Slate Magazine dubbed 2014 “The Year of Outrage,”1 and I’m inclined to agree.
We were outraged when a London block installed anti-homeless spikes, and when Khloé Kardashian wore a Native American headdress.2 We were outraged when we read the Senate’s torture report outlining CIA practices of systematic prisoner abuse and we were outraged when we read about Lena Dunham’s childhood sexual experimentation.3 We were outraged by Bill Cosby; we were outraged by gentrification and income inequality; we were outraged by Ferguson; we were outraged by the Austin based “Strange Fruit PR” firm who foolishly chose a name that echoed a 1930’s Billie Holiday song about lynchings. We were outraged by Fox News and/or by Jon Stewart’s satire of Fox News. We were outraged by Rolling Stone’s UVA rape story, then we were outraged to find out that they got their facts wrong. We were outraged that iTunes gave away U2’s new album for free without asking us. And by “we” in all of these examples I mean something like “social media” or “the internet”—“the internet” construed as a kind of corporate consciousness and increasingly a corporate conscience.
Julie Turner, at Slate, laments, “Over the past decade or so, outrage has become the default mode for politicians, pundits, critics and, with the rise of social media, the rest of us.”4 She goes on to describe the danger our outrage poses to real moral accountability. She writes, “[I]t’s easy to anticipate the cycle: anger, sarcasm, recrimination, piling on; defenses and counterattacks; anger at the anger, disdain for the outraged; sometimes, an apology … and on to the next. Twitter and Facebook make it easier than ever to participate from home. And the same cycle occurs regardless of the gravity of the offense, which can make each outrage feel forgettable, replaceable. The bottomlessness of our rage has a numbing effect.”5

So, what is the attraction of outrage? Why is there so much willing participation? Outrage, unlike true moral accountability has a connection to schadenfreude—that great German word with no simple English equivalent, describing the satisfaction or enjoyment derived from someone else’s misfortune. Outrage is partly about moral judgment and partly about reveling in the failings of others. In its worst incarnations, it allows us to be cruel and morally righteous at the same time. The internet and social media makes it much easier for outrage to escalate into broadly supported public shaming, but the internet did not invent outrage. Its been around since, well, at least since the time of Jonah.
I want us to examine Jonah’s story as a story about outrage. The book of Jonah begins this way, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:1-3). We are not told why Jonah flees, only that for some reason he does not want this job. After the boat ride and the storm and the whale and the salvific regurgitation, we get to this morning’s passage: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time” (Jonah 3:1), and this time, Jonah goes. His proclamation of judgment and doom to the Ninevites is short and sweet, short enough to tweet: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (48 characters).
Notice that Jonah does not call Ninevah to repent, does not put any conditions on the judgment of God. There is no “if you don’t . . ., then God will . . .” structure to this prophecy. It is doom and nothing else. Ninevah, the longstanding enemy of Israel, was to receive its just punishment. That was enough for Jonah. We might say that Jonah was finally ready to unleash his outrage on Ninevah. But he did so reluctantly. Not because he secretly liked the Ninevites or felt compassion for them, quite the opposite. As he confesses later, his real concern all along was that God might not go through with the promised apocalypse. He feared that God would relent, that justice would be swallowed up in mercy, and he would be left with nothing but his outrage unfulfilled by the righteous punishment of the offenders.
Thus we see, as the book of Jonah moves toward its conclusion, that Jonah’s deepest outrage is not against Ninevah but against God. God did not follow through. God did not deliver the prophesied doom. God did not keep up God’s part of the bargain. And so Jonah retreated from the city, set up a booth, and let his outrage stew. Surely today his outrage would be soaring through the twitter-sphere, but in the ancient world there was no such outlet to draw others to his righteous cause. Twice God asks Jonah “Is it right for you to be angry?” (4:4,9) But Jonah gives no plausible answer.
Now surely some of you want to say, hold on just a moment. Isn’t outrage sometimes the right response to moral horrors? Surely there are times when we are right to be angry. Josh Shipman preached Isaiah last Friday and challenged us to rise to righteous anger when we see injustice. So what is the message of Jonah? Does it contradict Isaiah? Is my objection to outrage a contradiction of Josh’s plea to call to account those who traffic in evil and injustice?
I think not. Outrage is something different. Perhaps I could describe it as an equation. Righteous anger + moral superiority – mercy + a dash of schadenfreude = outrage. Outrage would always prefer to see the guilty punished than see them repent.
So perhaps during our own forty days of introspection, repentance, and discipline, we might consider the ways we fall prey to the perverse, righteous pleasure of outrage. How might we distance ourselves from the epidemic of outrage, from our own complicity in public shaming, our own secret schadenfreude? How might we resist the temptation to express our moral superiority at the expense of someone else?
With all due concern that you may come to think less of me, allow me to quote that great TV sage, Dr. Phil. Often when giving relationship advice, Dr. Phil would ask, “do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” If I might freely paraphrase his question, I will leave you with a few questions of my own:
- Do you want to be right or do you want to be reconciled?
- Do you want to be right or do you want the story to turn out well?
- Do you want to be right or do you want enemies to become friends?
- Do you want to be right or do you want to have mercy?
- Do you want to be right or do you want to be holy as God is holy?
Amen.
Scott Bader-Saye (@ScottBaderSaye) serves as academic dean and holds the Helen and Everett H. Jones Chair in Christian Ethics and Moral Theology at Seminary of the Southwest. He joined the faculty in 2009 after teaching for twelve years at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit university in Scranton, PA. His academic interests include political theology, sexual ethics, ecology/economy, and Jewish/Christian/Muslim dialogue.
