People are Addicted to Outrage: Four Ways to Walk a Better Path

Today, everywhere you look you see “treats”—supermarkets filled with fresh cakes and pies, every convenience store displaying an array of snack cakes, honey buns, and donuts. What was once a rare “treat” has become a dietary staple for too many of us, with increased waistlines as evidence.

But a “treat” by definition is something we enjoy only occasionally. Having a piece of cake for your birthday won’t wreck your health. Turning a treat into a staple, whether it’s cake, chips, or fast food, doesn’t put you on the fast track to a healthy mind and body.

Returning to the idea of these sorts of food as an occasional treat is a great way to move toward better health.

Unfortunately, too many of us are doing the same thing to our emotional health we’ve been doing physically. In this case, rather than turning a treat into a staple in our diet, we’re feeding our souls with an unhealthy diet of outrage.

Sure, there’s a time to be unsettled or perhaps even outraged over some things. But outrage has moved from an occasional outburst to a first-response for many it seems.

There's plenty to tempt us to respond this way, given the uncertainty of our times and our divided country. But even this is no excuse to turn outrage into an emotional version of junk food binge eating—it’s too common, mostly unnecessary, and almost never useful. And, it doesn’t change things for the better.

We've become addicted to outrage and it’s killing us.

I wrote Christians in the Age of Outrage: How to Bring Out Our Best When the World’s at Its Worst not to scold Christians for being like the world in our constant sense of outrage.

I wrote it primarily to help us to be at our best in our age of outrage— how we can break the addiction and find a better path forward.

In the book, I talk about how Christians can be at our best today. Rather than seeing our world through the lens of everything that’s broken I argue we should use a lens with four main features. Read More