No Offense

You know, there's something I've always found a little bit strange about practicing my faith: people treat me differently.

And no, I don't mean differently in the sense of persecution, though I admit that has happened to me plenty of times before.

What I mean is that a lot of times, people who are otherwise not religious will walk on eggshells around me.

For example, a friend of mine from undergrad once used a hefty expletive while talking to me over Facebook. Immediately afterward, she wrote, "Oh, excuse my language. I know you're religious."

I'm fairly certain that she was being genuine, and that her comment wasn't meant to be sarcastic. Feeling a little confused, I laughed and said, "What? Why apologize? Do you think my ears are going to bleed or something?"

"Well, no," she told me. "I just don't want to offend."

Oh, please. Spare me.

And just the other day, another friend wrote, "I swear like a sailor, except around..." another one of her friends, who I know is a proud and outspoken evangelical.

Attitudes like this blow my mind, not necessarily out of shock, but confusion. Have we suddenly turned into china dolls because of our faith?

When people say things like that, it proves that they don't really know me at all. Yes, I do swear. Yes, I am working on that. But half the time it's a wonderful literary device. ;) The funny thing is that if, in a rare moment I do let a word slip, some people will gasp and say, "Oh! I can't believe you just said that!"

I am no saint. In fact, I'm very far from, and I have no desire to show a forced, perfect facade to the world -- that time of my faith is long gone, thank God. More than anything else, those comments are just condescending. You don't see me gasping and clutching a rosary every time someone swears in front of me, after all.

I suppose that it makes people feel better about themselves if thy can "clean up" around supposed "religious people." In some ways, I can almost understand it -- I used to act the same way around priests, just because of who they are.

What I learned, to my great delight -- and what I wish people would learn when speaking to Christians -- is that we're really all the same. We all fall, and we're all broken. It's the human condition, and I think we'd be much better off if we stopped pretending to care and actually, you know, caring.

Instead of worrying about offending me, try worrying about offending God.