Always look for the offensive side of life

People are easily offended these days. This is true whether their spot on the political spectrum is on the Left, Right, or somewhere in the Centre. All sides, the two ends in particular, are prone to being easily offended (usually by different things) and demanding that whatever it is that’s offending them is banned, suppressed, or censored. People really need to chill out.

I was reminded of all this today by a post on a Facebook Page for the community we live in. It was very much off topic for the page, which rarely has discussions of things that aren’t specific to our community, or maybe the wider region if it affects our community. I saw a post someone made this morning, something that had nothing to do with our community:

I was shocked to see the cartoon drawing a parallel between the cross of Christ and the personalities involved with Capital Gains Tax. Such mockery of the core of the Christian faith is only possible because we live in a democratic country and there is no danger of a backlash from Christians. I pose the question: would the cartoonist portray any aspect of Islam in an equally demeaning way? I think not. Christ himself said while hanging on the cross, “Forgive them, Father for they know not what they do.” Be thankful that the basis of Christ’s teaching is forgiveness not reprisal.

My first reaction was an unkind, “WTF?!” The only comment at that point was along similar lines:

Well said… It's a shame people are all too ready to embrace Islam but laugh and mock people who are Christians. Let's accept and respect everyone's religious beliefs as I do as a Christian.

It seemed to me that the discussion was sitting on an edge between more or less rational comments and rank islamophobia, so I chimed in. Here’s my comment in full (slightly edited for clarity):

I haven’t seen what you’re referring to, so I have no idea whether I’d think it was making a good point or a bad one, or whether it was offensive or just naff (most political memes on all topics fall into the latter category).

But your point isn’t really about that particular image, it’s about your personal offence at people being what you personally consider to be disrespectful to your version of Christianity. You absolutely have every right to have that opinion and to express it, and good on you for doing so! But that doesn’t mean your views are immune from either criticism or exempt from people expressing opposing views. That is their right, too.

As you know, there are many flavours of Christianity, and not all of them share your feeling of being disrespected. The fact people use Christian imagery to make political points is mainly because it has “cultural currency”—people know what it refers to and what point they’re trying to make. In a sense, it’s a compliment to how pervasive Christianity is that people *can* use Christian imagery and references to make a point.

The reason that people don’t generally use anything from Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any of earth’s hundreds of other religions is precisely because hardly anyone would “get” it. So, it’s not that that they’re picking on Christianity, nor are they giving more respect to any of those hundreds of other religions, it’s merely because they want to make a point people will understand.

Also, very often people making these points using Christian references are themselves Christian—though probably of a different flavour than you are. That adds another layer to this.

Finally, there *ARE* uses of religious references that are deeply offensive, and I have seen some directed at Christianity. However, the vast majority of truly offensive religious-based memes on social media attack Islam, not Christianity. I’m sure we can all agree that it’s wrong to actually attack *any* religion, or atheism, agnosticism, nontheism, or even just those who have no religion. There’s a difference between criticising ideas and beliefs we don’t share and attacking them. The first is fair game, the latter isn’t.

But your argument wasn’t about attacks, it was about use of references to Christianity that you don’t like. What I’m saying is, first, not everyone, nor even every Christian, will share your view on that. Second, the use of such references is seldom an attack on Christianity, but, rather, an acknowledgement that Christianity is pervasive, and referring to other religions wouldn’t work because of that pervasiveness. And, also that the real social media attacks are mainly against other religions, not Christianity.

Despite all that, you’re right, people ought to be more respectful of others and their different beliefs (religion, politics, opinions on Cadbury chocolates, whatever). But people will keep doing things we don’t like and that we may even find offensive. That’s life. I think that when they do that, all we can do in response is to acknowledge we all have differing views, but still try to provide a better example. You never know who’s listening, and they might just learn to do better!

A few more comments followed, some veering close to being unkind and unhelpful, plus a couple in support. The person responded, “I was not being PC – simply expressing my feelings as a committed Christian,” which I have no doubt was a sincerely held belief, but conservatives never realise they’re “being PC” when they are because they truly believe only those on the Left can be “PC”.

By this point, I wanted to see what the person had been on about, so I looked up the cartoon, acting on a hunch that I knew where it came from. I then posted another comment this evening (again, edited for clarity and to add links):

Interesting discussion! I decided to look up the cartoon in question to see what this was all about. It turns out it was by the NZ Herald's Rod Emmerson and published April 20 (I posted the link to it in a reply to my comment in case anyone wanted to see it, but so that those offended by it might be able to avoid seeing it).

I can see why certain Christians might be offended because they mistakenly believe that it's mocking Christianity, but it's not. Instead, it's actually mocking the NZ First [Party] caucus [in Parliament] because they killed the Capital Gains Tax, and the visuals are based not on the Christian story at all, but on the 1979 film "Monty Python's Life of Brian" (which, of course, certain Christians tried to ban because they said it "mocked" their version of Christianity). Specifically, it's based on the crucifixion scene in that film, where Eric Idle leads everyone in a rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" [video above] as they all hang on their crosses.

Although I wasn't the least bit offended by the cartoon, I think it failed because it wasn't funny and/or didn't make an obvious point. Emmerson can be really, really good—and other times, well, less successful. In my opinion, this particular cartoon was weak and ineffectual, yes, but not offensive.

It's great that in a free society everyone is free to make their own decisions about what they believe, and also what they think is offensive. They can make those decisions ONLY for themselves, obviously, and if they want people to agree with them they need to make a better argument. This discussion has made clear that we all have our own opinions and beliefs, and we're all equally entitled to hold and express them.

Still, despite the strong feelings this subject can stir up, on the whole it's been a LOT more respectful than I see on most Facebook Pages, so there's that!

The discussion really was mostly civil, but I also don’t for one minute think that the conservative Christians were persuaded at all. As is so often the case, my comments were really directed at people reading the comments but not leaving a comment themselves.

In general, I don’t comment on social media posts unless I want to speak to the silent watchers of comments. My motivations are that I want to give comfort and support to those who agree with me but feel they can’t express their opinions. I also want to give people without firm opinions another way of looking at an issue, something other than what the conservatives are arguing. And, of course, it’s not a terrible idea to remind conservative people that not everyone agrees with their opinions or worldview.

All of which is, of course, why I’m blogging about this, too.

Some years ago I changed my social media commenting tactics. Rather than coming out with all barrels blazing, I instead try to phrase everything in respectful—but firm—tones so that the conservative must reply to the ideas, not the person. It’s surprising how many are incapable of doing that. Unable to avoid making it personal, they instead say nothing at all in reply. That’s fine with me—not only because such situations provide very little chance of finding common ground, but also because their silence actually strengthens my arguments by leaving them unchallenged.

In this particular case, I suspected that it was impossible to find common ground based on their initial comment, something that was confirmed hours later when they added, “To express an opinion is one thing, mockery is another,” indicating that they were insisting on defining both the limits of acceptable opinions and also what could be acceptable discussion.

Social media arguments are stupid, and discussions usually can’t really be called that because sooner or later people of differing views start arguing. All things considered, this was one of the rare exceptions to that.

People really do need to chill out, though. And they really should always look on the bright side of life. But that's a different topic.

Update – April 23, 2019: Today the same person took to our community Facebook page to complain about another NZ Herald editorial cartoon about the attack in Sri Lanka. They wrote:

Another offensive cartoon has appeared in today’s Herald, this time depicting the empty tomb and carrying the caption ‘A Resurrection’. The words appearing above the entrance to the tomb in the cartoon are ‘Sectarian Terrorism’. If this is a reference to the bombing of the churches in Sri Lanka what a dreadful parody of the resurrection of Christ. For Christians the empty tomb means that Christ has risen from the dead and is alive today. That is the central message of the gospel. The Apostle Paul said ‘And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith.’ When is this trivialising of the Christian message going to stop?

This time, it didn't go well for them, and many people were quite unkind to her and really did mock her religiosity. It's fair to say that most of the negative reaction was because of how irrelevant her complaints were for that page, and I gave her several links for places she could complain to the newspaper directly. I ended up getting ad hominem attacks from someone who wanted to make it personal.

Like I said in the original post: People really do need to chill out.