Sunday, February 20, 2011

Easily Offended?

Offend...Defined as:

"To affront, hurt the feelings of someone; to arouse feelings of disgust in; to act contrary to law, moral principal etc; to cause resentment. (Websters)



"A brother (or sister) offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle".... Proverbs 18:19



I think I offended someone recently.

I got an email from one of my readers telling me to "take me off your list" for 12stepsandawindingroad.

My immediate reaction was, "Well... fine then... done!".... And I simply deleted their name.


A few days later, as I thought about it a bit more, I wish I would have handled it differently. I wish I would have gotten in touch with this person and asked them exactly what I had said in my blog that offended them. I thought the particular blog that weekend had been pretty innocuous, nothing controversial about it at all (I thought). But, there must have been that one line or two that they read which somehow triggered this reaction.

It's easy to offend someone, even when it's not our intention to do so. There have been cases where I have purposely offended someone just because I didn't like them or their position on a subject and I really didn't care whether they were offended or not. I'm not proud of it, ... I think it's just part of the human (fallen) condition.

A few years ago I had a casual business relationship with a company I did a small amount of work for. One day, the business owner was dealing with a customer in a particularly unhelpful way. I thought I was going to be "helpful" and so I told the business owner that there might have been a better way to handle the situation. Bad move. I offended him. His only thought was that I was trying to tell him how to run his business. I thought of it only as a suggestion,... he took it as a hostile takeover.
A couple of days later I called him and apologized for interfering. His response?... "Yea,.. O.K."... And he never called me again to do any work for him. So, obviously, as King Solomon said in Proverbs 18.... The bars to the castle were locked and in place. There was no winning this person's favor.

The longer I travel down this road of life I see how easily our words, and especially, our motives, can be misconstrued. Even though we may mean well when we say certain things, most of the time trying to be helpful and offer what we consider "constructive criticism", we end up simply offending the other person. Sometimes it seems like life is like walking a tightrope across a great chasm... one small slip and it's, as the old saying goes,... all over but the shouting.

I'm sorry that I offended this particular reader with something I said in a blog. I really wish I had pursued it and found out exactly what it was. Perhaps I could have explained things better, or at least had a dialogue.
I guess when one says more than most about life, love and addiction issues, there are going to be some points of contention. I just hope that next time the person writes me a personal note and we can discuss it in an open, honest fashion. I can always be reached at this email address: coloringmoses@yahoo.com

I hope this email address doesn't offend anyone;.... you know... coloring "Moses".
(Could I be belittling a beloved Bible Character?)....

One never knows ....unless they ask.....

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