Anger and Hate

B.C. premier under fire after urging drivers ‘to think before you hop in the car’ amid gas price surge.

Canadians love their cars so much that high fuel prices won't make most of us change our ways.

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Dear Kate,

"Why so many Christians are not only eager to stay with a diet of milk, but actually get cross at the suggestion that they should be eating something more substantial?" my pastor asked a question that NT Wright once asked.

I will try to answer the obvious by sharing with you the two headlines above and a few adjectives about us humankind.

Our premier, leader of our province, was "under fire" for suggesting something that is quite sensible about our driving habit, sensible always and ever should be, skyrocketing gas price or not.  A very little kid with a reasonable education can tell you why.  Then why are people so angry about what our leader suggested? One could certainly disagree, even earnestly, but to become angry?  And at what?

It was only a suggestion after all.  He didn't talk down to anyone. He didn't say we must do it.  He didn't deny the possibility that some of us might not be able to do it well even if we try our best.  He only suggested the possibility of something good to come out of our thinking, our thoughtfulness.  We can all think, big and small, be thoughtful in our own ways, dignity and honor always a possibility, our choice.

So that's my first answer, why we get upset about mere and sensible suggestions: because we are thoughtless.

My neighbor a few doors down dashes out in four wheels I don't know how many times a day.  I get out of my house maybe at least 5 times a day, walking my dog mostly, doing lawn work, taking out the garbage, going to work, and almost every time I would catch his car dashing out of his garage.  He's always in a hurry: two kids and lots of activities for them, what choice has he?  He could, maybe, let me suggest, park his car on the driveway during the day instead of opening up his garage door and closing it behind him every time, rain or shine, just to reverse the chain of commotion very soon after, knowing there is bound to be another necessary dash to make, sometimes within a matter of minutes, me going out to collect my emptied trash bin and coming back inside.  He wears a frown always, even from a distance I can see, through a car glass darkly.

Who am I to judge?

Well, I am a home owner too.  I know how a garage door works, and had the unpleasant experience to deal with a few broken ones.  The garage door opener breaks, and the door spring snaps, the easier and faster the more you use them, obviously, and the whole chain of actions is generally a very noisy and violent way to get things your way.  So you would think it is sensible for a family-man, community-builder to mitigate the agitation somewhat to make life, his and others', more livable.  You would wish one might think outside his box - boxes, car and garage, just a little, to feel a little less helpless, a little less harried, a bit more hopeful about his being and doing, and maybe, just a suggestion, a bit more helpful to his neighbors?

"If you’re going to the grocery store and you know that you’ve got a neighbor that needs something, ask if you can pick it up for them and reduce the number of trips that we take," our premier went on to suggest.  And I think this is the line that really got people angry.  Because now he was accusing people of being unneighborly, unhelpful, a miser and maybe misanthrope.  Where on earth do you find such a neighbor?  Not in this century, not on this land of plenty, not exposing our mental health to more hazard!  We are asking for less troubles, not more!

A thoughtless person is unteachable, recalcitrant, short-sighted, and self-possessed.  Any good news of better possibilities would only add to his self-pity and despair, because nothing is good enough if he can't see any possibility.  And hence the anger, towards the news-bearer, and life in general.  Bring the gas price down or shut up, that's what our anger says.  Someone needs to do something about my bad life situation, people who get paid to do it, fix it up, "back to normal" at the minimum we must insist.  Someone drops the ball on enabling me to keep dropping mine.

I am going to make one final suggestion, a big leap that if you are going to look back at where I sprang from, would not be entirely nonsensical: what we are really angry about, what we really hate, is our own life.  A person who loves her life would always cultivate new possibilities for better things to grow.  Hope springs eternal.

How is one who loathes his createdness and creatureness to worship - no, to merely listen to his Creator?  This is my answer to Wright's question.  We don't even respect leaders we can see; why would we listen to any rumored deity faraway?

Yours, Alex