Why Am I So Easily Offended?

the power of turning the other cheek

I take offense, and I take it a lot! I get frustrated, annoyed, angry, upset, and hurt by what other people do and say, and they don’t even have to be actual people, in my actual world. I can get frustrated with people on TV. Some shows make me so upset I can’t even watch them, like the news. Quit watching that years ago. I got so mad and annoyed, hurt and depressed by everything other people were doing.

Yeah, my emotions tend to be deeply tied to other human beings, and that’s like being tied to a rat that’s running from a cat that hasn’t eaten in five days; it’s all over the place.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the root of all this frustration and anger, hurt feelings and woe, is a tiny little thing called being offended. I used to think that was reserved for people that other people like to call Karen, but the older I get, the more I, too, find myself wanting to share my negative feelings with total strangers. It used to be that I was so shy I would only talk to my people, but now I’ll talk to anyone. Maybe it’s because of all my time at the community pool with the over-70 crowd, but I’ve broken down the walls of social awkwardness and started to talk like a woman who gets paid by the word.

Our public pool is right next to a high school, and the parking lot is tiny, so when high school students park there, it makes it hard for me to find a spot. So, you can imagine my ire when I saw a kid jump out of his car parked at the pool and run into the school. I thought to myself, “I’m telling on him. He isn’t supposed to park here. We need these spaces open for seniors.”

And then I thought to myself, “What am I really angry about here? Aren’t I actually more concerned about the spaces staying open for myself?” And since I hate being lied to, I told myself the truth, “Yes, I want to tell on him, so that my life will be easier.” Ugh! Hello Karen. (Sorry to all Karens everywhere who wish Karen didn’t get picked as the name for trouble.) But when did I become a part of the collective? “Resistance is futile.”

This encounter got me to thinking about the freedom I feel to tell people what I think. Is it all based on my own wants, needs, and desires? Do I express the emotions that I express just to get what I want, to complain about what I don’t have, to become a part of the collective?

I say collective because I notice that in my pool times, the common tongue is complaint. One lady looked out the window while I was walking next to her, and said, “Oh, NOW the sun comes out. Figures!” To which I said, “Isn’t it great that the clouds don’t stay forever?” Which received a very puzzled look.

I have to say I cringed at myself, too. It was like I brought a t-bone to a vegetarian dinner party. That definitely wasn’t the thing to do. Would I ever be invited back? (There I go thinking about myself again.) When “How is your day going?” elicits nothing but complaint, I feel like a bucket of ice water being thrown over the head of the old lady changing next to me, by offering any kind of joy or encouragement in return. It’s just too out of place.

Are these now my people? Is this my new culture? Must I be absorbed into the collective?

When I was asked to speak to our college group on Jesus’ call to turn the other cheek, to love your enemies, and to pray for people who are against you, I was confronted with the cold hard truth that I am not only on the precipice of the age where diatribe is the daily dialect, but I’m often tempted to jump off said precipice throwing the caution of demureness to the wind. It’s just what we do.

But as someone who loves to think deeply about God and humanity and why we do what we do, I started to think about what it means to turn the other cheek. It kind of sounds like a call to place yourself at the entrance to the front door and lie down for people to wipe their feet on you. But then I realized that a slap on the cheek isn’t an act of violent aggression but of offense. A slap on the cheek is being insulted. It’s being hurt by someone’s words. It’s being forgotten on your birthday or neglected in the crowd.

The dictionary says it like this: Being offended has to do with feeling upset, annoyed, or resentful in response to something that is perceived as insulting, disrespectful, harmful, or unjust. Which leads to defensiveness, a desire to make them feel as badly as you do, to give them the cold shoulder, to lecture, to hold a grudge, to prove yourself to them. It can give you feelings of bitterness, resentment, and spite. All because you don’t like the way you think you are being treated.

If I’m being honest, and I see no reason not to be, since we aren’t in an argument and you aren’t disrespecting me or calling me out on something, I can say that I’m upset, annoyed, and resentful multiple times a day when people don’t do what I want them to do. That’s really the source of all of my perturbation, which translates as me taking offense for you not doing everything the way I want you to do it. Like pulling as much weight as I am in this relationship. Or giving me the best seat in the restaurant, or making sure the toilet paper goes over the roll. Gulp! I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. That was so hard to say. Taking offense is pride doing its job to destroy not only my relationships but my spirit.

Taking offense makes me defensive and passive-aggressive. I’m not mean enough to be aggressive-aggressive, so I just speak to you through the gauze of my wounds unknowingly afflicted by you, so that on some subconscious level, you may just feel sorry enough for me that you will apologize for how nasty you have been. I like neither being seen in a negative light nor not getting what I think I deserve.

The more privileged you feel, the more you take offense.

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

How do I get out from under the perilous precondition of needing to be respected, adored, favored, and loved the way I want to be loved, and given what I want to be given in order to give anything in return? I think the answer is the opposite of the problem. If the problem is, and it most definitely is, my pride, then the answer is the opposite of pride: humility. Is it any wonder that the answer to selfishness is selflessness? After all, it’s God’s economy, isn’t it? (The last will be first, and the first last. Exalt yourself, and you will be humbled, either by your own doing or the doing of another.)

In fact, selfishness is the opposite of love. Love has to be selfless; if it is not, then it is not born from the Spirit-a topic I treated more extensively in the love chapter in my book Fruitful.

It isn’t lost on me that the answer to the suffering of being offended by choosing to love myself more than I love others is to consider others more important than myself, and so to live in selflessness, also known as love. I guess you have two options: love yourself more, and be offended by their lack of love for you, or consider others more important than yourself (source: Philippians 2:3), and so be free from the anguish of offense; the unbearable feelings of bitterness, resentment, ruminating over what they did or said, annoyance, frustration, and anger.

The truth is, living in constant offense is a heavy burden, but choosing to love, even when it’s difficult, opens the door to true freedom. It’s not just about turning the other cheek; it’s about turning away from the corrosive effects of pride and towards the life-giving power of love. In that, we find not only the ability to endure but the strength to thrive in a world that often feels at odds with our souls.