 If you're a Christian, this will infuriate you. Okay, wait, hold up, hold up. What did you expect me to play? Maybe the latest perversion and distortion that this world is endorsing. Now, I've seen this stuff, too, and don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with having righteous indignation, but at the same time, there's a problem. This endless cycle of outrage content is mind-numbing, and it's bad for the soul. Can you believe Disney put this in their movie? First Buzz Lightyear's transgendered Naldis? Surely we are in the last days. Have mercy. What's the mission of this kind of content? Like, give Christians a look at how insane the world is today? The world is endorsing worldliness again. Sinners be sinning again. Like, I get it. Now, even as I say that I'm sick of this kind of content, I need to look at myself in the mirror and say, yeah, over the years, I probably put out more than a few videos that could be classified in this category, and I'm not proud of that. That's something that was wrong and was motivated out of a desire to, you know, get clicks, get likes, get Christian hype. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying there's something deceptive or distorted in our culture and bringing Christ's light to it and helping people understand it better. That's still my mission to this day. I'm just saying that when the climax of the content is outrage, we're missing the point. Okay, then what is the mission then? Well, Jesus came to this world not to condemn the world, but that the world would be saved through him. Is that the message that we're communicating through our content? Now, I recognize that a lot of you aren't Christian content creators, but at the same time, we are all consumers of content. The question that we need to be asking ourselves, and I've asked myself this question quite a bit recently, is do I, when I look at myself in the mirror, am I obsessing over somebody else's sins as a means to distract from my own or make an excuse for myself or make myself feel safe in my own sin? Am I being fueled by outrage culture in order to sit on my high horse? Now, Jesus actually touches on this issue in a parable he tells in Luke 1810. Let me get my Bible. Okay, so when Jesus was teaching, there was a number of people that were around him that considered themselves to be righteous, and they're treating others with contempt around them, and so he told them this parable. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee said, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortors, unjust, adulterers, or even the tax collector. But then the tax collector prayed, and he prayed in humility and exemplified that by using seven of the most powerful words in all of scripture. He said this, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Okay, so what does this mean and what does this not mean? It means God values humility in our hearts. In James it says God gives this law to the proud, but he gives his grace to the humble, that the prideful will be brought low and that the humble will be exalted. Humility is good, and that's the proper orientation of our hearts. At the same time though, does this mean that we never point out sin and we never say something is wrong and we never make a judgment? No, of course not. Many people will throw out the verse, judge not lest ye be judged. But what this means is that the same judgment that we use will be applied to us. So make sure that the judgment that you're using, you can stand up to. But this is what God's been teaching me. When I look online and I see the latest sexual perversion of our culture, God wants me to look inward to say, yeah, that is wrong. That is against God, and I should feel a certain righteous indignation about that, and that's okay. But at the same time, I should look within and say, oh man, God, where have I violated your design for sexuality? Where have I taken part in sexual immorality? What do I need to repent of here? I hope you're beginning to get a sense that there's two ditches here. The folks that I'm targeting this video at are the folks that are gonna say, you know, what is the world doing? The world's just going to hell on a handbasket and, you know, continually outraged about every little thing. And there's no kind of grace there. There's no kind of redemption there. It's just frustration, anger. But then there's the other side, at least in the Christian sphere, that says, well, I've sinned too, so I have no right to say that, you know, this is wrong or call somebody else. And it's like, no, no, no, that's not the right response either. God cares about our heart posture. Are we in right relationship with him? Have we confessed our sin? Then we go out and we speak the truth. We don't want to play the hypocrite here. I think another aspect of this outrage culture, especially within Christian communities, is how it impacts the way we see our neighbors. If you're on social media and you're constantly interacting and engaging with content that's just fueled by outrage, it puts you in survival mode because you're just trying to defend yourself. You're in this defensive mode. Man, the world is collapsing against me. I need to do everything I can to just protect myself. You feel like you're being attacked. When we take this mentality and feeling into our daily interactions with our neighbors, we start painting them as if they're trying to attack us. And sure, you have these kind of one or two hostile encounters where somebody doesn't want to hear about your faith at work. That happens, yeah, it's gonna happen. We're gonna be persecuted, at least in Western culture. It's like pretty minimal in a lot of ways. But in large part, you're going to encounter people that just don't really know what they believe and they're open to hearing what you have to say. Speaking from experience, I think it's easy to see all the stuff online and use it as an excuse not to talk to my neighbor. I mean, maybe he's a radical leftist progressive who wants to, you know, transition children and it's like, what is going on? I don't know, you know, this person is just the enemy of God. I can't even think about developing a relationship with them. My time is better spent reposting this guy getting dunked on in debate. Yeah, your neighbor could believe all that stuff, but maybe he doesn't. And maybe he's just kind of interested about what you believe and isn't as hostile as you think he might be. Yeah, some people will be hostile and there are actually some people that are enemies of the gospel and seeking to lead others astray. But at the same time, you're still called to love that person. The truth is that you don't know what your neighbor believes because you've never talked to him. And even if you did and he believes some wacky stuff and some things that are antithetical to the gospel, that's not too surprising. The fact is he learned that stuff in school and in university and he's just trying to figure it out. You got to just have a conversation with him. That's what we're called to, to love people. So what do we do when we see something online that makes us angry and maybe even rightfully so? What do we do with that righteous indignation, that holy anger? Because that's what it should be. It shouldn't be out of holier than thou, oh my goodness. I'm so glad I'm not like them because that would be an unholy anger or disdain or pride. Like no, no, no, that's not where we go to at all. So if it is this, you know what, Lord? I recognize my place. I recognize that I am lowly and I need your mercy as well. But I also recognize this is wrong. This is sinful. What do you do with that anger? Anger that sits and stews becomes bitterness and cynicism. Anger can also deprive us of joy when we're consumed with the darkness of our world. Weeriness is not far behind. I've been there too and in some ways this season I feel this weariness close by. But at the same time, I'm encouraged by the scripture in Galatians 6-9. And let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. I get it, it's easy to grow weary in this world when you're on social media too. You're seeing all this ridiculous stuff take place and it's like, how do I'm I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to react to this? Yeah, I feel angry about it. But what am I supposed to do with it? You don't give up in doing good. That's number one. But what is the goodness that we're called to? Is it just to outrage? Is it just to feel frustrated about everything? No, it's to movement. Like our calling is to let this anger, this holy anger lead us to movement. This movement should be towards discipleship, to service to evangelism, to working hard for the glory of God, to build companies that honor God and to be part of a local congregation and to serve them and to build those folks up. The last thing that I want from my content is to bring you to this place of despair, to see, oh, the world is such so sucky and it's just terrible and the world be doing worldliness again and sinners be sinning again and it's like, what am I supposed to do? It's like, no, Christ has won. He is victorious. And that is the reason that this holy anger can lead us to joyful rest in Christ because he has won. That our work through Christ will produce fruit. That's what excites me, building godly families, building churches, building communities, building companies, developing a godly government. Like that's the exciting stuff of culture building that only begins when we get ourself right. When you can look and say God have mercy on me for I am a sinner. Thanks for watching, guys. I hope this video helped you as you seek to follow Jesus daily. Until next time, God bless. Angerness, angerness, anger, angerness? Angerness is not a word, bro.