The 7 Words

Offense is a trap. It is a complex snare that hides secret motivations and desires in our hearts. Though we feel offense as a single emotional reaction, it is produced through a series of related mechanisms. I call this the mechanism of offense.

Like a complex machine, each mechanism triggers the next until, finally, we find ourselves trapped by offense. In A Sharp Compassion I explore each step of that process. Below is a brief description of each stage to help you better recognize the vulnerabilities in your own life.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

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1

Offense

Before we can disarm the trap of offense, we have to acknowledge that it is there. The Bible often refers to offense as an obstacle, a stone in our path. It's our blindness to the obstacle that makes it dangerous. You trip over the obstacle you can not see. Once you learn to recognize the feeling of offense and the process that creates it, the obstacle is exposed and becomes more accessible to avoid. But don't underestimate how hard the warning is. We do not want to see, and so the obstacle often becomes our obsession.

2

Insecurity

Since the fall, humanity has lived in insecurity. The first impulse of Adam and Eve was to hide and to cover their nakedness. We're still trying to cover up our vulnerabilities. We do it through our own efforts and by the religious impulse to manipulate whatever gods might offer us protection. What we want most is to deny it. We want desperately to convince ourselves and others that we are not insecure. This deep insecurity leaves us constantly susceptible to temptation and suggestible to the world's false hope.

3

Obsession

Insecurity always turns our attention to an object. We become obsessed with it. Consider the fruit which the serpent used to tempt Eve. There is always some object that promises to cure our insecurity and give us meaning. It might be a physical object, an appearance, or just a certain reputation. The goal is never just the object, but what the object promises to do for us. This is the human impulse to worship and why the Bible is constantly seeking to help us see the hidden idols of our own hearts. We obsess over some object of worship.

4

Imitation

Our obsessions point us to a person and produce imitation. We see others who seem to posess the object we desire. Seeing the confidence of another, we begin to imitate them. Desire is formed by seeing what is desirable in our model. We like to think of ourselves as original. We imagine that our interests and preferences are uniquely our own. But desire has a source. It isn't individuality. Our desires are formed by the imitation of another. It is this imitation that leads us into a new kind of insecuirty.

5

Affirmation

The problem with idols is that they lead to greater insecurity. Our idols never really deliver on their promise. Instead, we become enslaved to them. We give more and sacrifice more and never find ourselves fully satisfied. The more we pursue our idols and the more we imitate those who seem to possess them, the more desperate we become for affirmation. We need signs of our progress, and we need confirmation from others around us. Everywhere, people are desperate to convince the world and themselves that they are confident and self-satisfied. The truth is that our insecurity only grows worse.

6

Accusation

Ultimately, we need someone to blame. How can we give our lives to pursuing these idols only to admit we're still hopelessly insecure? With nowhere left to turn, our suspicion begins to grow. Someone is keeping us from what we deserve. Someone else is to blame. We begin to despise the people we previously hoped would affirm us. With this spirit of accusation unleashed, we become increasingly sensitive to offense and increasingly isolated from the world. We become trapped in offense.

7

Healing

There is a solution to this trap of offense. We must be willing to die to ourselves. We must be willing to see our insecurity and to recognize how imitation is drawing us into hopeless idol worship. We must be willing to die to our desires, our self-constructed identities, and our idolatry. But the answer is not to abandon all imitation. To be human is to imitate. What we need is a model, one we can imitate, who will not lead us into greater insecurity but into real peace and security. We need someone we can imitate who will not become a competitor or a rival. Its only through the imitation of Christ that we find real freedom and tureal healing.

In A Sharp Compassion, we'll take a closer look at how Jesus risks offending us to help us see the trap of offense. It takes hard words to cut through our defenses and expose the insecurity that leads us toward destruction. But by paying close attention to the words of Jesus, we are offered a better way.

While many who heard Jesus's hard words walked away offended, others were drawn to greater faith. Seeing their true need, they came to recognize a greater source of security, not in the things of this world but in the savior willing to risk telling them the truth. Let Jesus become your way out of the trap and your path out of offense.

Because his love is great, his truths are often hard, and his compassion sharp.

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