Where I live, social media is all of a flutter. The local news has run stories about the “local outrage”. What malevolent ill have the local council visited upon us? They have cut down a tree. Not an especially nice tree. Not even a particularly old tree. In fact, a tree that was causing a lot of damage to the pavement and the road. But oh my goodness, some people are mad!

That, of course, comes hot on the heels of locals having been moaning for years about the roads. Buses blocking the main artery in our area, traffic congestion at peak hours, pot holes and road surfaces left unaddressed. That led the council, in conjunction with Transport for Greater Manchester, to start works to improve the road. They are creating dedicated bays for buses, making the pavement wider, removing ugly railings and replacing them with planters and generally improving things. But, you guessed it, having whinged about the state of the area, people are now whinging about the upgrades insisting first they are unnecessary (having moaned they were previously necessary) and also making hay with the inevitable (temporary) congestion caused by the works.

Perhaps peak pointless moaning came after years of complaints on housing shortages. With various plans to build more houses struck down by locals because they would build on greenbelt land, the council identified a set of brownfield sites for housing. Cue more moaning about the disruption to the area and complaints that, in the set of houses built on derelict and abandoned land near the town centre that was previously an eyesore and now replaced with some perfectly smart housing, ‘who would want to live there!’ The moan seemed to be that we need more houses but we object to you putting them anywhere and are very angry at any disruption building them might cause and yet if my children have nowhere to live locally that is also the council’s fault. It is quite incredible.

This outpouring of local anger is par for the course in my area. I love Oldham and its people, but Oldhammers are world-class moaners. Particularly when it comes to local government. I don’t presume for one minute to suggest that the local council is perfect. In fact, right now, they can’t even elect a leader amongst themselves. But it is also the case that a certain kind of Oldhammer is never pleased. The council could get a list of grievances, address them all as requested and people would still moan about whatever they did. We now have parties in local government who thrive on stoking this kind of discontent and amplifying every local gripe. The politics of grievance is strong here.

Increasingly, this doesn’t seem to be an issue confined to Oldham either. Everywhere you turn, people are busy complaining about something. I am amazed at the frothing rage of some people over the most trivial matters. There is an entire Facebook group dedicated to poking fun at Angry People in Local Newspapers getting worked up over minutiae, often standing next to a mildly rotten fence, pointing and pulling a sad face.

Christians, it seems, are not immune either. Only yesterday, I posted about folk getting worked up over a fictional lion not being represented as they had imagined when they previously read a book. But most days I read something in the Christian press or blogs that insists we are facing an unprecedented crisis of some sort or other. The tone is always alarmist and rarely far away from suggesting there is a new and serious threat to the existence of the church and its operations. That isn’t to suggest those things are never problems, but most of them prove not to be the threat they are presented as being. Certainly, these alarms seem to be raised on a weekly, sometimes even daily, basis. The impression given is that the church is in a perpetual state of existential crisis and Christians are somehow failing if they are not in some sort of perma-crisis mode. The effect of this is to do little but create a great deal of fear, anxiety and burn out for an already tired people. It is exhausting.

I just think we would do well to chill out a bit.

This became a bit of a theme of my ministry and writing over recent years. It seems we just have it in us to get worked up, het up, upset, concerned, agitated and angry in ways that do absolutely nothing to serve our good or wellbeing. I spent a lot of time with Muslims under the cosh of an Islamic system that dictated their every waking action, with stern people consistently telling them that they were not up to scratch. I do not think any honest reading of the bible would lead us to the view that Jesus wants anything close to something similar for us.

Jesus was quite clear about his yoke being easy and his burden light. The gospel was intended for joy. Pushing back against the legalism that quickly crept back in was a repeated theme of the New Testament. It was a blight on the church throughout its history. The Reformation was, to all intents and purposes, a movement aiming at restoring the joy of the gospel to those who had found themselves back under the cosh of legalistic religion. How sad it is, then, when Reformed believers end up creating their own legalism, their own burdens and yokes, that are not at all light like the one Jesus promises us.

Rage bait is a joy-killer. Rage bait is a burden-creator. Rage bait is a heavy yoke demanding a particular response that lays guilt upon those who refuse to froth with anger or existential concern. It often denies the sovereignty of God in reality and overstates the reach and authority of the church so that God’s people find themselves and their response to events as the ultimate saviours of the church. Rather than resting in Christ, they find themselves consumed with fear and relying on their particular response in order to save the church. Any who do not join in the existential crisis-mode are deemed minimally foolish or naïve, but often find themselves on the receiving end of more anger still – don’t these dolts realise that we have to do something to save the church, the country or to stand up to whatever the latest political or cultural crisis might be!

More often than not, however, these are not things Jesus has specifically asked us to do. They often do not rely on God’s sovereignty or the work of the Holy Spirit. They are more interested in creating a fear response in us than a trust response in God and the actual saviour of the church, Jesus.They also tend to lack perspective. The latest cultural issue is deemed the issue of the day, the issue we must all rage about, the issue we must act politically over or die. Except, the church has historically been through far worse, with far fewer levers to pull, and the gates of Hell still failed to prevail against it because it is Jesus who builds his church and it is God who protects it.

What is more, the product of this fear-mongering, rage bait, culture warrior stuff is never joy. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who has been made happier engaging in this stuff. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who has become so much more evidently christlike since they began engaging this stuff. I have seen plenty who become more angry, frightened, obnoxious or just heavy-laden. The end product is not the joy that Jesus wants for his people, which suggests this probably isn’t what the Lord wants us consumed with all of the time. However else we cut it, getting worked up about felled trees and the voice of fictional lions probably isn’t going to lead to the abundant life promised us in Christ. Which, in short, suggests we probably ought to chill out a bit and rest a bit more in the Lord Jesus.