Rage and Goodness
Thursday, July 24, 2025
Theologian Meggan Watterson describes the source of what she calls “sacred rage”:
There’s a rage that gives us clarity about when our boundaries are being crossed, a rage that gives us critical information that we’re in danger, that someone is harming us or someone we love. There’s a rage that demonstrates to us how interconnected we are, for example when we feel rage while witnessing an injustice….
Seeing George Floyd murdered was something we all witnessed collectively because seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier refused to leave his side, refused to listen to the police officers who told her to move on, and instead remained, and filmed on her iPhone the murder that would reignite social justice movements all over the globe. This form of rage is sacred. It’s a rage that clarifies what we care most about in this world, about what we will put our bodies on the line to stand up for. The distinction is that we let this sacred rage motivate us into action, but when we act we move from love.
Watterson compares sacred rage with rage that seeks to cause harm.
It’s the rage of revenge. The rage of trying to get even. It’s the rage of an endless cycle of retaliation. It’s the rage that can compel us to act in ways we will regret for the rest of our lives, or that will cost us our lives or someone else’s. It’s the rage that refuses mercy. It’s the rage that keeps us up at night locked in a horrific egoic struggle going over again and again a betrayal, a terrible wrong someone has caused us.
And it’s a rage that thinks it’s right…. That we have every right to cause harm to someone who has harmed us. That we have every right to get all caught up in the ego, in our own tiny window of perception about some person, that we get to take our rage out on them.
Watterson affirms our inherent goodness as the source of both rage and healing:
Rage and goodness are not mutually exclusive. Rage is often necessary in order to draw fierce boundaries when we or those we love or those we feel connected to are being harmed. And rage is necessary to remind us of our innate goodness. We’re angry because we are good, because we recognize, we know innately, what is good. Rage, like a slow controlled burn, can fuel and inform us….
Rage is information. Rage is not an action plan. Rage holds no answers for what’s next. And it can quickly galvanize action. Yet, if we act only from that rage, if we move the way rage wants us to move, we will cause harm to ourselves and others. So when we go to take action, we must first intentionally return to love. Rage informs us about what we love, and love moves us to act in ways only love knows.
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Anthony Parrott
God’s Ridiculous, Indiscriminate Love
What the Parable of the Sower Teaches About Grace
Photo by Zoe Richardson / Unsplash
There’s something absolutely beautiful about the way God loves, and it’s perfectly captured in Jesus’s parable of the sower in Mark 4. Picture this farmer who just throws seeds everywhere—on the path, in the rocks, among the weeds, on the good soil. His agricultural technique is questionable at best. Any farming instructor would probably give him an F for seed conservation.
But that’s exactly the point.
The sower doesn’t pre-select which ground gets the good seed. He’s not running soil samples first or checking pH levels. He’s just flinging the grace of God around like confetti at a wedding. This is what theologians call prevenient grace—God’s love reaching everyone before they even know they need it. Not just the elect, not just some chosen few, but literally everyone gets seeds.
In a world where we’re constantly sorting people into categories—worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving, insiders and outsiders—God’s approach is radically different. Divine love isn’t parceled out based on merit or predetermined worthiness. It’s broadcast indiscriminately, extravagantly, almost wastefully.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He explains that The Satan—the accuser, the one who lies and deceives—immediately swoops in to steal this good word from some people. How many of us have heard the good news and then had thoughts creep into our minds: “Nah, that’s not me. I’m too messed up.” Or maybe we’ve been taught lies that God is actually a vengeful cosmic killjoy just waiting to smite us. That’s the work of the accuser.
These lies are insidious because they sound so reasonable. They masquerade as humility or theological sophistication. But they’re actually theft—stealing away the very grace that God has freely scattered in our direction.
Jesus makes an especially pointed comment about the thorny ground, where money and the pursuit of it actively chokes out spiritual growth. In a culture that treats bank accounts like report cards from heaven, Jesus says wealth is actually a spiritual hazard, an active impediment to spiritual flourishing.
You simply cannot serve both God and money, as Jesus says elsewhere. The thorns don’t just coexist with the good seed; they actively strangle it.
Grace That Multiplies
So what separates the people who get the parable from those who don’t? Jesus makes it clear that the differentiating factor is curiosity. The disciples get closer to Jesus. They ask questions, they lean in, they want to understand. The people on the outside are those who think they already know everything.
Certainty kills curiosity, and curiosity might just be one of God’s love languages. The moment we think we have God figured out, we stop listening. The moment we assume we understand how grace works, we stop marveling at its wildness.
The beautiful thing about good soil isn’t some sort of genetic spiritual lottery. It’s about staying curious, asking questions, and being willing to let God’s ridiculous, indiscriminate love take root in your life. And when it does, grace becomes reproductive.
When God’s love takes hold in your life, it doesn’t just sit there like a trophy on a shelf. It multiplies. Grace creates more grace, more love, more fruit that feeds others. The whole point of grace being received is that it becomes grace that’s given.
In a world obsessed with scarcity and competition, God’s economy operates on abundance and multiplication. The more grace we give away, the more we have. The more love we share, the more love grows. It’s the only investment strategy that’s truly bulletproof—because it’s backed not by market forces, but by the inexhaustible generosity of God.
