Have we lost our shared humanity?

"I'm offended." So the sign has to go.

And so the sign went, for the company requested that the Christian take down their sign inviting people to pray. It was a bold sign, but hardly offensive. It invited people who followed Jesus to pray. It didn't ask anyone else to do anything. It didn't condemn any other beliefs or ideas. It just invited Christian people to meet with Christian people to pray.

This is the new era where the following prevails.

"I'm offended by...(pretty much anything that I don't like) and the offence must be removed."

"You don't understand me unless you are me."

"You don't have anything to say that I might need to hear because you are different to me.'

This seems to be the state of play in American Universities or Liberal Arts Colleges. (See The Big Uneasy, New Yorker, Nathan Heller & The Coddling of the American Mind, The Atlantic.) One college professor put it like this,

"Students believe that their gender, their ethnicity, their race whatever, gives them a sort of privilege knowledge - a community-based knowledge - that other groups don't have."

But it isn't just in the land of stars and stripes. It is alive and well under the southern cross. The new way to stop something being done or said is to say, 'I'm offended.' And if someone is offended it must be wrong.

Now, I don't think we should aim to cause offence. Jesus told me to love my neighbour even if they are easily offended. But this offensive arbiter of truth is hardly an environment for the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. Which is ironic in an age in which ideas can be so easily exchange in so many mediums.

Trying to understand exactly how we got here will take more brains than I possess. How can one truly dissect and understand a whole culture? And yet, it doesn't seem that surprising to me that we are in this cultural space. For we've made two huge moves in our society that certainly contribute.

We've opined, argued and asserted that there is no absolute truth and that any truth is personal and individual. You're right, that seems to defy the idea of truth itself. Something is true whether it is held by an individual or not. But, there you go, we've decided that in many areas of life, especially ethics, that what is true and morally right is self defined.

This understanding of truth leads logically to the conclusion that each person should be, not just could be, but should be, offended by others. Think of it this way. If truth is self defined, then if you challenge the truth I believe in then you directly challenge my identity. And if you challenge me, my sense of self, you offend me! To argue with me is not just to say that my thinking is wrong but that I am wrong.

And so, what should I do to avoid this challenge? All I have to do is throw up the walls of my identity - ethnicity, gender, social standing, up bringing etc and since others - those dangerous others - don't share those things in common, I'm safe. They can't touch my truth. For truth is self defined. And if it looks like they are clambering over the wall because of something I share with the dreaded other, than I simply make the barricade higher by pointing to more things in my identity that they don't share.

We lost a lot when we decided that truth was subjective. (This is ironic isn't it? Given that to decide that truth is subjective is to assert a universal truth. But never mind, many have pointed this out in the past, and it is only true for them.)

All this relates to another move that has occurred. But again, it is more of a loss than a move. We've lost a sense of what we share - that all people are made in the image of God. This, historically is the basis of our shared humanity. This is the basis that many people in the past used to trump our differences of ethnicity or gender or..whatever. It is what the abolitionists used. As the famous medallion of the anti-slavery campaign asked 'Am I not a man and a brother?' It is what the civil right's movement used.

The argument is simple and profound.

Though this person's skin colour is different, or their language is different or their ethnicity is different, they are made in the image of God.

And so what is shared is far more important than what is different. What is shared trumps what is different.

As we've moved away from our Judeo-Christian heritage in the West, we've moved away from this shared understanding. And so we've lost many things that ought to be shared. We've lost a shared vision of other people. We've lost a shared vision that the truth matters and that it may well matter enough to cause at least some offence. We've lost a capacity to let differences exist. We've lost the ability to work out what ought to offend. Such as a sign that invites people to meet and to pray.