On Mother’s Day many years ago, I looked out our kitchen window just in time to see a chipmunk eating baby cardinals in the nest outside the window. I screamed for Donn to bring his BB gun, but he was too late. I was furious even though I knew the chipmunk was just following God-given instincts.
A friend once accused me, “You’re always for the underdog, aren’t you?” One would think with that penchant, doing foster care would have been a natural direction for me. (Especially since I’d almost died giving birth to our twins, and we’d decided not to have more children.) However, I’d always resisted the idea of being a foster parent because I didn’t think I could give up the children if the courts returned them to their biological home. Then one day, the Holy Spirit said, “What if God wants you to do foster care?” After that, it was only a matter of time.
When CYS asked us to take 18-year-old Sherry* and her two-year-old son as boarders, my bent to stand up for the underdog surfaced again. She had a boyfriend who often didn’t show up for dates, yet told me with great emotion, “I love Sherry.” One day I’d had enough. “Well you certainly have a strange way of showing it!”
Sherry watched wide-eyed as I gave George** a good-sized piece of my mind. Afterward she said, “I saw a side of you today I’d never seen before.” “I’m like a mother bear when someone messes with her cubs,” I told her. Another time when a mother had endangered her child, I said, “If you ever do anything like this again, I’ll do everything in my power to see that you never have another opportunity.”
James 1:19 tells us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry,” but I believe there is a time and place for being angry, speaking emphatically, and taking action. Especially if we see someone being mistreated by a person or corporation bigger, stronger, and more powerful. Ecclesiastes 3 doesn’t specifically address anger but it does says: “a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace” (Ec. 3:7-8).
I’m told in Nazi Germany, people in a church near railroad tracks sang louder to drown out the screams of the Jews being taken by train to gas chambers at Auschwitz (concentration/extermination) Camp. I wonder if this is one of the examples Edward Burke was thinking of when he said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (and women) to do nothing.”
I get Citizen Magazine, newsletters from American Family Assn., and emails from One Million Moms to keep me informed of rights being violated and evil prospering. Then I send emails, sign petitions, and make phone calls to stand for truth and righteousness in our nation and in our state. We can’t take action if we are uninformed. Donn and I also pray about specific battles because Scripture tells us, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness in high place” (Ephesians 6:12). And “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through the power of God to the pulling down of strongholds” (II Corinthians 10:4).
If we believe as Christians we should always speak softly and agree with everyone, we have been deceived by the enemy of our souls. We serve a God whose Son drove moneychangers and animals out of the temple courtyards when they turned His Father’s house into a den of thieves. Will we be as zealous to take action when we see God being dishonored or “the least of these” being mistreated? Or will we allow evil to triumph by doing nothing?
Forgive us, Father, when we bow down to the god of being nice instead of acting on righteous anger for the sake of your holy name and the least of these. Amen.
*Note: I chose this devotional before I became aware of the circumstances surrounding the death of George Floyd. As I learn more and more of the facts of this case, I am even more convinced that there is, indeed, a time for properly channeled anger.
**Names changed.