Tearing Up the List

I haven’t written anything in a long time. Part of it was because I was surviving my first trimester of pregnancy, which was awful, and surviving the winter which is always hard for me. The other reason is because I guess I felt that the blogging world was so flooded with ideas and opinions that nothing felt fresh, and what could I contribute?

But every season has an end, and here is my meager contribution to this world of ideas.

    I have noticed a disturbing trend in our culture but particularly in the world of blogging and internet comments (why, why, why does every website need a comments section?). It is a propensity to be easily offended, and to write about it. Ever since people of my generation were young we have been hearing about this, just in different ways: people are offended by a cross on the wall in a courtroom, or by a sign saying “Merry Christmas” in a grocery store, or by language that some are using to describe their race or group. And though this “PC” generation has learned a lot about how to treat each other, what words to use and not to use, it seems like we may have taken this chance to educate and turned it into an opportunity to be offended.

Take this for example: how many articles have you seen that are called something like this- “Ten Things To Never Say To A Pregnant Lady” or “What NOT To Say To A Mom of Twins”. The article then lists the things that people have said to the author that they categorized as offensive. Then, if you dare to read the comments, people add more and more things that offended them to this list. Or simply say, “Yes! I HATE that!” These articles exist now in regards to many races of people, every type of sexuality, every unique family situation (“What not to say to parents with one child” “What not to say to parents with two children”), and every person who is seen as “not the norm”: a person with curly hair, a redhead, a person with a missing limb, an otherwise handicapped person, a parent of a handicapped person, etc. Now, here is what is not wrong with this idea: education. The internet is a valuable tool in that we can reach people that we would not ordinarily be able to reach in order to teach them how to better communicate and respect others. Some of these articles are very thoughtful with the goal being something like: I know that my situation is unique and unusual, and I know that when you are talking to me/helping me/etc. you are trying to be kind, but you are unintentionally hurting my situation instead of helping. Here are some easy tools for you to be a better helper, if that is your goal. Knowledge is power, and if I can learn about someone better so that I can help or love them more effectively, then bring it on.

Others of these articles seem to be simply a re-hash of all of the things that have been said to someone that for one reason or another they just didn’t like. They are giving you a list of their opinions, their interpretations, and their judgements of things that were said or done to them by people who they mostly don’t know anything about. Maybe that person rubbed your pregnant belly because in their community that simple act is an acknowledgement of something beautiful that is happening inside of you. What they saw as kindness and encouragement, you choose to see as someone blatantly ignoring your silent rules. And so, you see it as a threat. But it isn’t, it’s simply a lack of understanding.

Sometimes, people are ignorant of “the rules”. They didn’t read that blog post, maybe they don’t have the internet, and maybe they don’t encounter people like you or families like yours very often and they just say whatever they think. My brother and sister-in-law have ten kids, and I asked her once what is the most annoying thing people have said to her. She had to think really hard, and then she basically said that nothing really bothered her all that much even though the examples she listed could have easily made a “What NOT to Say to Big Families” list. It wasn’t because the comments couldn’t be seen as offensive, it was because she was simply not offended by them. She was able to quickly and without reservation extend grace to people who made comments about her family without much thought at all.

In our country and world right now there are race issues, sexuality issues, gender issues…lots of issues actually that don’t seem to be getting better. In our quest for equality we are doing a lot of teaching, rule-making, and educating. We keep thinking “if they could only understand better, think more like me, see my side, they would be able to see how we can fix it”. So we talk, and write, and comment. But do you know what most of us are not doing? Actually embracing each other.

Let’s say you go out on a date with someone, and before you sit down to talk they hand you a list of rules of things you can and cannot say to them. Some of them seem obvious, but others you sort of don’t understand and you may have said to other people before. What if you forget? What will they do? You really like them but now you are afraid, afraid to offend, afraid to seem like an idiot. Did that person build a bridge between you or create a boundary of fear and expectations?

The first step to understanding ANYONE is to accept their perceived weirdness and their uniqueness and start a relationship. About a year and a half ago I joined a church with a large Korean-American population. At first it was hard for me to form relationships with people because I walked around censoring my every word. I was terrified to offend people by asking them where they were from (what if they were born in the US and they think I’m asking if they were born in Korea?? What if that is offensive and I don’t know it? Should I bow back or what?), or what languages they speak, or what kind of food they liked. So I mostly kept my distance and asked super safe questions, until I began to work at the church and knew that I needed to step outside of my comfort zone. By that point our church had become even more multi-ethnic, full of diversity of race, income, upbringing, and culture. If you think it’s easy to throw a bunch of people together who on the surface have nothing in common, well, it isn’t. But we have worked hard as a community to get messy, talk about the hard stuff, acknowledge our differences, and form real and lasting relationships. I hope I never come across an article called “What NOT to Say to Korean-Americans” because I am positive that I would have said everything on the list in the past year. But do you know what we have in our little community that makes it safe? That makes our blunders and missteps ok? We have relationships. We have true, real love from God that helps us to not see so much with our own judging eyes, with our lists of expectations that come from each of our cultures and backgrounds (how could we EVER meet all of those different expectations?), but with God’s vision that sees everyone as precious. Love, Jesus’ deep and agape love that lives in our hearts, is just not easily offended.  It just isn’t. It can’t be.

Sometimes people are so crazy and rude that it is really hard to see them other than really crazy and rude. But if we let ourselves be the manners police of our culture, censoring and correcting and creating lists and rules and expectations, then what we are doing is molding others to our own likeness. What we are saying is: my feelings are more important than our potential relationship. My culture and my background tells me that what you are doing is insensitive, regardless of what your culture and your background tells you. How can we ever create relationships and start bridging these deep, painful chasms in our culture if we are holding people to the standards of our opinions? Understanding does not come from saying the right things in a conversation, it comes from feeling freedom and acceptance and grace. We are never going to reconcile with each other if we are a culture where we are afraid to help people, afraid to start a conversation, afraid to say something because of a fear to offend. We can turn it around, we can change the way we are, but it can only come from completely dropping our expectations, ripping up our lists, and accepting people as who they are: parts and pieces of a family we don’t know, a background we don’t know, a list of hurts we don’t know, influences we don’t know, experiences we don’t know, a whole life that we just don’t know. But we CAN know them. That person who offended you can become your friend. All it takes is intentional grace and real, accepting love.

Tear up the list. Be bold. Get messy. Love courageously.