There is nothing new in Christians falling short of the high demands of Christianity. What may be more surprising is that some prominent Christians are now explicitly rejecting Christian precepts.

“Christians must learn to hate again,” proclaimed the Reverend Joel Webbon, pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Texas.

“This is not the time for love and peace,” declared the Reverend Douglas Wilson, senior minister of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

Stephanie McCrummen offers these examples of increasingly militant Christian rhetoric in an article published last September in The Atlantic. These Christians use Scripture (Psalm 139 in Rev. Webbon’s case, Ecclesiastes 3 for Rev. Wilson) to support the idea that we should be stoking rage and demonizing our opposition—be they political, religious or cultural. For at least some portion of Christian America, hatred of enemies seems perfectly compatible with discipleship.

We might be tempted to dismiss this as a Protestant problem. But incendiary language can be found in Catholic spaces, too. 

There is a prophetic component of Christianity that occasionally finds expression in strong scriptural language (see “You brood of vipers…” in Mt 12:34). However, we must weigh these instances against the mountain of verses that counsel us to love our enemies (Mt 5:38-42), to eschew angry and insulting words (Mt 5:21-26), to leave vengeance and judgment to God (Mt 5:38-42, Rom 12:14-21), to worry about our own sins before those of others (Mt 7:1-5), and to prioritize acts of charity, not acts of cultural warfare (Mt 25:31-46). 

Add to these the example of Jesus himself, who forgave the people who humiliated, tortured and executed him. Take the totality of Scripture, and any assertion that God wants us to hate—or even that he excuses our hatred—is ludicrous.

What accounts for the cherry-picking of Christian texts for verses that, taken out of context, seem to condone hatred? Some of it is simply our broken humanity. We are chasing the high that comes with being convinced of our rightness and of our enemy’s villainy, and we are seeking a way to square that primal urge with our stated values.

But there is another exacerbating factor: a media ecosystem that benefits from our rage. Social media platforms like Facebook, X and TikTok are designed to maximize engagement at any cost. Since anger draws eyeballs, our social media companies deliberately promote divisive content, knowing that their profits will increase in proportion to the anger of their users. We are spending hefty portions of each day scrolling through feeds designed to enrage us—not to inform us, connect us or fulfill us.

This internet-fueled anger pervades both sides of the political spectrum, and Christians are not the only people who fall prey to it. As a Christian myself, though, I find the tendency to link rage and Jesus particularly troubling. To pursue an agenda of retribution and vindictiveness in defiance of God’s law is bad enough. To do so in his name, to distort his word in service of our own worst impulses, constitutes a heartbreaking idolatry and possibly a sin against the Holy Spirit.

In this environment, Catholics should seek to mitigate the damage done to Jesus’ name and teaching by spearheading a digital temperance movement.

Just as the original temperance movement, beginning in the 19th century, sought to address social ills by swearing off an addiction—alcohol—a digital temperance movement would seek to eliminate from our lives all the addictive technologies and platforms that stoke our anger. A digital temperance movement would practice the following principles.

Cut off social media. Cold turkey. Social media is to our minds and spirits what cigarettes are to our bodies.

Are there benefits to using social media? Of course there are. But as the technology reporter Cal Newport points out in his book Deep Work, we do not choose tools for their benefits only; we choose them for their benefits in relation to their costs. The paltry benefits of social media do not outweigh their costs: our well-being; our capacity to engage in meaningful work; and our ability to understand, articulate and live out the teachings of Jesus. Viewed in this light, what is social media but a cancer? Cut it out, and never look back—at least not unless and until platforms develop algorithms that nurture our tranquility.

Question your righteous anger—or at least, your response to it. There is a time for righteous anger as a motivating force for change. But righteous anger should not be treated as a license to dispense with Jesus’ teachings on peace, love and forgiveness. It is precisely when we are angry that Jesus’ most challenging teachings about forgiveness and love become most important. Ammon Hennacy of the Catholic Worker is credited with quipping, “Being a pacifist between wars is like being a vegetarian between meals.”

If your honest answer to the question “When is it a time for war?” is “Whenever I feel like waging one,” you should question your methods for determining when violence or verbal abuse is justified according to Christian priniciples.

Don’t overlook lies, logical lapses and lack of charity from your own side. When someone with whom we agree is justly accused of poor behavior or faulty argument, we often feel tempted to engage in “whataboutism”—to counter-accuse our opponent instead of dealing with legitimate criticism. But we can’t turn a blind eye to sin or sophistry from our ideological compatriots. To do so is hypocritical and breeds an atmosphere of distrust. We have no hope of reaching common ground if the rules of engagement are constantly changing, depending on who is playing. Do not convince yourself that your cause is more important than truth, decency or fairness (Lk 6:31).

Stop generalizing about your perceived opponents. It is hard enough, as Christians, to love our enemies. We don’t need willfully to expand our definitions of who counts as an enemy and to what degree. If a single person commits an act of political violence, we should not ascribe that individual’s choices to half of America. If someone disagrees with us about abortion or immigration or liturgical matters, we can disagree passionately without demonizing that person. We should be able to fight for our values without denying our opponents’ humanity or reducing them to a caricature.

Do not reward content that enrages you. Make a conscious choice to resist anger-fueling clickbait in favor of…anything else. Spend time in nature. Read ennobling literature. Learn to samba. Just don’t spend your time joining the latest social media pile-on or scrolling through a feed full of videos about your side “owning” or “destroying” the opposition.

Hang out with people in real life. Seek to meet those with whom you don’t agree—online if you must, but especially in the physical world. The anonymity of the internet creates what is known as the “online disinhibition effect,” our tendency to be meaner on the web than we would be in person. Meeting people IRL helps ensure that we connect with people as people rather than as internet trolls.

Extracting oneself from the vice grip of social media addiction is certainly difficult in this digital age. But Christianity has always been countercultural (Lk 1:46-55), and it has never been easy (Mt 7:13-14). 

Tech companies are making fortunes from our anger and anxiety. Jesus’ message is being warped in the process. We can all refuse to be party to our own manipulation. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Jesus.

[For another view, read “How Gen Z Catholicism is growing in the digital age.”]

Elizabeth Desimone has an MFA in fiction from Oklahoma State University. Her work has appeared in Busted Halo and Cricket magazines.