How to Respond When People Offend You
What do you do when people offend you, insult you, treat you badly, or persecute you? I’ve had some practice working on this unfortunately. I’m sure I’m not the only one, so this post will discuss some of my experience in dealing with offense and responding to others.
Previously I mentioned that I was getting an increasing number of negative comments on my blog posts. Some were from well-meaning Christians who felt the need to correct me. Others were from people of a differing religious belief system who wanted to argue and debate over doctrinal issues. Some were from people, Christian or not, that just intensely disagreed with things that I said (and not always in the nicest way). Frequently I get a bit lambasted on Pinterest with comments from atheists, specifically about a post on “How to Pray for Unsaved Loved Ones”. I guess you could call it a persecution of sorts.
The temptation to argue when offended
Apparently some of them are taking offense that I, as well as others who are pinning these prayers, might be praying for them, and they want me to stop. Well guess what? Not gonna happen. 🙂 And now, since they were so kind as to leave me a comment and give me their name, I can pray for them more specifically. By name. Which, by the way, I wasn’t doing before because I didn’t even know them. 🙂 They can’t really stop me from praying can they? I know…I’m such a rebel. The problem that I’ve been struggling with though when I get offended by their comments is wanting to reply to them.
These commenters have written things that are critical and insulting. They say things and make accusations that aren’t true. Often, they take things I say and twist or misconstrue them. They definitely appear to be in “attack” mode. My first gut reaction is that I’m extremely offended. I feel very angry because I feel a sense of injustice. I deeply want to want to argue with their comments. It takes an awful lot of restraint not to say anything. Instead of arguing and fighting back, I’ve had to learn to hold my tongue and fight back with prayer.