Have you noticed how many people seem to be offended? You don’t have to look much further than Facebook, Twitter, or the headlines of the news outlets to see there are a lot of angry people out there. To be fair there’s a lot going on in the world that could generate huge amounts of negative emotion but being offended is different from being righteously angered or upset. Being offended has more to do with what’s going on in you, than what is happening around you.
Are you looking at me?
The word offence is defined in the dictionary as being:
annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself or one’s standards or principles.
So basically, if you’re offended it means someone has done or said something that you took personally. Whether it was intended as an insult or not is besides the point; the key word in that definition is “perceived”. Very often we get offended or take offence to something that wasn’t meant to be personal but we decided that it was a direct attack against us. The origin of the word offend is the Latin and it means “to strike against”. It conjures up a mental image of hitting your head against an opinion or statement made by someone else that you don’t like. The opinion isn’t harming you but your response to it is.
Take it or leave it
Popular culture wisdom says:
Offence isn’t given it can only be taken.
This can be a little misleading because there are those out there who are rude and go out of their way to upset others, but at the same time you have a choice whether to take comments to heart or not, and it’s a matter of maturity as to whether you’re able to rise above something that was never directed at you in the first place.
The problem with offence is that it’s a completely negative response. You can’t build on it or use it to restore a relationship, and it won’t help you become a better person. Offence is nothing but bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness.
Break free
Lewis B. Smedes once said:
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
Don’t allow bitterness and offence to bind you up and confine you to a prison of your own making. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to so that we could live free lives and not be bound up. Why then would you choose to live as a slave to your offence when he has made a way for you to be free of it?