I’m Not Like a Regular Christian, I’m an Offended Christian

I have discovered something deeply unfortunate about myself.

I am entirely too smart to be this dumb sometimes.

Not academically dumb. Not “I forgot where I put my phone while holding my phone” dumb, although menopause would probably like an honorable mention there. I mean the particular kind of dumb where I know Scripture, recognize patterns, can explain spiritual warfare, identify unhealthy behavior, articulate boundaries, quote the appropriate verse, and then somebody sends me a thumbs-up reaction and suddenly I am Regina George standing in the middle of the hallway wondering who needs to be added to the Burn Book.

👍

That thing right there.

I know it is technically a hand.

My nervous system reads it as disrespect.

“Okay.”

Oh, so we’re fighting?

“Sure.”

Interesting. So you hate me.

“👍”

Father, forgive them, because apparently they have chosen violence.

This is precisely why wisdom has to be more than something I know. It has to become something I use.

Because lately, I have been thinking a lot about fire. What starts it. What sustains it. What God burns away. What He protects through the burning.

This morning, though, I had to consider something considerably less comfortable:

What extinguishes mine?

Because every fire doesn’t go out because somebody poured water on it.

Sometimes I smother my own.

Jesus says in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (ESV)

Yet by the end of that same conversation, people who had been following Jesus were walking away.

“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” John 6:66 (ESV)

That verse hits differently when I stop reading myself as automatically being one of the people who stayed.

Because what offended them wasn’t that Jesus had suddenly become less Jesus.

The teaching got hard.

That distinction matters.

They had followed Him when there was bread.

They had followed Him when there were miracles.

They had followed Him when what Jesus was doing benefited them in ways they understood.

Then Jesus said something difficult, and suddenly proximity to Him required something from them.

Apparently, offense has a way of revealing whether I wanted Jesus or simply wanted the version of Jesus who agreed with me.

And whew.

There goes my coffee.

Because offense is one of my struggles.

Not theoretically.

Bad.

I can get offended by tone. Timing. Facial expressions. What somebody said. What somebody didn’t say. The punctuation they selected. The punctuation they failed to select. The aforementioned thumbs-up reaction, which I remain convinced should require a permit.

I can create an entire storyline from very little evidence.

Welcome to Mean Girls: Sanctified Edition.

“She reacted 👍.”

“So you agree she hates me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Everybody take one step back. I’m going to handle this.”

Except sometimes the Burn Book exists entirely in my head.

That is unchecked arrogance.

Arrogance isn’t always me walking around believing I’m better than everybody. Sometimes arrogance is assuming my interpretation must be accurate.

I decided what you meant without asking you.

I decided why you did it without talking to you.

I assigned motive to your behavior.

I convicted you in a courtroom you didn’t know existed using evidence I gathered, interpreted, presented and ruled on myself.

Your Honor, I would like to call my first witness.

Me.

Excellent. No further questions.

And John 6 tells me that this can become spiritually dangerous because the disciples were grumbling among themselves.

Jesus knew.

“Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this…” John 6:61 (ESV)

They were discussing Jesus instead of seeking clarity from Jesus.

Girl.

That one got me.

Because offense loves a group chat.

Mean Girls taught us this already.

One offended person finds another offended person, who finds another offended person, and eventually everybody has validated everybody’s interpretation so thoroughly that nobody remembers to ask whether the interpretation was true in the first place.

Community can heal me.

Community can also help me build a very convincing Burn Book.

And if everybody around me is offended by the same person, I can mistake consensus for confirmation.

That brings me to another fire extinguisher: unhealthy relationships.

Sometimes I love people so much that leaving feels impossible. Sometimes history makes me stay longer than wisdom would recommend. Sometimes belonging becomes so important that I start adjusting convictions to preserve connection.

Jesus refused to do that.

People walked away, and He did not chase them down offering a revised edition.

He turned to the twelve.

“Do you want to go away as well?” John 6:67 (ESV)

That is such an uncomfortable Jesus.

Because I sometimes want Him to negotiate.

“Okay Jesus, I understand what Your Word says, but You don’t understand the circumstances.”

Sir, perhaps we could workshop this commandment.

Forgive them?

What about strongly disliking them from a biblically appropriate distance?

Love my enemies?

Define love.

Deny myself?

Now You’re doing too much.

Unequally yoked?

Surely there is an appendix.

I want biblical standards until biblical standards interfere with something I desperately want.

Jesus does not change truth to preserve company.

And if I am going to follow Him, eventually I cannot either.

That does not mean everybody who disagrees with me needs to disappear. Quite the opposite. If everybody in my life always confirms my perspective, I should probably become suspicious.

Because Peter stayed.

And Peter got called SATAN.

Not metaphorically in the loose way we use words now.

Jesus turned to Peter and said:

“Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me.” Matthew 16:23 (ESV)

Peter.

The rock.

The disciple.

The man Jesus loved.

The man who would become instrumental in the early church.

Got rebuked so severely that my thumbs-up trauma suddenly looks a little dramatic.

And Peter stayed.

That has been messing with me.

Because if Jesus calling Peter “Satan” didn’t make Peter unfollow, block, delete, change churches, post a suspiciously specific quote on Facebook and announce that he was “protecting his peace,” perhaps every uncomfortable interaction does not require my departure.

Sometimes staying is wisdom.

Sometimes leaving is wisdom.

The question is whether offense is making the decision for me.

Because unwise decisions extinguish fire too.

There is a difference between being hurt and being led.

I can be legitimately wounded and still make an illegitimate decision from the wound.

That is the part I hate.

Because pain does not automatically make my interpretation correct.

Peter could have said, “I cannot believe Jesus spoke to me that way.”

And frankly?

I would understand the meeting.

Peter could have gathered Bartholomew and Andrew in the parking lot.

“Did y’all hear what He called me?”

A disciple group chat would have been catastrophic.

Instead, Peter remained close enough to be corrected, restored, discipled and eventually entrusted.

Which makes me wonder how many things I have walked away from prematurely because correction felt like rejection.

How many relationships did I abandon because discomfort felt dangerous?

How many decisions have I made while offended that I later called “discernment”?

How many times have I said, “God told me…”

When God was somewhere saying, “Please leave Me out of this.”

I am too smart to be that dumb.

And then there is unexpected agony.

This one is harder to make funny.

Because there are offenses I have carried with people.

Then there are offenses I have carried with God.

My mother died when I was eleven.

I am thirty-five now.

Which means I have officially spent far more of my life without my mother than I ever got to spend with her.

There is something profoundly unfair about that sentence to me.

I know the theology.

I know God is good.

I know death entered the world through sin.

I know eternity exists.

I know grief and hope can coexist.

I know all the appropriate Christian answers.

I also know there has been a part of me that has been offended with God.

There.

I said it.

Not because I stopped loving Him.

Not because I stopped believing Him.

Because somewhere inside the little girl who lost her mother was a question that never completely stopped asking:

Why did You let me have so little time with her?

I have had to “forgive” God for something He never did wrong.

That sounds theologically ridiculous because God does not sin against me and therefore does not require my forgiveness.

Yet emotionally, that is the language my heart understood.

I had to release the case I had built against Him.

I had to stop quietly prosecuting God for not writing my story the way I thought a good God should have written it.

That is unexpected agony.

Because sometimes following Jesus exposes me to discomfort I cannot explain away with a cute scripture graphic.

Jesus said:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24 (ESV)

A cross is not inconvenient.

A cross hurts.

And I think sometimes bad theology taught me that if I followed Jesus correctly, suffering would always make immediate sense.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes I have obeyed God and still hurt.

Sometimes I have prayed and still lost.

Sometimes I have forgiven and still remembered.

Sometimes I have healed significantly and something small still touches the eleven-year-old version of me who would very much like her mother back.

That does not mean my fire is gone.

It means I have learned that fire and grief can occupy the same body.

Faith and questions can share a room.

Love for God and disappointment with what He allowed can exist in the same prayer.

I don’t have to lie to God to remain loyal to Him.

That may actually be one of the greatest differences between the disciples who walked away and Peter who stayed.

Peter was offended.

Peter was corrected.

Peter misunderstood Jesus repeatedly.

Peter failed spectacularly.

Peter denied Him.

Peter stayed close enough to come back.

And maybe endurance is less about never becoming offended and more about refusing to let offense choose my direction.

Because I want to finish well.

Paul writes:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” 1 Corinthians 9:24 (ESV)

A race requires stamina.

I cannot sprint every emotional mile.

I cannot burn maximum energy responding to everything that irritates me, hurts me, disappoints me or makes my eye twitch.

Some things require confrontation.

Some require boundaries.

Some require grief.

Some require prayer.

Some require a conversation.

And some require me to put my phone down because 👍 is not persecution.

Wisdom teaches me the difference.

The enemy does not necessarily need to extinguish my fire himself if he can convince me to keep handing out fire extinguishers.

Unchecked arrogance.

Unwise decisions.

Unhealthy relationships.

Unexpected agony.

Each one can make me abandon what God is doing if I refuse to submit it to wisdom.

That is why knowing the Word matters.

Not so I can quote Scripture while remaining emotionally undisciplined.

Not so I can identify everybody else’s dysfunction.

Not so I can weaponize Bible verses against people who offended me.

The Word gives me language for the battle and wisdom for my response.

Paul says we should not be “outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” 2 Corinthians 2:11 (ESV)

I need to know his methods.

More importantly, I need to know mine.

Because Regina George was not the only problem in Mean Girls.

That is the whole point.

Cady entered believing she was different, got surrounded by dysfunction, became fluent in dysfunction, participated in dysfunction and eventually had to acknowledge that she had become part of the very thing she criticized.

Well.

Hello, mirror.

Sometimes I am Regina.

Sometimes I am Cady.

Sometimes I am one inconvenience away from putting somebody in the Burn Book.

Sometimes I am Peter, wounded by correction but still following.

Sometimes I am one of the disciples in John 6, hearing something difficult and quietly wondering whether following Jesus is still worth what it costs.

And sometimes I am still eleven years old, looking at God with tears in my eyes and asking Him why He let my mother leave so soon.

Yet I am still here.

Still following.

Still learning.

Still burning.

And maybe maturity is not becoming impossible to offend.

Maybe maturity is becoming increasingly difficult to extinguish.

My fire cannot depend on everybody speaking correctly to me.

It cannot depend on everybody staying.

It cannot depend on God explaining everything.

It cannot depend on life being painless.

Because if my fire requires perfect conditions, it was never going to survive the race.

So yes, I am entirely too smart to be that dumb.

Which means I know better than to let arrogance, impulsivity, unhealthy attachment or unexplained agony convince me to abandon the One who has carried me this far.

I can be offended and stay teachable.

I can be hurt and stay wise.

I can grieve and still trust.

I can misunderstand and seek clarity.

I can lose people without losing myself.

I can have questions for God without walking away from God.

And apparently, with substantial prayer, sanctification and perhaps divine intervention…

I can even survive a thumbs-up reaction.

👍

Although I do believe sanctification should have reasonable limits.