Resenting Peace
General Conference Debrief–
Elder Cook’s talk on being a peaceable follower of Christ, despite what you’d think, was not about going around being nonviolent. It was about the problem of evil and what to do about it.
He suggests that the best solution to struggling with why something bad happened to you is accepting the peace Christ offers. Answers help, but the real solution is peace.
Telling on myself here, this reminds me of an experience I’ve had from time to time. Something genuinely unjust will happen to me and I am justly angry at the people who did it. Then I will feel my anger evaporating and the Spirit offering me peace. And I resent it. I don’t want to be at peace. I am right to be angry. Away with all this officious interference.
So it seems that peace is actually something we have to decide to accept, and the choice is not easy nor automatic. To the extent that figuring out why matters–once I am at peace I discover that it usually doesn’t–it is only when I have first accepted peace that I can accept the explanation.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
bruce g charlton
November 28, 2023
@G. “Something genuinely unjust will happen to me and I am justly angry at the people who did it. Then I will feel my anger evaporating and the Spirit offering me peace. And I resent it. I don’t want to be at peace. I am right to be angry.”
I would interpret this as an illustration of the fact that anger is Not a sin; but resentment Is a sin – and indeed one of the worst.
(Especially nowadays; when some forms of resentment – e.g that embodied in socialism, feminism, antiracism, sexual identity politics – is top-down encouraged, and indeed socially and economically rewarded.)
My interpretation is that what you felt at first was anger; what you describe after you had rejected what you term “peace” was anger turning into resentment (or, at least, the temptation for this to happen).
You also illustrate that while anger is spontaneous, resentment is a choice.
Good stuff!
G.
November 28, 2023
Bruce,
Very sound. I think you are right
seriouslypleasedropit
November 28, 2023
>I would interpret this as an illustration of the fact that anger is Not a sin; but resentment Is a sin – and indeed one of the worst.
Wow, this makes a lot of sense. Thank you!