Today, we began a conversation on what it means to be offended, how to deal with offense, and how to help others with offense. But to start off, I wanted to make a point with our students. It’s honestly easy to offend people and tear them down. We need to be intentional, however, about finding ways to build others up and encourage them. So, we played a simple game that required them to complement each other. I teamed them up into two groups, and then, in each group, I assigned a number. Each team had to turn away from each other. I would call out 2 numbers. Those two people would have to face each other and quickly give each other a compliment.
In the first round of this, I allowed them to do whatever they wanted. In the second round, the complement could not be about their physical appearance, because many of their complements were about people’s shoes or hair. Instead, they needed to compliment each other’s personalities. In the third round, they had to complement something they did. In the final round, I turned it all around. they had to compliment themselves. They had to find an aspect about themselves that they appreciate and say it.
The Lesson
One of the things that is unfortunately seen more often than any of us would want to see is people who come to church, say they follow Jesus, then sadly one day walk away. This is genuinely heartbreaking, but it’s not something we should be surprised by. In fact, Jesus warns us of this in Mark 4:14-20:
14 The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others. 15 The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away. 16 The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. 17 But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. 18 The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, 19 but all too quickly, the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced. 20 And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”
Mark 4:14-20 (New Living Translation | NLT)
In this passage, Jesus lists off the condition of people’s hearts and what causes some to fall away.
Ask: What causes the issues for the people spoken about in verse 18-19?
These are individuals who have allowed life issues to sprout out and choke out the hope of Jesus in their lives. One major life issue that does this is offense.
Ask: What does it mean to be offended or to offend someone?
The general definition of the action of offending someone is:
to cause (a person or group) to feel hurt, angry, or upset by something said or done
Ask: So, with this working definition. What offends you?
Ask: How does being offended affect your day-to-day life?
Offense can affect many things. There are 3 main places in your life where offense can affect you.
The way you see the world around you. So, instead of seeing things as they are, you see it in light of your offense. Someone may have ZERO intentions of doing something that’s offensive to you, but because you have a wound related to an area of life, you’re automatically hurt by something they do.
Example: I once reposted an article by a particular individual who was making a solid point about something I’m personally passionate about. However, the writer of that post had previously made statements about another topic that an old friend was personally offended by. I am not saying that his statements were right or wrong, but my friend took personal offense to them. Because I share a separate post that person made, my friend, looking through the lens of her personal offense, saw me as an enemy, as someone who automatically hated her and the things she was passionate about. She proceeded to cut me out of her life without even a conversation.
When you hold on to an offense, you begin to look for signs of that offense everywhere, even where it’s not.
The way you talk. Often, when people are offended, it becomes part of their daily conversation. Some will discuss the offense as if they are free from it, but their speech is clear they still live in the hurt and pain. Sometimes, when people are walking in offense, they will speak rudely or not even talk to folks because they are offended.
The way we act. Sometimes, when we are offended, it affects how we interact with the world around us. Because we are offended by a person, we can begin associating that offense with something that person is involved with or a place they go to. Some leave the faith because they are offended by one person, and so they apply that offense to the entire body of Christ. Offense can often lead people to isolation and depression. On top of that we begin to hold back our own giftings and talents from the Body of Christ. We hinder our own ability to reach others with the good new of Jesus.
There are 4 main things we need to do when we are dealing with offense.
We need to have some humility. We must realize that we may just as much as people have offended us, we may have offended others. Just like we want grace from others, we should give them grace.
We need to be honest with ourselves. If we’ve offended folks, we need to be willing to say, “I’ve done wrong.” At the same time, if we have been offended, we have to be willing to ask ourselves, “Am I offended because they did something wrong? Or is it really something else and I’m actually in the wrong?”
We need to be rooted and grounded in love. The reason that the seeds in Jesus’ parable survived was because they were rooted and grounded. Remember what Jesus taught in the book of Matthew. Love the Lord with your heart, soul, and mind, and then love your neighbor as yourself. Meaning since we profess to love Jesus, we need to love those who have offended us and love others enough to ask forgiveness if we’ve offended them.
We really can’t operate in this manner unless we ourselves are firmly rooted in God and being filled by the Holy Spirit. This requires us to be in the scriptures and to be in prayer.
There are many things that can offend us. The reality is that something that offends you may not offend someone else. At the same time, there are things that don’t offend you that may offend others.
Over the next several weeks, we are going to be discussing 4 ways that the seeds of offense are planted in people. We will discuss how we heal from those things, but also how we avoid some of them as we help to grow the body of Christ together.
Adventures in Student Ministry 