Skip to main content

Love Without Offense




Reflections on the seeming complexities of love.

When reflecting on the seeming complexities of love, contrasting the nemesis of love seems appropriate. Offending or being offended is not something one can do with love. It challenges our love and tempts us with unforgiveness and bitterness.

When offense rears its ugly head, love gets stuffed down into forgotten compartments within ourselves. When we get offended, emotions like anger, wrath, and hatred come forth, as we seek to protect and get vengeance for ourselves and loved ones.

What is Love?


It takes a special person to not get offended when others do. They have learned to overcome the temptation of anger by passing over the offense.

Most of us get offended somewhat easily. When this happens we realize how conditional the love we give is. Are we only loving those who love us back? That seems to be the natural reaction for most people.

What is love then? Is it simply a conditional behavior we extend to those who love us back? Is it possible to love those who don’t reciprocate, and why would we do this?

As we all know, there are times when those we love offend us. While we can mostly avoid offensive strangers (or not care what they say), inevitably, those close to us will offend us (pressing our proverbial buttons).

Being offended by those in our confidence or at work is often worse than when a stranger offends us. Offenses can threaten to derail relationships and create long-standing resentments and grudges.

If offense wasn’t a nasty thing, love would flourish without restraint!

We could love others without any worry of being offended. It would make life much easier.

The Offended Problem


The problem is there are more offenses in the world than love.

Maybe love is complicated and needs offense to provide the contrast.

If offense was gone then love would be the default behavior. Love is kind, patient, tender-hearted, easily entreated, and true.

People who are devoid or lacking love tend to spend their time and effort offending others. They are resentful for not receiving enough love, for being the victim of offense, so they extract it out of those whom they see as having too much love and not enough offense.

Just because someone is victimized (offended), doesn’t mean they have to be resentful and extract it from innocent people who seem to have too much love and not enough offense. The hurt person doesn’t have to even the playing field.

The hurt and offended could overcome their offense by being happy for those who haven’t had to endure the same offense and by helping those who have. The only way to help is to show the offended how to love instead of offending.

Conclusion


Everyone is subjected to being offended. How we deal with the offenses of life will determine how effective we are in our efforts. Marriage is full of offenses we have to overcome. Love is the result of this overcoming.

Love is simple and easy, figuring out how to overcome offenses is the hard part.

Forgiveness and patience are needed for love to find a place in our hearts. If we don’t have these, our hearts will be full of offenses, resentments, bitterness, and hatred.

Everyone in our life (including ourselves) will disappoint us (offend us) eventually. Our efforts to love people will depend on our ability to overcome these offenses that inevitably happen in our daily lives.

While love is simple, relationships are not because of offenses. In order to appreciate and foster love, learning to be patient and forgiving is key to overcoming offense. Until then, unconditional true love will continue to allude the unforgiving offended.

Originally published at Vocal

Follow on Substack

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When was the last time Oregon had a Republican governor?

              Will we ever see one again? Conservative-minded Oregonians might be curious to know the last time Oregon had a Republican governor. For those 37 years and younger, they might wonder if Oregon ever had a Republican governor considering the last year a Republican served in the office was the first 12 days of 1987. The last Republican governor for Oregon was Gov. Victor G. Atiyeh who served two terms from January 8, 1979 — January 12, 1987. Victor was born on February 20, 1923, which means he was 55 when he first became governor and 63 when he left. Victor passed away at the age of 91 years old on July 20, 2014. In all the years since he left as Oregon’s governor until he passed, he never saw another Republican governor serve his home state again. Even until now in 2024, we have yet to see any other political party besides the Democratic Party as the governor of Oregon — that means we’ve had a Democrat as governor for 37 years consecutively....

6 Ways to Make Money from Articles/Content

Original content with your byline. There are 6 basic ways to make money from your content. I will call them content articles, but they can also be videos, photos, podcasts, and artwork. Affiliates Writers can market affiliates on their websites or add links to their articles or posts on writing platforms or social media. Affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as it seems, yet it can work if the product or service is relevant to the article. These products and services can be sourced through broker platforms like ClickBank or just found individually by the writer. Most products or services have an affiliate program. Ad/Membership Revenue Revenue-sharing platforms like NewsBreak and HubPages give writers a cut of the ad revenue; the amount depends on how many views the piece gets. Membership revenue gives writers a cut of the money coming in from people subscribing to the platform, like Medium and Vocal. Vocal gives a certain amount per view while Medium gives according to membership engageme...

Writing Success Comes from Volume and Quality in Balance

Our success is up to us. Success, as a general term to describe the results that constitute a success in a writer’s mind, as it meets or exceeded our expectations. And volume is how many articles/content pieces it takes for each writer to succeed with various levels of quality involved. Each writer will have their personal goals and ways to measure the results achieved through writing an article. Each writer has differing perspectives on what constitutes quality with a finished product. With these important variables in mind, let’s explore how many articles it might take with a theoretical estimation based upon experience and what I’ve seen in my decades-long online writing journey. Most writers can’t expect to attract a lot of views when writing only one article a month, or 12 a year. They may be able to stay in the game at the base line level and maintain some trickle of income, yet it isn’t the volume needed to reach that level of success to maintain. Still, we must first appreciate...

Where is Humanity Going?

Conversations Part 1 In the near future, a middle-aged man (Seth), from America, found himself talking with his mentor in a dystopian land full of deception. His mentor was a gray-headed and bearded man just past middle-aged called Pastor Nick. Seth had many questions for his mentor and the ongoing conversations are what ensued. What is the purpose and direction of humanity? Seth asked. Well, Seth, the obvious answer involves technology, as it is the main purpose of modern man. See, the so-called progress of humanity is culminating with a technological tyranny, giving the elite total control over everyone within the system, which is built and controlled by technology. Everyone involved in the system, as it is transitioning into this hive mind, is helping to build and support the reality of this technological future. They perceive it as progress, yet it is being built for only one reason — to control every human within the system. Is everyone going to be within the system? Seth asked. N...