Offense

I was daydreaming the other day - a real juicy one, you know, one of those brain threads that keeps unraveling and unraveling...eww, gross...

Anyway...I was daydreaming and something popped into my mind...Wreck It Ralph! Eh, not the best Disney movie, but then again, not the worst. I liked it for all the video game references :)  We watched it a few months ago, but I guess it came to my attention again the other day when I heard a clip from the movie being played on one of the video feeds in Target's entertainment section. It was a clip from when Ralph first landed in the game Sugar Rush and met little Vanellope, a clumsy "glitch" from the game (I'm not gonna give a synopsis of the movie, just watch it sometime if you're really that interested in filling in the blanks); but as curious Vanellope is grilling Ralph as to how he got into her game, she asks him a tongue-in-cheek question, one that is meant to sound cute & naive coming from a little girl: "are you a hobo?" That's a cute line, and the cute indignity of the transaction between the two characters provides some comic relief for an otherwise tense moment.

When I heard that clip the other day, I remembered a feeling I had when we first watched the movie at home a few months ago. It was a twinge. There's no better way I can describe it. A twinge. Not a facial expression, more of an internal feeling. Some people would go so far as to call this feeling offended, but I don't like using that word because to me it conjures the thought of a 1930's sewing circle of nose-raised holier-than-thou's. So I'll leave it at a twinge.

Now let me be the first to say, I liked the movie! I don't condemn it as unethical or morally scathing. It's actually a fun, comical movie! - one quite enjoyable for a recovering video game addict like myself. I'm not speaking to the nature of the movie, I'm just touching on a subtle shift in values, a sneaky trick played through culture on so many levels: I'm talking about convictions, and in the larger scope, our integrity. You see, the twinge I felt did not fling me into an uproar, nor did it cause me to turn off the movie altogether. It was kinda like a bad taste in my mouth, and I can trace it back to this one conviction: I feel compassion on the homeless and disenfranchised. 

Now this is the part where you're thinking, "C'mon Shane, lighten up. You're blowing this way out of proportion. You're being way too sensitive!" Nope, I don't think so. I'm no fundamentalist by any means, but I do have convictions, and when something or someone makes light of an oppressed group of people, it sorta rubs me the wrong way. Kinda like if someone had a sibling with Down syndrome, they would feel that same twinge if they heard someone using certain slang terms flippantly. On the other hand, I'm not trying to go down the whole "politically correct" road either, I'm just making a simple statement: the culture that surrounds us is not offended by much anymore.

I went through a good part of my teenage years and all of my college years trying not to feel any twinges toward anything. Whenever I was asked about one of my "grey areas," I even used the phrase, "I don't feel convicted about that right now," like I was thinking, "maybe I'll take a stance on the issue someday, but I want to do whatever I can before being bound to convictions." Well, I've found that the irony in that mindset is that after all these years, I've found that true freedom is found by way of conviction, by way of integrity. I watched all kinds of movies, played all kinds of video games, listened to all kinds of music, hung out with all kinds of people - I just brushed it off, avoiding one reality: I had convictions, but I was choosing to ignore them. We all do this, in some way, shape or form, at one time or another.

Look around, take a gander - really sit down and take a look at our culture. Through freedom of speech, I'm allowed to write this blog, which I'm grateful for; but because our nation has supported freedom as relative, integrity as relative, void of a standard for conviction, culture and the media are influencing us and our children with one subtle message: if you've got twinges, you're uptight, ultra-conservative, and downright uncool.

There was a time when being a man/woman of conviction was seen as the gold standard, a high calling and an honor. Since then the gold standard has been lowered and dragged through the mud, and in it's place came an extreme lack of fidelity by way of neglected integrity and a penchant for ignoring a healthy view of the world around us in order to satiate our selfish desires. Nothing is off-limits anymore - no holds barred, everything is fair game, nothing is untouchable. Certain TV shows, musicians, and celebrities pride themselves in being irreverent.

You've heard it said, "If you won't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." It's so true, but when I was unraveling this daydream thread the other day, I got a good nugget that holds the same truth: "If nothing offends you, it's likely you're not defending anything." If nothing shoves you a little, it's likely you're not standing for anything. Just like basketball. I was never a great defensive basketball player; I always enjoyed offense more than defense, so that always affected my sense of urgency on defense. My level of defense would depend on my adrenaline spurts and fatigue, and more often than not, I would just be a body to get past. Cold confession, I know, but it serves a point. Since I didn't care as much about defense as I did offense, I let a lot of things slip by. The same is true for our integrity - if you let what's on offense, those "offending" you, slip by because you don't have that sense of urgency, you aren't really defending much are you?

Proverbs 4:23 says, "Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." I'm not saying to be super paranoid and stuck up, I'm saying to examine your convictions and what's shaping them. Have you been getting a twinge about anything lately? Embrace it, that's your integrity shining through. Don't be a snob about it, stand for something. Don't be afraid of your twinges, it means you're standing, you're defending. More about defense next time.