No offence!

What offends you?

When should Christians be offended by what they see in the world around them, and how should they respond? Those questions were recently addressed in a Huffington Post Religion blog post by Joanna Harader, pastor at Peace Mennonite Church in Lawrence, Kansas. She examined the questions and looked at biblical examples to illustrate her point.

She suggested that in some cases, as illustrated by Jesus’ response to Pilate in Mark 15:1-5, Christians are called to bear silent witness. Sometimes, as Jesus did when chastising money-changers in the temple, they should speak out. And other times they should engage in self reflection, as Jesus did when he changed his mind about healing the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-23).

With that in mind, what in the world should Mennonites, or more broadly Christians, take offence to?

Daniel Epp is offended by ignorance and Christians who don’t act out their core beliefs, which he tries to do in his work.

As a program associate at Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA), Epp works with high-risk offenders to keep them from re-offending. The group tries to live out the social gospel by standing in solidarity with those who are offended by structures that perpetuate violence.

A lot of the people Epp works with are aboriginal. Standing in solidarity with them is a part of living out his faith.

“They represent a minority group that have been oppressed by colonialism and other western structures that have been put in place,” Epp said.

Talking about the work he does at CoSA often sheds light on things that people tend to oversimplify, or people that have complicated histories.

“I’m careful to say that there is still personal responsibility [for the crimes those in the program have committed] but insistent that we need to inform ourselves better about the systemic issues in our society,” he said.

When expressing his concern, Epp makes sure to use gentle language, including the practice of stating a “star and a wish.” This means that instead of bombarding a person with negativity, one starts with something positive (a star), and then frames concerns as things one wishes were different.

Melanie Kampen, a graduate student at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ont., is offended by “injustice, oppression, violence, apathy, laziness, wealth, arrogance, and hatred,” she said.

As a Christian woman, she’s offended by misogyny, chauvinism, and feminists who hate men and as such replicate the ideology they hate.

In her attempts to speak out and deal with those offences, Kampen poses questions to the people who say or do offensive things.

“[In those situations] I will pose rhetorical questions designed to critique or unhinge assumptions behind something offensive someone does or says,” she said.

“I think it’s always important to speak truth to power,” she said.

When offences take the nature of personal or social injustice, and not just irritations, Harader believes speaking out is important. “Particularly when the offensive behaviour is creating unjust systems and hurting vulnerable people,” she wrote in her Oct. 25 article.

In some cases, speaking out means being an offensive Christian. Harader outlined a set of four principles to being an offensive Christian in an Oct. 2 article that we should consider when speaking out.

“Christians are allowed to be offensive,” she wrote as her first principle. “We are not always called to be nice, accommodating, submissive, quiet or subtle.”

Secondly, Christians should aim to offend people within their own religious group, not other faiths. Jesus modelled this by questioning the dominant interpretation of Jewish law. Harader even suggested that Christians might only want to critique their own denomination.

Next, she wrote, offending is not for the purpose of proving that one is right, to joke, or to merely make people mad for the fun of it. It is expressly to extend God’s life in the world.

Finally, Christians should take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences attached to being offensive.