Be Cringy, Be Like The Cringiest Man I Have Ever Known
There was a boss I once had who was just so good at evoking cringes in the people around him. He was so commanding. He was in charge. He had entered into the post-communist milieu of Central Europe, and he had built a Christian institution where nothing like it had existed. This was an important second career, after he had shown significant accomplishment in another field. Thousands were affected by his life.
I was an innocent missionary just out of college, well-indoctrinated about the world, daily having that horrible indoctrination ripped painfully out of me.
That boss of mine who I used to just feel so uncomfortable around is one who I have come to see as a role model, as someone who I wish to be like. He did not care if he made you cringe. He did not care one bit. He cared about making you think. He cared about motivating you to excellence.
The goal is not to offend. That, however, is one of the goals of the freakish, rapey, transgressive agenda that is so common in our groomer era from many of the political elite given a voice in the media. The goal is not to offend. The goal is to keep so ardently to the truth, that you do not care if you offend.
That first boss of mine said many “offensive” things.
And you never knew what was going to come next. It was impossible to know. His is the kind of life that legends are made from. There are few things that would be told to me about him, where I could say, “He would never do that.”
I would like to encourage you to be that guy, but I do not know how many of us have the ability to be that guy.
I don’t know how many of us are able to lovingly have a ministry of offense, in which we have no shame about telling the truth in a way that the other can listen to it and retain it. I don’t know how many of us care enough. I don’t know how many of us will disregard the cultural and societal punishment that inevitably follows that kind of person.
And I do not suggest that the purpose of such a ministry is to offend. But you must understand that in our era when you do not care about offending, when you do not onboard the shame that the cultural wants you to bear, that you inevitably offend some.
There are some who read Psalms 119:165 as a prohibition against allowing yourself to get offended: “Great peace have they which love they law: and nothing shall offend them.”
What a refreshing reading of that verse that is.