Holy or unholy indignation?

That great Latin American missiologist, Rene Padilla, once wrote, "One does not become a revolutionary through science but through indignation." Simplistic? No, powerfully insightful. The great man went on to say of his native continent, "In Latin America I believe very few people become Marxist because it has intellectual appeal; rather they become Marxist because they see poverty and injustice, they are moved to indignation and they wanted to do something about it". *

I have been reflecting on this as I listened to the family of Abdul Waheed Majid (the British suicide bomber who blew himself up in Syria last week) talk about his desire to do humanitarian work. Did Abdul leave Britain as a radicalised Muslim terrorist or as a compassionate humanitarian volunteer? Is it not just possible that he left his family to go to Syria because he really wanted to care for traumatised families? But what happened next? Was what he saw there so overwhelming that his indignation and revolt demanded a more vigorous response than handing out bottles of water and sticking plasters? Did his indignation find a home in radicalised Islam? When he sat in the cab of that truck-bomb was he still looking for a way to deal with his indignation?  Probably, we will never know the answers to those questions.

But I have another question ... What about holy indignation? Is there enough indignation in the Christian community to radicalise us, to turn us into a powerful, revolutionary, force for the Kingdom? Or is that too dangerous?

* in "Marxism and Christianity" published in "Facing the New Challenges: The message of PACLA" Padilla,R. 1978  page359