Don’t Take the Bait

Many years ago, when I worked at a local bank, I was casually friends with one of the tellers. I’ll call her Jane. 

I didn’t know Jane very well, but we would talk at lunch and have casual banter among ourselves, as most of the branch employees did. 

One day, I came to work and she had a frown on her face.  I noticed her demeanor and said, “Smile, Jane!” cheerfully. 

“I don’t feel like smiling!” She said back, rather forcefully.

I proceeded to feel personally attacked by this response.  Yes, I know; it was childish and ridiculous. I went to such efforts in avoiding her that, among other things, I would get up from my desk and purposely— forcefully—close the lunchroom door when I heard her voice. My intention was to “punish” her, so I felt even more justified in these childish actions when I closed the door in her face.

After a few weeks of this behavior, I noticed she had a black eye and the side of her face was purple. Shocked, I asked her what happened. She told me that a man whom she’d been dating had swindled her out of her life savings. He punched her after they argued, then took her car and left her stranded while they were out of state. 

Needless to say, I felt ashamed of my foolishly selfish behavior. Satan had set a trap of offense, and I took the bait without even asking myself what was truly going on.

Luke 17:1 (NASB) says:

He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come!”

As this passage says, it isn’t a matter of if we get offended, but when.  Our Father will take care of the one who offends us because He clearly sees his or her motive. Our job is to watch our response to the offense. We always have a choice: we can to cling to it, often irrationally (like I did in the example above) or we can reject the offense, surrendering it—and the pain—to Jesus, the One who understands offenses like no one else. The problem with holding on to offenses is they fester and grow, causing us to see everything through a lens of offense (exactly the problem I had in the above scenerio). Then we are in a dangerous place where everything has a tendency to hurt our feelings and we withdraw from others, quietly nursing our pain while justifying our actions.

The Bible tells us that love doesn’t keep score of wrongs (1 Cor 13:5) and it always believes the best of others. We are to reject selfishness, considering others ahead of ourselves (Philippians 2:3). “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 2:5 NIV).

 Ultimately, we are responsible for our reaction to others. We cannot justify angry, vengeful thoughts when someone hurts us. And it doesn’t make us feel better to try to get even; it just causes more strife and makes us puppets in the hands of our only true enemy.

So the next time you are tempted to nurse an offense, don't take the bait!