Sacred Rage, Holy Love: Reclaiming the Voice of the Living Christ

Delilah Tanner
Jun 29
3 min read

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, “It is written: ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of thieves.” —MT 21:12-13

They tell us to stay calm.

They tell us to be quiet.

They weaponize “peace” against the people bleeding on the ground and “love” against the ones weeping in the street. But real love doesn’t whisper when the world is on fire, it screams. And real peace doesn’t come from silence, it comes from justice.

We are living in a time where the name of Christ is shouted from podiums, wrapped in flags but the actual teachings of Christ: mercy, humility, solidarity with the poor—are mocked or ignored. Some have turned churches into weapons, prayers into propaganda, and pulpits into platforms of cruelty. They call it “righteousness” when it’s really just power wearing a cross.

So what do we do? We get loud.

Not with empty fury. Not with bitterness or hate. But with a holy, grounded rage born from love; the kind Jesus carried when He overturned tables in the temple. The kind that weeps with the mothers of Rafah, Kyiv, Tehran, and Tel Aviv and burns at the feet of billionaires profiting from bloodshed. The kind that walks beside immigrant families into courtrooms and checkpoints—and rages at those too cowardly to show their faces. The kind that cannot, and will not, be silenced by shallow calls for “civility.”

Because faith doesn’t demand politeness. It demands strength; the strength to rise, to speak, and to act when everything around you says to sit down and stay quiet.

So we get loud and stay loud.

Louder than those using His name in blasphemy.

To Be Holy Is to Be Disruptive

Jesus didn’t come to uphold an empire. He didn’t die to maintain comfort. He lived and died as a challenge to unjust power: political, religious, and economic. He stood with the unwanted. He loved the lepers. He embraced the outcasts. And He called out the ones who distorted God’s name for personal gain.

If you’re grieving, exhausted, or furious, you are not outside the faith. You might just be living it more honestly than those quoting scripture to justify state violence.

You are allowed to cry out.

You are allowed to demand better.

You are allowed to say: “Not in His name.”

Beware the Loud Ones Who Preach Hatred

There’s a flip side to this, though. Those who have hijacked Christianity have gotten loud too.

Loud enough to cheer for bombs dropped on civilians.
Loud enough to criminalize poverty and call it “law and order.”
Loud enough to bless politicians who mock compassion as weakness.
Loud enough to ban books, but too quiet to feed the hungry.

They speak Jesus’ name, but not His words. They preach morality but excuse every cruelty. They weaponize the Gospel not to heal, but to divide.

This isn’t new. It’s exactly what Jesus warned us about: wolves in sheep’s clothing. Religious leaders, laity, and politicians who build monuments to the prophets their ancestors murdered. Hypocrites who wash the outside of the cup while the inside is filled with greed and rot.

We know them by their fruit.

And it is rotten.