​GRACE NOTES - CAUGHT IN THE MACHINE: HOW OUTRAGE SHAPES OUR SOULS

You just wanted to check the news. Maybe glance at your feed. See what’s happening out there. But five minutes later, your jaw is tight. Your heart’s racing. You’re angry. Again. And not just abstractly angry, but specific-person-in-your-head, real-words-you-want-to-say angry.

Why does this keep happening?
Because it works. Because rage pays off.

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​The internet isn’t neutral. It’s not just a mirror of what’s already out there. It’s a magnifier. And in the world of social media, outrage is one of the most profitable things going. It fuels clicks, comments, and shares. It keeps us engaged. It keeps us scrolling. The longer we stay, the more ads we see. The more engagement a post gets, the more it gets pushed into our feeds. And the more outrageous it is, whether political, religious, or even just petty, the more it spreads.

If we’re angry, we stay. If we stay, they get paid.

And little by little, this begins to form us. Not just in our opinions, but in our instincts. We’re being shaped to expect conflict, to assume the worst, to meet every disagreement with suspicion or disgust. That’s not just mental fatigue. That’s soul formation.

We start to live in a posture of reaction. Rarely reflection. Our inner world gets noisier. Our patience gets thinner. Our capacity for grace shrinks. And over time, we forget what it feels like to actually listen, to be still, to trust.

And of course, we bring all of that into our churches.

Because formation doesn’t stay online. It shows up in our relationships, our patterns, our prayers. It lingers in our meetings, our hallway conversations, our hesitations. Suspicion, defensiveness, division. These things aren’t just “out there” anymore. They start living among us. We begin to assume enemies where there are only neighbors. We grow cautious, sometimes even combative, without always realizing why.

But the church isn’t meant to mimic the world’s anxiety. It’s meant to offer something different. Something deeper. Slower. More rooted.

That kind of formation doesn’t happen by accident. We can’t be spiritually formed by the rage machine all week and expect to be grounded in grace for an hour on Sunday. Something has to shift.

Not a quick media detox. Not disengagement. But real, intentional formation. With people.

Because the counter-formation, the one shaped by the Spirit, has to happen in community. In relationship. In actual shared life.

This fall, we’ll be opening space for that kind of formation: small groups, women’s and men’s groups, circles of grace and conversation. Not to add more noise to life, but to offer something quieter and deeper. A chance to grow together in faith, in trust, in life shared.

Grace doesn’t go viral. But it does take root.
And it changes us.

​So maybe the better question isn’t just, “Why am I so angry all the time?”

Maybe it’s this:
Who’s forming us right now?
And who’s walking with us on the way?

Peace,
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community