Useless Rage

Imagine being so angry about something that you feel you are about to burst a blood vessel. Now imagine talking about whatever is making you upset until you are blue and black in the face. Now imagine doing this for the rest of your life. I know, it is exhausting! Not to mention unproductive! There you are cussing and complaining up and down left and right, making all kinds of crazy gesticulations and nothing happens. How frustrating, how annoying. However, maybe we need to stop with the cussing and complaining long enough to think about what all of that has accomplished.

Usually nothing is accomplished.

When we fail to act, nothing changes. Yes, some may argue that making noise is doing something. However, I believe that action is more productive than mere words. Many quote from the scripture this popular idea, “faith without works is dead”, focusing on the idea that all you have to do is have faith and everything will change, but that’s because they have not read what comes before:

¹⁴ What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? ¹⁵ If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? ¹⁷ Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

I am tired of persons complaining about injustices, profiting from their complaints but not actually being the change. But it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that I also do it. I also complain and cuss how unfair life can be at times and continue to traverse the same places from which this unfairness resides. However, when you see someone doing the same thing that you do then you realise how both self-sabotaging it can be or self-serving. Some people claim to be activists but all they are are bandwagonist, who will hop on a cause if it does something for their image. If they are called on to make some kind of sacrifice in the name of that cause, they suddenly realise they have so much to do that will be stunted by being more involved. It is easy to have a running commentary on any number of issues but when the jokes and the talking has been exhausted, then what? For too many, it is to pack up and head home, until another such occasion comes around to talk some more. Far too many of us have become good talkers and not good doers.

There are so many persons who get fired up to the one hundredth degree about things that, yes we need to be angry about, but what next? How do you turn that rage into something productive? How does it become an agent for change in the lives of those who are the most affected, the most vulnerable. Now it is easy for anyone to stay in the comfort of their homes and either watch commentary on the injustices of the world or make said commentary, but, how many of those persons will actually do something to start and be the change that the world needs? How many are willing to have real faith and stand against the many that stand a part from the few?

Rage is useless if it goes nowhere and does nothing.