Stephen Slater, a JetBlue flight attendant until yesterday, is now a folk hero of sorts. The 38-year-old from Queens apparently flew off the handle when an abusive passenger verbally attacked him as the aircraft they were on approached the gate at JFK in New York City. Slater’s reaction to the abuse has become comic fodder for the late-night comedians. He made an announcement directed at the rude passenger over the aircraft’s PA system and then deployed the emergency chute, exiting the plane in dramatic fashion, but not before grabbing a couple of beers from the galley.
I am just as amused by Slater’s antics as the next person. Charged with some serious felonies, he now faces up to seven years imprisonment, and there is a lot of talk via various social media about organizing a defense fund for him. But when I stopped laughing, I asked myself if the rage Slater must have felt is a symptom of something else. With the seemingly frequent incidences of rage that we read about in the news, I wonder just what it is that we are all so angry about.
As a pastor, I have come to believe that my role is often that of an anxiety manager, both mine and the people I serve. In his monumental work Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman provides some genuine wisdom about the complex relationships involved in the management of religious institutions. Essentially, says Friedman, congregants who complain about the performance of their clergy person are rarely honest with themselves about the real reasons they are angry. Worse yet, the role family processes play in such a setting allow congregants to treat their pastor or rabbi less civilly than most others with whom they come in contact. It is an occupational hazard, I suppose.
Putting aside the unique nature of the clergy-congregant relationship, I submit there are some generalizations that also apply to social life in general. As an observer of human activity, I have watched as some helpless public servant is brutalized by a patron over a seemingly small thing. I have been the victim of road rage because someone cut me off in traffic and then proceeded to make an obscene gesture at me, and one time, even threatened to kick my a– if I uttered any words in my own defense. I am always bewildered when something like that happens. What are we so angry about?
I suggest that it has to do with a feeling of impotence over our lives, and perhaps we ought to pause to recollect that such is a part of the human condition. The truth is that ultimately we do not have control over much, and flying off the handle at those who serve us will not change that. It’s kind of what Job discovered after he had challenged and even cursed God for the misfortunes that befell him.
Then Job answered the Lord: ‘I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:1-3, NRSV).
My personal translation of the above passage is something like this: “I have been talking without knowing what I’m talking about.” Stephen Slater’s reaction was reminiscent of that character in the film Network, who declares, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” I am not suggesting that Slater’s troubles were Job-like, but he–like all of us–should remember that we are not in charge of much. Anxiety is never welcome, but it is a part of life. Its power over us stems from our existential suspicion that the future cannot be known and that we have little ability to alter it.
I am content to believe that though I cannot know–or control–the future, God is already there. I have to remember that when I am tempted to lash out at someone who is trying to help me.
Raising Basileia 