Friday, August 12, 2011

Christian-Phobia Is "Hurtful"

I don't like the word "hurtful," actually, or the thinking behind it. I hear it as a signal indicating "I demand that everybody tiptoe around my mood disorder."

There are two ways to ask someone to modify their behavior. By far the more productive way is to describe, in clear, objective, positive terms, what you would like them to do instead of what they've done that's bothered you.

If you can't do that, and you feel that you have to talk about your little hurt feelings, the way to do that without becoming the obvious verbal abuser is to describe, in clear, objective, positive terms, what the other person has done that has hurt your feelings. (I'm doing that here, yes.)

There are older, better understood words that summarize your opinion of someone else's behavior, like "harmful" (when you can identify material harm done by the behavior) or "offensive" (when you can identify the person offended) or "disrespectful" (when you can explain how the behavior violated your standards of due respect for others). "Hurtful" sounds whiny.

However, while we're here: In this blog, although ideally everybody will always show due respect for everybody, it's the Christian-phobics who are required to be careful about posting anything Christians might find "hurtful," or disrespectful.

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