The Tyranny of ‘the Rant’

Why it's dangerous to vent your frustrations or rant (even when no one is around to listen)

Photo by Xia Yang on Unsplash

Do you like to rant when you are frustrated and stressed?

Imagine going home from work, where you just had your worst day ever. Instead of being able to enjoy the peace and quiet you hope to have, your parents are lobbying cuss words at each other. They don’t bother asking “have you eaten,” You then enter your room, all alone. You remember how bad your day was, how your boss did not care about your hard work but rather scolded you in front of your peers for a minor mistake. You remember how you tried to get help from your co-workers but they ignored you. You feel this burning anger inside you and all you want to do is to scream loudly about how unfair your boss is or how toxic it is in your workplace. You want to utter words that express your hurt - why instead of finding peace and comfort at home, your parents want to argue more with each other rather than ask how you are doing.

Or, maybe you find it easier to imagine being a teacher coming home from a stressful day of schoolwork. Going home, you know that you have more paperwork to do, paperwork you feel you shouldn’t have to be bringing home. On that same day you remember a parent who told you that you are a no-good teacher, because you were too strict in grading her child’s final essay. And so, as you open your laptop to start on your paperwork, you find yourself holding back tears from your eyes. You feel the urge to express your frustration - for the school administrators who require the paperwork, the tyrannical parents and the child who knew better than to be a tell-all to her mother. And so you start ranting, complaining, expressing your frustration, slamming the paperwork you brought (while avoiding hitting the laptop, as you still have 6 months to pay for it).

Or, imagine one of your siblings bringing home her live-in partner into your family home for the 6th month. For the past 5 months, you have been patient with her, constantly reminding her and pleading with her not to do so. Yet because you are a Christian and she is not, you try to stay calm and be polite every time you are in front of her. However, when you are alone in your room, you vent your frustration through those expressive and frustrative laden sounds such as tsk,tsk, haaaay, kainis!

In situations where you are stressed, hurt, or suffering - isn’t it permissible, even necessary to vent your frustration? Is it alright to vent your frustration about a person or situation when no one is around to listen? Is it permissible to rant about someone who has caused harm and stress to you?

For some of you, your answer is yes, right? After all, what’s the harm with ranting when no one is around? Isn’t it alright since no one is around to listen, and my ranting won’t count as gossip or slander? Isn’t it permissible to rant since all I’m doing is releasing the stress that is built up in me? If I don’t rant, I’m afraid that my stress will not go away, and that my hypertension may build up!

Not only that, you may feel that ranting is permissible, and even right, because it is how you become true to your self. Your authenticity is at stake when you rant. If you are inauthentic (meaning if you pretend that you are fine but deep down you are angry) you are at the very least dishonest with yourself, and at worse, setting yourself up for bitterness - if you don’t release your anger through ranting. In short, we tend to believe that inauthenticity leads to hypocrisy or deep-seated bitterness - and ranting enables us to be authentic with what we feel.

But does it really do so? Does ranting make you better or make you worse?

Ranting, in it’s essence, is evil, and so is it’s effect. Think about the Israelites who grumbled and murmured in their 40 years in the wilderness. If ranting is justified, they will be the ones who would have the right to rant. After all, they suffered much under the heat, the insecurity of not having your own land, and the perilous journey filled with scorpions, hunger, and the occasional Amalekites. Yet, why did God showed His anger on them whenever their ranted? Why did He not say “I understand your pain,” when they wanted to go back to Egypt and murmured and complained. The answer: ranting is sinful because it tyrannically destroys us. So how is ranting tyrannically destructive for you?

Ranting leads to hurtful, sinful words.

When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
    but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

Proverbs 10:19

Speaking many words leads to an abundance of sins and destruction, as it is written, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking.” According to this passage, one significant way you are abundant with careless words is when you rant. Your rant in effect, produces words that are harmful and hurtful.

You know this to be true don’t you? Have you not spoken much words in the middle of the rant that you regretted saying? Do you remember the arguments you had with your wife where you said painful and hurtful words that you cannot take back? Do you remember the times you ranted about how your church mate is a hypocrite and he found out about it because his best friend heard you in the middle of your rant?

Your rant also produces unfair characterizations regarding another person. Surely in your rant you don’t merely release animal noises or manly grunts. In your rants alone in your room, you describe the supposedly evil and deficient characteristics of the person you are ranting about.

Even if you are ranting to yourself, do you not blast off demeaning adjectives and adverbs that shape your long-term perception about that someone you are angry with? If someone whom you asked to pay back the money he loaned is not paying you past the due date, do you not start demeaning his character and thinking him as an unfaithful person? Then you find out that he has actually paid you and you merely forgot to check his chat message to you. Did you not regret blasting off such mischaracterizations of a person simply because you want to vent?

Does this mean that if someone did something wrong or someone made me angry, I would have to just bear with it and hide my anger? No, you should not. Just one verse before, in verse 18, the Bible calls the one who conceals his hatred as a liar - not a good label to have. So what do I do instead? Well, Jesus has given us clear instructions: go to the person face-to-face and confront his wrong on the matter. Tell it to him or her yourself. Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” (Matthew 18:15).

Words matter. They matter because they shape the way how people connect and relate with a person. Venting frustrations can harm and hurt a person by destroying the person’s reputation among those who hear you rant. It can also lead you to treat the person unfairly, solely judging him by your rants about him. Ranting about a person’s foolishness, laziness, hypocrisy, and unfaithfulness irresponsibly will lead to unnecessary hurt and broken relationships.

Worse, however, is the reality that rants do not foster peace and forgiveness, but rather they make one deeply bitter over time.

Ranting leads to uncured bitterness

Name a person who often rants and is the most happy and content person you know.

You can’t right? It’s ok if you can’t, because there is none.

The greatest tyranny of ranting that controls the life of the one who rants is that he becomes deeply bitter over time. The rants don’t cure the person’s bitterness nor does it give him wisdom to resolve the problem he is bitter about in the first place.

For example: suppose a school teacher is stressed with her supervising teacher who keeps on passing all the nitty-gritty paperwork to her, citing that she has her masters thesis to work on. The school teacher may sit with her other co-workers after work and rant about how unfair this Masters student co-teacher is. She may cry “unfair!” over the fact that both of them are busy in their life after work, so why should she be the one to bear the burden of the paperwork when she is also busy with her other part-time job of making a school curriculum. The school teacher may also choose to not rant in front of her colleagues, choosing instead to rant to her boyfriend, or even alone in her room. After her long-winded rant, she claims that she is relieved as she has let off the built-up steam of anger in her head.

The next day, however, her supervising teacher approaches her and passes more paperwork this time. What is she most likely to do?

1. Will she happily receive the extra paperwork because she is no longer stressed, having released the stress through her rants the night before?

2. Will she confront her co-teacher calmly and firmly, explaining to her in a kind but firm tone that she cannot take the paperwork as she also has errands to do after work?

3. Will she accept the workload given to her (maybe with a fake smile) and then continue to rant later to her colleagues, her boyfriend, or to the fly on her wall?

Though answers 1 and 2 are a possibility, the one who rants will most likely choose option number 3. Why? The one who rants would prefer to be bitter about a person rather than resolve that bitterness.

At the core of the one who always rants, she is more concerned with maintaining a moral superiority over the oppressor than deal with the oppression. She is more concerned with playing the victim rather than finding victory over the main problem. She is more concerned with adding fuel for her bitterness and anger, only in order to prove her characterization of the person she is angry with.

In this case, the school teacher will go home and rant, why? Because she would rather be proven right all along that her supervising teacher has a character of a lazy terrorist who enjoys passing responsibility to others rather than doing the hard work. By accepting the paperwork, she wants to prove that she is the victim, that she is kawawa. By ranting about it later, she wants to prove that her bitterness towards her supervising teacher is justified.

The problem is, the bitterness doesn’t solve her problem, it merely hardens her problem like concrete.

The school teacher will go to work and interact with her supervising teacher. All the while she will refuse to listen to her advices, as she perceives herself as morally superior. She will refuse to be humble and receive correction, because all her supervisor’s actions are filtered with bad motives toward her. In short, she will remain bitter, and keep getting bitter - as long as she keeps ranting.

What then should I do to avoid a darkening bitterness?

First, stop ranting.

When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
    but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

Proverbs 10:19

Ranting doesn’t help. It aggravates the problem. Restraining your lips however, enables prudence. Prudence is wisdom. It is having a clear mind to make a clear and right judgment that is not led by your emotions. Ranting does not allow you to have a clear mind. It passes the blame from you to the other person. If the other person is to be blamed, then you will feel you don’t need to work on anything. Not working on anything does not move you from problem to solution.

So stop ranting. Stop it!

Second, take responsibility.

You may not be responsible for the other person’s sins and wrongdoings, but you are responsible for your own sins and wrongdoing.

The problem with the school teacher in the example above is not just that she was ranting. It was also that she was choosing to talk about the supervisor’s problems rather than talk to the supervisor about her problems. She did not move toward a solution, she moved towards keeping the problem at large and complaining about it.

Similarly, there may be a time you were offended and deeply hurt by your church friend. What is the right thing to do? What is taking responsibility? Taking responsibility is not ignoring the wrong and feigning fellowship while letting your anger simmer deep in your heart. The right thing is not staying silent and hope that your anger will subside over time. The right, biblical thing to do is to confront your brother in Christ, being honest about how you feel, and work towards a solution.

Thus, instead of ranting, take responsibility. Go talk to the person who offended you. Be honest, be open, but also be willing to listen to the person.

Third, cast your cares to God.

There are cases where after confronting, the person will not listen to you. If the person is hard-hearted, an unbeliever¹, and no change has happened even after you have attempted to do the right thing, then do the next right thing: cast your burden to God.

casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

Kyle Idleman in explaining 1 Peter 5:7, describes casting your care to God as transferring ownership of your burden to God. It involves praying but is not merely praying. It is approaching God as a young boy carrying a heavy bag would approach his father and say “Father, would you please carry this?” When the child says that word, he lets go of his bag to the hands of his father and walks with his father - all the while, his father is the one carrying the bag.

When you cast your hurt, your pain, your anger, your bitterness to God, you won’t have any time nor opportunity to rant or vent your frustration. Why? Because He cares for you and the burden and frustration is no longer in your hands. It’s in His.

So, stop ranting, take responsibility, and cast your frustrations to God.

Stop the tyranny of ranting in your life.

1. If the person is a believer and member of the church and he did something wrong and sinful, go and bring another witness, and if it doesn’t work, go and tell to the elders of your church (Matt. 18:15-20).