How to Confront Blasphemy
It's hard enough being a teen these days, but how can you be a good Christian,
too? And how can you step up to something you think is wrong, when the
person to be confronted is one of your favorite teachers? When, and how,
should a teen confront blasphemy?
The Letter
I once wrote an editorial called, "The Morality Police." In
it, I chastised the people who "notice the splinter in (their) brother's
eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in (their) own." In response
to that, I received the following letter from one teenage reader:
In my government class this year, we watched a movie while studying elections. It was a movie the teacher had rented from the video store, and I don't even recall the name. What I do remember, however, was that as we watched it, my teacher tried his hardest to turn down the volume or bleep out whatever he could of the swearing. Well -- at least some of the swearing. Actually, he just tried to censor the "f-word" and the "b-word." And maybe the occasional "a-word".
But what I noticed is that not once did he bleep out "Jesus Christ" or "God**mn". Apparently those words are no longer considered offensive in the public schools.
It was extremely offensive to me, though.
Now this was one of my favorite teachers, and I probably should have said something -- but I didn't. As I said before, it is a public school. I guess I figured that speaking up would be preachy or something. Looking back, I know that speaking my mind would not have been bad, but that's not the point. The point is that it happened -- and it's just unfortunate.
This teacher, whom I like and respect, went to great lengths to make it so we couldn't hear the words we hear everyday in the halls, but left in the worst of all. Because for me, taking the Lord's name in vain is far worse than any of those other words.
The letter concluded by asking my advice on what should be done. Unfortunately,
I don't have any quick-fix solutions; but I do have a few ideas on how
to begin.
Step 1: Express Your Feelings
Generally speaking, if people like or respect us they would rather not
hurt our feelings or do things to upset us. So, the first thing we need
to do in confronting blasphemy is to tell the person doing it that we
do not approve. The best way to do this is by expressing (and owning)
our feelings:
In this particular example we might say, "I felt hurt when you censored
the crude slang but didn't seem to censor the use of the Lord's name in
vain."
Notice that we don't assign any motivation to what happened (e.g. "you
didn’t even try"), but simply attempted to describe what we
experienced.
Step 2: Express Your Beliefs
If the person being confronted is someone we know, then I think they deserve
to understand a little bit about why we feel the way we do. So
after stating our feelings, we can take a moment to talk about our beliefs.
Keeping with the same example, we could say, "For me, taking the
Lord's name in vain is far worse than any of those other words. I believe
He is our creator and we should respect His name."
We don't need to provide the person with a theology lesson, just a basic
statement of our belief. What we're trying to do is give the person at
least a glimpse of why we feel the way we do.
Step 3: Ask for Something
Once we've accomplished the first two steps, the question in one's mind
is probably, "So what?" This last step is how we answer that
question. We ask the person to do something.
In our example, we would most likely ask for a change in behavior. "It
would mean a lot to me if you would please censor those words, too."
Likewise, if the person was the one using the Lord's name in vain, we
might say, "I would really like you to stop using those terms --
especially around me."
We may not change the world, but if we follow these three steps, we can
certainly start to change the behavior of the people we care about. It
may not be easy, but even teens are called to spread the Good News and
share the love of Jesus with the world. And confronting blasphemy is certainly
a step in the right direction!
– Brandon Jubar
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