[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], October 2020]
People today seem to take offence so easily, and therefore there is little room for intellectual debate and disagreement. How do we react to this kind of culture as Christians?
There’s a quote going the rounds on Facebook at the moment supposedly from Morgan Freeman though I very much doubt it is Morgan Freeman but I still like the quote anyway and it says this “Just because I disagree with you does not mean I hate you”. We need to relearn that as a society.
[00:42] I think that’s really sums up how things are at the moment, we’ve lost that ability to disagree agreeably and something being offensive is defined by whether or not someone takes offence. People seem to be taking offence very easily at the moment and off the back of that there seems to be a reduction in the opportunities for free speech. Many a comedian and street preacher has fallen foul of the authorities and the morality police who take offence at what’s been said. Also authors and intellectuals have found themselves banned from university or their debates cancelled because of their particular stance on gender or sexuality or abortion. Perhaps those views which were fairly mainstream have now become distasteful, offensive, even hate speech. Perhaps because of this we are heading to a point in our future where rules and regulations, where our state are shaped by popular opinion and that leaves little debates for alternative views.
[02:13] This is very much linked to what I was saying in a previous midweek message about our definition of truth: we seem to have lost a standard for truth so, what is true or what is offensive, has now become arbitrary. Actually it is the most popular voice or the loudest voice which dictates what is true and what is good or what is hateful now. The church has found itself increasingly on the fringe and increasingly on the wrong end of this truth, of this debate. Workers have found themselves at employment tribunals because of something they said or didn’t say on Facebook or Twitter or whatever social media they happen to be using.
[03:16] Perhaps as a church we sowed the seed of our own destruction. I mean it wasn’t that long ago in history where the arbiter of what was offensive and what was true was the church. We weren’t particularly great at being gracious and time and time again people were censored or even arrested for the things that they said or the things that they did, be it saying that the earth revolves around the sun or that you stood up for the vulnerable and the weak.
[03:53] Time and time again the Bible has been used as a weapon, as an excuse to imprison rather than liberate and perhaps what we’re seeing now in our society is just a continuation of what’s been going on throughout all history. Narrow mindedness, partisan politics, morally outraged society who demand justice when they find themselves offended by something.
[04:29] Perhaps this is just a sign of the sinful, the fallen world that we live in, that the Bible tells us about. This is the way humanity unfortunately is. We seem to have this knack, this habit of taking those things that are good and true or intentions or the bible or morality and twisting it so much that it causes hurt and pain. Issues are used as a stick to hit people with and it leads to people being discriminated against rather than loved. We see this in the way the Bible has been used and perhaps as Christians, rather than pointing the blame, we need to learn some lessons about the way we have treated people in the past and the way we have used God’s words to discriminate against and to hurt whereas God’s word is meant to bring freedom particularly to those who society would put on the outside. So before you point out the splinter in the eye of society perhaps we need to look in the mirror at the plank that is in our own.
[1] YouTube link: Should I Be Offended?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © Martin Shorey