the result I wanted…Will God reward me with the right feelings and, if I’m so good and compliant, that will create a path for me? Who wants to sit in this liminal space with me?” The liminal space that Taylor writes about is our life today and everyday—the space between now and then, between problem and solution, between symptoms and diagnosis, between fear and faith.
In our Philippians text today, St. Paul lists all the reasons he should have a good, problem free life. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Paul is saying that he did everything right and yet still had it wrong.
This is the hardest thing for us to understand about God’s way. We believe we have a bargain going with God. We do this and God does that to reward us for good behavior. We do our good deeds and work hard, so we should get good things. Good for good. So how does that calculus work when life is hard? What about our deal, God?
The ‘pay for play’ deal we think we have with Jesus would be very transactional, an exchange economy. It describes a business transaction. I give goodness and Christ gives gifts. But St. Paul is telling us this is not Jesus’ way. His love for us is not a task or about following rules and laws. It is a relationship, meaning Jesus is attached to you, is connected to you no matter what. No law makes Christ do this—love draws Christ to you. It is a gift—no earning necessary. As a wise Christian friend said to me, “We are people who want a reward for receiving a gift.” Paul tells us what happened to our deal—Jesus. He writes in Philippians, “Not having a righteousness that comes from law but a righteousness from God based on faith…Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Paul is saying that all the ways he tried to be important in the world are nothing compared with the love he found in Christ Jesus.
And what about your anger? Isn’t all anger self-righteous in nature? Where is Jesus when you are angry? Anger is a sign of feeling scared, threatened, or hurt. Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote that our feelings can be symptoms of something that grace wants us to look at. “In other words,” Dr. Peck wrote in The Road Less Traveled, “the painful and unwanted symptoms…are manifestations of grace. They are the products of a ‘powerful force originating outside of consciousness which nurtures our spiritual growth…The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace—a gift of God, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair.”
It is the answer to Taylor Harris’ question, especially when there are no answers forthcoming. Who will sit with me in this liminal space? God’s grace, embodied in Jesus Christ sits with you, promises to always be with you. The heart of God who says, “I am with you. You are important to me.” Will we get what we want? No, probably not. But we will get what we need. God’s promises—unlike the cable company—are true and trustworthy.
I would like to end with theCollect appointed for today because it bears repeating: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
