When Anger and Justice Converge with Love and Mercy

Have you ever been really angry? I’m not talking about annoyed or frustrated—like when your car breaks down and it’s going to cost a lot of money to fix. I’m talking about seething anger, the kind that grips you by the gullet and squeezes. The anger that propels you toward the abyss of despair because there is no catch for your emotion.

I felt that kind of anger when I first read about Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus. The knowledge of what had been done to them made me so angry I was ill. Their captor made the following claim, “I am not a monster, I did not prey on those women, I just acted on my sexual instincts because of my sexual addiction.” And while some might take comfort in the knowledge that he was caught, I got even angrier when I learned he had hung himself in his jail cell. His last act ensured his victims would not see justice done in this life.

I find that anger usually sprouts from the fertile soil of pain. Be it disappointment, injury or injustice, some form of pain is usually at the root of my emotive sensibilities.

Year ago I was livid over the state of my body. My weight was unbearable. For the most part I was able to numb out my daily reality with more and tastier food, but every so often I would see a commercial with a before and after picture of someone who had lost the weight, and it would trigger within me the deep well of anguish in my soul. Why did I have to be fat? Why were some people able to eat whatever they wanted and stay thin? I was humiliated by my weight, and so I went to a health food store and I bought a product called, Hydroxycut. I had heard its results touted on local radio as being the most sure fire way to get rid of excess fat. So I plucked down my hard earned money (the product was not cheap) and started popping pills. Within a few days I knew the product didn’t work. It only made me jittery and anxious. So I stopped taking it. And, even better, went into withdrawals.

I laid in bed nursing the worst headache I ever had and sobbed. Was there no hope for me? Then I looked at the ceiling in my bedroom and scowled. “You did this to me. You made me this way.” And I began to curse God. “I hate you,” I said. “I really hate you.” And then I ate some M&M’s to assuage the pain. But the pain didn’t go away because candy won’t heal heartache. Like alcohol won’t heal heartache. Like shopping won’t heal heartache. Like sex won’t heal heartache.

So there I was shaking my fist at a God I believed in but despised because my body was not as I wanted it to be. I had no understanding of how to control my appetites and felt a great injustice had been done to me in the forming of my cells. Now maybe you are reading this and have never experienced such a thing, but I can assure you, I was angry to the core of my being and—though I didn’t realize it at the time—I wanted justice.

But how can there be justice for the “sins” committed against one’s own body. At the time I didn’t think to consider that the things I was consuming were harming me. Sure I saw the cause and effect, but one must eat. The idea of eating salad all the time repulsed me. I knew only that I was hungry and in pain—both physically and emotionally—and I perceived God to be a tyrant. I wanted justice for God making me the way that I was and I knew I wasn’t going to get it. Can there be a more bitter state of being?

When I look back I have more clarity about the lies in place at that point in my life. I believed God was not good because I was fat (as if his goodness depended at all on my body). I believed my weight was in direct correlation to my worth. I felt I was worthless because society told me fat people have no value because they are ugly. Also, I could not see how enslaved I was to food. I put all of my focus and hope on food and how it would help me, but I did not see it as an idol. It comforted me, how could it be hurting me? The removal of it caused me great pain and so hunger was my enemy. This led to the belief of more lies, that it was impossible to lose weight and keep it off, that I was powerless over the food I put into my mouth, and that my situation was hopeless. It was not until someone spoke some of these lies out loud to me that I began to address them in turn and choose a different path for my life.

At the heart of every lie is a partial truth. So it was for Satan in the garden when he spoke the very first lie into existence, “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) The lie caused Eve to question God’s goodness. She decided she knew better than he. So she picked and ate the fruit and brought about a most grievous agony—separation from the God she loved.

At the heart of my food addiction is the idea that food will satisfy the deepest longings of my soul—more than God, more than people, more than anything (the lie that I know better than God about what is good for me). Once I learned that was not true I found that my obesity was actually a gift. God used it to show me that He loves me so much that he would let me do things my way in order to learn that food could never make me happy. Once I learned to find satisfaction in Him rather than food, the lies lost their power over me. And while that process was very painful, it was worth every moment to fall into the loving arms of grace.

But I still long for justice. I long for justice for the lies that held me in their grip for so long and also for the lies that continue to be told to others in my previous predicament. Some of the lies are that image is more important than character or that people who are prettier(richer/more powerful/smarter) are more important than people of less means. Like the victim of a crime longs for justice from her adversary, I long for justice for the lies that continue to wound and scar me(and everyone else on the planet). In the same way, I long for justice for Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus. Their captor believed those same types of lies and became a slave to his pleasures which led to the loss of their innocence. In his case, I very much want there to be a hell because if anyone belongs there it is him. But wasn’t he a victim too? Maybe you will even wonder how I can ask such a question, but Michelle asks it first. She said that she forgives him because she too wants to be forgiven for her mistakes. That is astounding to me considering all she went through. What enables her to give such grace to a man who tortured her?

Oscar Wilde wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from prison. In his epic letter, De Profundis, he said, “But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.” He connected the dots between the pursuit of pleasure and character in his novel, “The Picture of Doiran Gray”. Oscar Wilde was given every opportunity in life and was very successful. He pursued pleasure in every form he was able to consume and in his own words said, “Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life for which I was never indicted at all.”

When I consider my own pursuit of pleasure and how I was defrauded by lies, I grieve. Grief then gives way to anger. And where do I go with that anger? I demand justice. But who can provide it? And that is why I rejoice when I hear the words of Jesus because he promises to exact justice.

Matthew 25:31, & 41-46
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

But what about justice for my own sin? Some might not consider gluttony sin but I see the misery it caused in my life. I want justice for the lies told to me—the lies I believed that caused me so much pain. Like the lies purported by the makers of Hydroxycut. Those lies were evil. But what of the lies I have told to others? Weren’t those lies evil too? I have told vicious, hate-filled lies that deeply wounded others. What about justice for them? In that case I cry out for mercy! For if every sin has its just reward—the hell that Jesus spoke of—certainly justice demands that I go there. And on what account can I claim a defense? That I didn’t know better? If God is real and he sees my heart, He knows that is a lie. What a despicable conundrum! If I want justice for all, I can’t exclude myself.

And this is why the gospel offers so much hope. God looked down on the misery and suffering of mankind and, because He is just, offered a solution to this problem. In fact, the only injustice seems to be that Jesus, who claimed to be God, took the sin of the world on his innocent back and then bore the punishment we deserved for it. Because he saw that our world is broken by lies and addiction. He saw bodies broken by obesity. He saw sexual slavery and every form of abuse being perpetrated on humanity. He saw that we could not save ourselves and had compassion on us. Because he loves us. Who can understand that kind of love?

I no longer look at my circumstances or the woundedness of this and shake my fist at God. Yes, I get still get angry and I still want justice, but I have absolute faith that he will exact it. If we are to believe all of the audacious claims that Jesus made, not the least of which is that there is a hell and there will be justice for all the wrongs done in this life, we have two choices. We can reject that he was God as he claimed to be or we can fall at his feet and worship him.

I don’t think I fully understood the grace of God until I experienced his kindnesses to me in the form of forgiveness. I no longer trust in my own understanding because I trust him enough to know that what I think is good for me and what he thinks is good for me are not necessarily the same thing. And at the end of the day, when I find myself beginning to be angry at lies and injustice, I remember this:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” – Lamentations 3:22-26