violence of the soul

There have been times recently and times not so recently when I became extremely angry.  Anger is a regular part of my day to day existence.  I do handle anger differently than most, I think.  I get nauseous, shaky, and filled with adrenaline.  I lose my appetite, and it's hard to focus.  I usually call one of my best friends and rant.  I scare myself when I'm angry.  My words made audible are a dangerous force, mostly because the anger is allowed to take up residence in my soul.  Those with whom I'm angry rarely if ever find out that I'm angry with them.  I refuse to tell them.  Maintaining relationships is one of the things I value most in life, and I hate confrontation.  So I call a friend, I rant and rave.  I listen to my music very loud, I play piano louder and faster than normal.  Before long the anger dissolves into sadness.  Incredible anger-filled sadness.  A sadness that overcomes me and makes "faking it" almost impossible.  I retreat into myself.  I blog.  And I pray.

Tonight I am angry because of the pain in the world.  I am angry because we hurt each other.  I am angry because people are okay with the fact that we hurt each other.  I am angry that we use violence, both verbal and physical, to win.  I'm angry that we need to fight.  That we need to win.

I'm a pacifist.

It's a lonely pacifism.  I'd be hard pressed to find those in a military town who agree with me.  But I'd also be lying if I said I'm at all okay with violence.  Violence scares me.  It's destructive and unrestrained.  If it's restrained it's calculated and cunning.  I believe that there are times in this world when violence is the only answer remaining to hold back unrestrained evil.  But I believe that violence, when necessary, should always be accompanied by sorrow and brokenness before God.  Violence, when directed at our fellow humans, is nothing other than the direct result of our brokenness.

It occurs to me, though, that my anger is so often not-so-restrained violence.  Maybe not the physical kind, but at the least the kind that results in my saying things that are intended to harm, to cut deep.  And this violence of the soul comes from the same thing that exists in all of us, the thing that believes ourselves right, that believes we must fight and win, that survival instinct, that protective instinct.

I'm an extremely aggressive person (although not in the physical sense).  This scares me.  It scares me because I believe that which drives me to "win" is the same thing that drives so much of physical violence and aggression in our world.  Where I fight with words, some of my brothers and sisters fight with fists, knives, or guns.  Where my brothers and sisters fight a visible war, I fight an insidiously destructive and invisible war of wits.  This is no more okay than embracing physical violence.

And so a conversation tonight about violence reminded me of the violence that lurks in my heart, the violence that threatens to destroy me and those around me each and every day.  The violence from which God sent his son Jesus to redeem me.

God forgive me.

May I lay down my arms.  May I give up the fight.  May I learn to love and to sacrifice and to bring peace into my world, because that is what Jesus came to do.  That is my calling.