Don't Be Too Easily Offended: How to Have an Un-Offendable Heart

What if we had an un-offendable heart?

A friend recently encouraged me to have an un-offendable heart. But what does that mean?

We live in an age of becoming easily offended… over political views, morality, personal slights. But where does offense come from? I think it comes from feeling like we are personally attacked and told our views or feelings don’t matter. We feel like it’s an attack against our very selves.

But in a world with six billion people, nobody is ever going to see things the same way or agree exactly on everything. Therefore, the offense is a given. It’s going to happen. Just like conflict.

You don’t exist as a human and not experience conflict at some point. It’s just reality.

So why do we get so offended? Does getting offended suggest maybe something about us? That maybe we wrongly think we are always right? Maybe sometimes we are right. But even then, if someone disagrees with us, it doesn’t mean we have to hate them. We can see things differently and not hate another person.

Being offended is not the same thing as being hurt. Someone can hurt our feelings and that’s a legitimate wound.

Jesus was angered by the money changers selling doves in the temple for profit. They were doing it for personal financial gain and not to serve the worshipful needs of those in the temple. This hurt and angered Jesus. You could say it offended him, but it was a righteous offense, not one born out of feeling personally, selfishly slighted. Jesus just cared about what God wanted, and seeing people profane God’s will was offensive to him.

But Jesus still loved those people.

While he was turning over tables and chasing them from the temple with a whip, it was because he loved God and he loved them. 

When we get offended, is it due to feeling personally slighted, like someone has attacked our ego? Often, when I get offended, I have to admit that’s the case for me. I feel like if someone disagrees or gets angry with me, it’s a personal attack against my very self. But that’s a selfish way of thinking and feeling.

If we could manage to get our self out of the way, maybe we’d be less susceptible to feeling offended.

Maybe it’s not about us. Maybe it’s about the other person who’s offended with us.

And that’s where love starts to come in. Maybe if someone gets upset with me, it’s not my issue, but theirs. Maybe instead of getting worked up over it, I need to just let go and allow them to deal with their own personal issues.

Instead of getting hurt and angry with them, I could pray for them.

There’s no way to grow in love better than to pray for those who hate you.

As Jesus said, “Pray for your enemies” and “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." 

At many points in life, others will trespass against us, and we will trespass against them. We will all hurt each other. We will all disagree and see things differently. We will all offend each other. If we didn’t, we’d be clones or robots or something not human. As humans, we each see things a little differently and this will inevitably cause conflict and offense.

But if we love those with whom we disagree, or who have hurt us, we are starting to act more like Jesus called us to. We are starting to love. In that way, Jesus seemed to have an un-offendable heart. If we can do the same, we will find a glorious measure of internal freedom. We will become more loving and less personally wounded by others’ disagreement or anger with us.

We do not all have to agree or see things the same way.

What Jesus said, though, is that we do all have to love one another. 

So pray for an un-offendable heart. Realize it’s not always about you, and pray for those who see things differently and attack you for it. 

Have an un-offendable heart… and soar!