The Inner Angst

Two or three times each year I get in touch with my inner angst, I become one with my outrage at the gross injustice and heinous evil in the world. A large part of these annual experiences is my paralyzing frustration at being an active participant in the systems that oppress others. Then I move to dwelling on my guilt and move to feeling disgusted at myself for focusing on my own guilt and moving the focus onto me me me. Of course that self loathing is still focusing on me.

So then I move to God in Christ who breaks free the bonds of injustice and frees me to serve and transform the world around me. Well, great, except I can't seem to move from outrage to real and sustainable action. I don't want to "save the world" but it is an urgent crisis that people are cut off from basic necessities and human dignity, they become "other" or "non persons". Something has to be done or more people will die and more blood will be on my hands as a participant in the systems that deprive the "other" from those basic needs. Lutherans (like me) cling to the theology of the cross which places Christ in the middle of the suffering, oppression, and deep pain in our broken world. This emphasis is not particularly glorious and does not offer solutions or clear answers, but attends to the places of brokenness by claiming that God is there and is crying and perhaps even is outraged as well. I like this, it is a model for me to just go and be there; however I am lacking the faith that says this is good enough. I want solutions and a real hope and end to suffering. I don't like to dwell in my own or other people's brokenness. I am not okay with just being present with people, I want to be a part of the transformation, I want to see people flourish and grow, not be destroyed and die.

What is my weakness that I cannot be satisfied with the awesome love of God who forsakes being perfectly above and apart to come into and take on suffering? If God died and rose again taking on all evil and death and suffering... all systems of oppression and greed... even the sin within each human heart, then why, why hasn't anything changed. At the end of the day, I just trust in the hope that God is at work in the world in posit