“Make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” Colossians 3:13 NLT
Is it possible to never get offended? To never have a reason to forgive because there’s nothing to forgive?As humans with emotions, and based on my current understanding, I would say the ability to never get offended depends on how much we have allowed God to work on our perspectives of life. Not some perspectives, but all.Until this happens, offences will be a part of our lives as we grow. An offence arises when an action done to us goes against our worldview.For example, if you believe that upskilling in your career is important and someone tells you that you’re not smart because you’ve not learned anything new in five years, you will feel offended. On the other hand, if you don’t believe upskilling is what makes you smart and someone makes the same statement, you won’t get offended and will probably pity them for their stupidity.So, taking offence isn’t so much about what someone did to you but your reaction to it. This then leads to the next question…
How can we constantly lower our offence metre to zero for the people we work with?
Always taking offence doesn’t make work move swiftly. I once had to settle a squabble between two of my employees. They started on a good note, with good synergy. Then suddenly, they had a disagreement over a creative work, and both parties took offence.From that time forward, the hostility showed in their chats with each other, and their synergy dropped. They no longer felt open enough to share ideas.To fix it, someone had to be the bigger person by calling up the other team member and apologising, regardless of how wrong or right either party was.I also used to always feel offended by someone I worked with in the past. When we became business partners, I prayed to God to change my focus from his weakness to what God wanted me to do in that organisation.From that time on, whenever issues arose, I learned to calmly express my perspective and forgive the offence. Other times, I didn’t even regard some actions as offensive because my eyes were focused elsewhere.Don’t let offences linger for long. Recognise the emotion and deal with it through forgiveness. Otherwise, it will continue to colour your relationship with others.
“I understand that offence depends on my reactions. I choose to react differently by…”
Not so fast. You won’t just magically stop being offended. Make a list of earlier offensive experiences you’ve had. Then pray for insight into these experiences and why you got offended.Ask God to work on your worldview for those matters and give you the strength to forgive when they come again.
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