We all get so offended.
We are offended when people don’t talk to us. And then when they do, we are offended by how they talk to us. We are offended by how people dress and why people do the things they do. We are offended by the government and our neighbors and elementary school teachers who deal with our stubborn, undisciplined kids all day. We are offended by the news and by books and by professors. We take offense to any opinion differing from ours, as if having that opinion is direct opposition against us, personally.
We all take offense so easily, over any little thing we please. Because we have the right to free speech, right? Because no one can tell me how to feel! Because this is what I believe and everything will go to hell if everyone doesn’t know it right this very second.
We are humans and we have a spirit of offense so deeply engrained in us. Or maybe another phrase for it is fear of not being heard. Because we are an angry and hurt people who don’t have the slightest clue what the right medicine is.
See, the whole reason we get offended is because first, we want people to hear us. But then our anger and hurt muddies our perception. Satan takes one seemingly simple sentence and works it over in our minds until we are just LIVID. And suddenly our offense has caused us to assume motives based on preconceived notions mixed with a pit full of lies. And our anger and offense ruins any chance of meaningful conversation or revelation because now Satan’s got us convinced we have to defend instead of speak, preserve instead of trust.
I’d like to use a few key examples from recent events, not to draw out any arguments on the events themselves, but merely to look at the offense taken in each.
I had just finished serving dinner at the Salvation Army with my roommates when I got in my car to go home. Not ten minutes prior had the announcement of Robin Williams’ death gone global. Every radio station was talking about it. My twitter feed was covered in quotes from his movies and my Instagram was littered with his goofy smile and outlandish characters.
It was sweet and it was kind and it did his life justice, I felt. People loved that Robin made them laugh, but within that laughter, there was a genuineness that radiated from him. An authentic, hurting man, just like the rest of us, trying to fill the void, and unsuccessfully at that.
But when it was finally confirmed that suicide had been his end, things went south real quick.
It seemed like everyone took to social media, debating and subtweeting about the horrible, tragic way of leaving this world. Some claimed its horror and selfishness, while others jumped to defend the sufferers’ lives and death. People were offended by certain phrases or pictures or thoughts.
And I didn’t want to look at my newsfeed all day because everyone was waltzing around gloating in their offense, making sure everyone knew where they stood and why they stood there and someone should dare challenge them from their stance and are we in a 17th century duel?
So we heard, with embittered veils, the offense, the hurt, the truth masked by pain and the lies masked by pretty words. And the statuses faded out. Most people got all worked up about it, wrote their loud and proud little opinionated post, and then in the days after the likes and the comments and the boiling blood subsided, went back to normal life, never attending to the anger simmering underneath the newly numbed outer shell.
And again with the Ferguson events. White people blaming black people, black people blaming white people. Cops blaming citizens, citizens blaming cops. The wealthy blaming the hood, the hood blaming the wealthy. Everyone offended by unconfirmed motives and rigid beliefs. It never stops.
And don’t get me wrong- the hurt there is real. Some of the anger is even justified. People are really really evil and awful. There’s a lot of injustice in this country and across the world that makes me furious.
But taking offense to it is kind of like that quote about bitterness, it’s the poison we drink hoping someone else will die.
We can always find something to be offended by if we try. And in America, trying to be offended seems like a part time job for most. Because if you’re not offended by something, then who are you?
So, here’s the thing.
What if we all tried to get offended a little less? What if we all worked on having unoffendable hearts?
Because if we are seated with Christ and are heirs to His kingdom and enjoy all the protection and provision and love that He does…. then why on this earth would we feel the need for offense?
Last time I checked, me and God are on the same page about how I feel about things, cause uuuhhh He’s All Knowing. And if He needs me to share those ideas (or change them…or throw them out completely), then I trust He’ll do so, but I would assume it’s not going to be in the form of some snarky comment or status retaliation via Facebook.
We get offended because we are angry and we are hurt. And being angry and being hurt are legitimate feelings- shoot, I’m angry way more often than I’d like and sweet Jesus will be binding my tender, hurting wounds on my death bed.
The point is Jesus is binding my wounds. My own explanation, my own opinions being heard, having “a voice”- none of those things clean and bind the deep, nasty wounds inflicted by myself and others and life and sin. Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End- HE is the only one who can set anything straight, who can turn our offenses into healing opportunities.
But the first step towards that, as hard as that may be, is keeping our idiotic, wound inflicting, completely unknowledgeable mouths shut long enough for God to work in us. To speak only when the Lord tells us to, not when we feel like we have something to prove. The Lord will raise up those whose responsibility it is to speak up for justice, so we must be careful not to build our own thrones or plug in our own microphones. We have to stop living out of fear of never being heard, but to know to our very core that we are heard by the King of kings and ultimately, to come to a place where that is enough.
That sounds like a lot to ask of America. And frankly, it seems pretty unbelievable to me that it would ever be a reality for the majority of the country.
But, I hear we have a God who specializes in the unbelievable.
