- People who say Christianity isn’t relevant anymore should consider what would happen if people actually followed Jesus’s teachings here. School shootings, for one, would be a thing of the past.
- Jesus’s audience would have taken it for granted that murder was wrong, and so his main purpose here was to take his listeners deeper into the root of the problem: anger.
- Jesus says that we should rid ourselves of the emotions of anger and hatred before they turn into actions—and that we should even go out of our way to help others not stay angry with us.
- Is there anyone you’re currently angry with? What would it take to resolve that anger in a healthy way?
- Is there anyone you know who’s currently angry with you? Is there anything you could do to resolve it?
- There are a few different options for today’s action challenge. You could go apologize to someone you were mean to. You could go to a therapy session to start processing some of your anger issues. You could take a conflict resolution workshop to learn skills for effectively processing anger (and practice your peacemaker skills). You could even volunteer with an organization that promotes healing from gun violence, like Students Demand Action. Whatever you do, the goal of today’s challenge is to push back against the tide of hatred, anger, and violence in our culture by becoming one less person in whom toxic feelings can grow.