Ben Jack on the nature of offense

Ben Jack

Being blessed/cursed by being born with what they call 'the gift of the gab' I often talk myself into awkward situations, and less often out of them again. Its fair to say that on my travels I may have inadvertently caused offense a few times, normally in a vain attempt at humour or charm (and falling waaaaaay short of both).

A perfect example happened recently when I was in a hotel bar waiting for service. I noticed an elderly lady on crutches and in a neck brace standing by herself and looking decidedly down in the dumps. Being me, I decided to spark up a conversation in a genuine attempt to be pleasant. I opened my mouth with the words "have you been in the wars my love?" thinking that she would have an opportunity to tell me about her recent fall, to which I could respond with an appropriate amount of compassion and concern. Instead she replied absolutely stone faced "No. I have spinal arthritis". This unexpected turn of events threw my brain a curve ball, and seeing as my mouth struggles to listen to my brain at the best of times, all I could think to reply was the frankly genius question "oh...does that get better in the sunshine?"

I know, I know, I literally have no idea what I was thinking. She looked at me as if I was mentally disturbed and replied with a suitable amount of venom "It never gets better". Thus ended the conversation.

With the best of intentions we can still cause people offense, sometimes because of our own stupidity like my recent idiocy, and other times because people choose to take offense at the things we do or say.

In our media and celebrity driven culture, people try and stand out from the crowd in the most extreme ways to get their five minutes of fame, even if it is ultimately infamy that they achieve. Causing deliberate offense is part and parcel of a culture that encourages us all to promote ourselves, be (a version of) ourselves and think of. you guessed it - ourselves.

It's pretty perverse how the media treats those in the public eye these days. They are reduced to hero and villain roles depending on which way the general public seems to be swaying, and the headlines written about them cement their reputations. Take for example the tragic story of reality TV star Jade Goody, who the media (and we as its consumers) exploited over the course of her short public life. One minute the villain, the next (during her sad decline in health) the hero. Read two newspaper stories a year apart and it was like reading about a completely different person. What a dark hole we tumble down with our consumer attitude to human beings.

I wonder how our media would have dealt with Jesus, one of the most famous men of his time, and now the most famous man in all of history, if he was walking around on earth today? I can see a headline one week praising the local hero Jesus for his miraculous provision of food for hungry crowds and supernaturally returning a blind mans sight, before going on to slam him the following week for having the audacity to claim he is the son of God. Jesus would have had a harder time with the media than an England football manager.

Speaking of which, I was saddened recently to hear about the death of former England manager and legend in the world of football Sir Bobby Robson. Now a lot has been written already about this man, and seemingly not one word of it has been negative. Quote after quote appeared in the news after his death from those who played for him, worked with him, knew him and loved him. The strongest comment that kept coming up over and over was that Sir Bobby Robson was a true gentleman, and that no one had a bad word to say about him.

The interesting thing is that Jesus - our model for living - had plenty of people saying bad things about him when he was killed on the cross, in fact it's what got him nailed up there - Jesus offended certain people so much that they brutally killed him for it. Jesus made a noise in the way he lived, and through the words that he spoke. And whilst it's fine to assume that, like Sir Bobby, Jesus was a true gent here on Earth, his existence was offensive enough to change the world and our destiny for all eternity.

So what does that suggest about how we should live our lives? That we as Christians should jump up and down in the media, offending people to get attention for the cause? Play the villain for a while to achieve our goal? Should we court controversy for controversy's sake if it makes people take notice?

Absolutely not! For a start we must remember that Jesus NEVER fell into the trap of sin that we so often do (even sometimes with the best of intentions). People chose to take offense to Jesus (and still do to this day) because he was, and is, counter cultural, not a follower or product of culture. The example Jesus set was not to deliberately offend people but to live radically different lives that much of the world may view offensive because it flies in the face of the 'me' fixation. It is a life that demands a response. It is a response that accepted or ignored has consequences. Jesus replaces 'promote yourself' with 'promote God'. He turns 'be yourself' into 'be yourself through God', and instead of thinking of ourselves challenges us to think of others because of our love for him. Even I with my 'Stupid Mouth' syndrome can live out this distinctive life, as it's not about being the most charming or the funniest and definitely not about being the most offensive! It's about being as Christ like as we can be, for his glory and fame.

Whilst I have a lot of work to do to refine some of my rougher edges before I can hope to escape justified negative comments about my personality on my death bed, I won't mind in the slightest those who complain on that day that I lived an offensive life of love, compassion and grace.