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

3 Ways Small Brick and Mortar Businesses Can Leverage their Websites

Not every modern business is tech-savvy and proficient with digital marketing; in fact, 36% of America's small businesses don't even have a website ; and many of those that do, have nothing more than a lonely website in the shadows. While this is a good start, this type of strategy isn't going to attract many website visitors. The good news is, it doesn't take a marketing genius to start gaining traffic to a business's website, yet it does take some time and effort to develop and execute a viable digital marketing strategy. In an effort to help, let's examine 3 ways small brick and mortar businesses can leverage their websites. 1. Optimize the Website's Sales Funnel: The first thing businesses need to do is optimize their website's sales funnel to make conversions . For brick and mortar small businesses like retailers, restaurants, event centers, etc., gaining a visitor's email is a conversion; for small businesses offering professional se...

The Most Discriminated People Are Not Who You Think

The physically unattractive, socially awkward, and poor are the most discriminated people. In America, social engineers have brainwashed us to believe minorities and women are the most discriminated people in our country and the world, yet is this really true? Using common sense, we can see this isn’t true in modern America, and even in the past. We can see clearly the most discriminated people in our country and the world are those who are physically unattractive, socially awkward, and poor. Physical Unattractiveness Physical unattractiveness is probably the top discrimination factor in the world. A person born like this will find they are not chosen for many things because of this unfortunate factor. They might be outgoing and friendly, which will help mitigate this problem, but they will invariably experience a completely different reality than a physically attractive person. We’re talking about not being chosen for jobs and friendships, and how they are treated in daily life by peo...

The next war will start before the Boomer Gen passes away

The NWO will leverage the Zionist brainwashing the Boomers have undergone. It makes sense that the hidden hand or the shadow government would start the next war before the Boomer Gen passes away, as they are the ones who support Israel the most. In general, the younger generations don’t care about Christianity or Israel. Their programming is to care about themselves and technology. If this is true, the next war will start within an estimated 5-10 years. The youngest Boomers were born in 1964, so are 61 years old. The oldest were born in 1946, so are 79 years old. To note: That means the youngest of the Greatest Gen are 80 years old. 2025 is also the first of the Beta Gen. So, there is a limited window of time for the NWO to leverage the Zionist propaganda they worked so hard to install into these older generations. Although these older gens are too old to do the fighting, they will spearhead the political and social support needed to send off the younger gens to die. The NWO also caref...

An Ode to Grandpa Lee

An old-time pioneer amid modern vanity and "progress." The man stood tall in the wind with the sun beating down on his flat-brim cowboy hat. He was a working man, focused on his pioneer family in the western country they called home. Building and designing structures high and wide, the man skipped across wooden beams high in the air, under shadows cast only by moving clouds; wide open spaces watched the scene as death-defying feats were carried out in relative obscurity, as just another day of work. The man was an old-timer with relatively few years to boast, a before his time pioneer with an adventurous and loving wife plotting business in sagebrush lands far beyond the hyped city life bustling with seemingly meaningless activities. His skin was as leather, scorched in the sun and beaten with high winds containing drifting sand mixed with alkaline dirt. The dry mountain air in the high desert cleansed his heart with comfortable respite from the high temps and harsh weather e...

Business and Society Articles

Search This Blog