Who Made YOU Mad? or “3 Questions for the Offended”

This is not the post I meant to write today. I meant to get back to blogging through the Articles of Religion, but I had an online exchange with my friend Tony Ares that forced me to do some real self-examination. 

Tony posted something about the debate over the Washington Redskins mascot debate. In our back and forth, Tony referred to the “ 'loud professionally offended' making decisions for all of us.”*  

The comment stopped me.

I started thinking about all the things that bother me today that didn’t bother me a year or two years ago.  I tried to mentally divide my offendednesses** into stuff I didn’t understand enough about to be angry and times when I jumped on the indignation bandwagon.

I couldn’t discern the difference. Not immediately. 

Can you?

Think about the political and social issues and activities that you think need to be outlawed or legalized after all the decades they’ve been whatever they are.

Think about them.

Did you read the book?  Did you then read an equally well researched and written book supporting the opposite viewpoint?

Or did you hear about it on Twitter or Facebook?

If the overwhelming majority of your friends and online followers believed the exact opposite and if you had heard the opposite opinion from all of them FIRST, would you still have the same opinion?  Would you still be offended?

This is important.  How much of your opinion is really YOUR opinion?

For who-knows-how-long, Adam and Eve walked around Eden buck naked and nobody had a problem with it.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2: 25)

Then one afternoon, they did something they’d never done: they put on clothes and hid from God. 

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  (Genesis 3: 7, 8)

When God confronted them about this shift in their view of what was socially appropriate in a Pre-Fall society, Adam explained that he and his wife were now offended by their traditional state of primordial nudity. (Genesis 3: 10)

Why? 

“Who in crap’,”  (My paraphrase. You won’t find that phrase in the NIV.)  God asked “Who in crap told you that you were naked? I didn’t say anything was wrong with you being naked.  Why do you suddenly find it ‘offensive’?”

Adam’s response was evasive and embarrassing.  The gist though was that he did not arrive at his new opinion independently.  He had consumed opinion-based media in the form of fruit from the Tree of “Knowledge.”   And this new source of information had him and his wife looking at themselves and each other differently.

Adam and Eve had stopped seeing themselves the way God saw them and started seeing themselves the way a certain serpent saw them. 

Solomon once said, “Do not take to heart everything people say, Lest you hear your servant cursing you.”  (Ecclesiastes 7: 21)   In other words, “If you listen to everything everybody says you’ll find reasons to be mad.”

But some of you think, “Well, if that’s how they feel, then I wanna know.”  (Try to imagine me rolling my neck when I say that.  Better yet, don’t.)

To you who wanna know EVERYbody’s opinion, Solomon points out “Many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others.” (Ecclesiastes 7: 22) 

Is what they did/ said out loud really so much more offensive than what’s happened in your own heart? (Matthew 5: 20-22)

Who told you to be offended?

Now pause for a minute, because right now you might be absorbing what you think is my opinion instead of examining your opinions.  I am not trying to unoffend*** you.  I’m trying to get you to consider WHY this pisses you off and that doesn’t.  You may have good reasons.

But what if you don't have any reasons?

Christians especially have to be extra conscious and careful about simply copying and pasting the prevailing cultural opinion onto our minds.

Sometimes, popular opinion is right. 

And sometimes it’s not. 

The prevailing opinion during Jesus’ public ministry was that Jesus was either a new prophet or a reincarnated one (Matthew 16: 13, 14) .

The correct answer was something totally outside the mainstream. 

Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16: 16)

How did Peter find the courage to speak such a fringe opinion? 

He faced the 3 questions I have to face and you need to face as well.  They are the 3 questions Tony got me thinking about.  They’re the 3 questions God has been asking His children since the beginning.

The 3 questions come from the Father’s examination of Adam in the Garden and the Son’s examination of the disciples in the gospels.

Who told you that you were naked? (Genesis 3: 11)

Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? (Matthew 16: 13)

But who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16: 15)

The 3 Questions are:
 Who told you?
 What do they say?
 But what do you say?

I’m re-examining what offends  (and doesn’t offend) me by asking myself the 3 Questions.  I pray you’ll do the same. 

 Who told you to be offended?
What do they say to make you feel that way?
But what do you say for yourself?

May your final answer come from the right place.

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 17)

And may you be convicted if your answer comes from the wrong place.

But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  (Matthew 16: 23) 

*(If you’re on Facebook, you can read the post and our exchange here. )

** Yes, “offendedness.” Well, it’s a word now.

*** “Unoffend” is also a word now.  It’s a verb.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

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