For Religion on the Internet: These three remain: outrage, insight, tribalism, but the greatest of these is outrage. 

Outrage is to self-righteousness as lust is to adultery. 

Slate called 2014 the year of outrage. I’m sure 2013 was close and 2015 might be greater still.

I noticed something the other day over at Rachel Held Evan’s blog.  Hmm, I should back up.

I first discovered her blog before her first book came out. She has written a post about finding a Reformed church in the East and the tribalist within me wanted to encourage her so I left a comment. At that time her blog was small. I much prefer small, quiet, sleepy blogs where comments stay in the low double figures at most. You actually have a hope of a real conversation. She had a moniker on the blog which was something like “blogger, writer, speaker” and part of me said “wow, she’s ambitious but probably a bit idealistic if she thinks she’ll be able to make a career out of this.”

Her first book of course I think caught the voice of a segment of a generation of young evangelicals. The comment numbers on her blog exploded. She’s been able to turn the corner on a writing career it seems. Monkey town/Faith Unraveled and then Year of Biblical Womanhood seemed to be successes. She gets speaking gigs, her name is known, she’s a voice. She did it. 

So she’s doing some advent meditations this year and I noticed the comment numbers even after a few days are sometimes even in the single digits. If she puts out a post on gays or women or racism comments will be in the hundreds in a few hours. Outrage sells. Outrage motivates. Outrage energizes our inner activist.

Outrage, Insight, Tribalism in Church

This is nothing new of course. Pastors and churches have been working these angles for years. Outrage mobilizes people in tribal ways. People will show up. People will give time and money. If you want to build a church outrage and tribalism are two sure tools.

One of the reasons I never wanted to pastor in North America was because I saw very early on that if you don’t want to work the outrage or the tribal angle you’re really left to insight. Insight is my drug of choice. I realized that if you don’t want an outrage church or a tribal church you’d need to have an insight church. As a pastor every week you need to work a text to find the new idea, the insight that will make the listeners pause for an appreciative moment and say “oh, I learned something new this week” the subtext being “I guess church is worth it after all.”

Insight, My Drug of Choice

I listen to Tim Keller sermons, read books, scan my RSS feed looking for insight. I blog my insights. Outrage makes me tired, uncomfortable and cynical. Tribalism can make me smug, but insight I love.

I naturally feel that insight is “higher” than the other two, but I’m not convinced this is anything more than a function of my temperament, an INTJ or an ENTJ if I really need to be.

All Three Nudge us to Self-Righteousness

The connection between outrage and self-righteousness is the easiest to see. Outrage is a cousin to anger and anger is the easiest glandular path to righteous indignation which when made a self defense strategy is a powerful form of self-righteousness.

If you’re a traditional religious person then God’s approval of you is based on your zeal. If you’re a religious rebel then this is the reason you’re more righteous than God or whatever God, religion, ideology, system or tribe you are denouncing.

Tribalism works in a similar way. Your loyalty to your tribe is your credential for approval from the tribe and its taste in God.

Insight and self-sufficiency is more subtle, or perhaps because it is my own drug it’s harder for me to see because it’s mine. I can always feel smug, secure, superior, because I can see the duplicity, the flaw, the fault in everyone else. I can even feel smug in seeing my own. Surely this will keep me smugly humble. It’s easy to look down on the glandular outrage addicts and the huddled tribal folk.

In any case I am my own savior and lord.

Where They Go

Team outrage thinks they can save the world. Unfortunately it’s a divided team. The upside is that there’s always an outrage partner to help you pull the trigger and get your fix. Even if your sub-team wins a battle there will always be another.

Team tribal has the warmth of community and hopes to endure. Being together is better than being alone. Outrage can wear you out. Tribes can endure. Ask the Amish.

Team insight is smug but lonely. We peer out of our windows in CS Lewis’ hell and mock the silly, stupid people down below. We might get on the bus, just because there may be an insight in the hard country. We are determined ghosts and Gnostics however. We want to know the hard country in theory but giving ourselves to it, or to anything is what we deeply wish to avoid. We, like the tribalism and the outrage addicts are deeply afraid but we cloak it in a different way. We prefer to stay a ghost in a land without commitments.

Congratulations Outrage, This is Your Year

So take your angry lap outrage. This is your time. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, satire. It will be longer than 15 minutes.

You won’t take long to celebrate your success of course, you can’t afford it, there is still more wrong out there that you must expose, better get busy.