Wearing Our Feelings On Our Sleeves

I've heard people say, "(S)He wears her/his feelings on her/his sleeve" all my life. It's meant to be a disparaging comment about someone the speaker feels gets their feelings hurt too easily, more often than not after the speaker has said or done something that hurt the other person’s feelings. Truth be told, we all wear our feelings on our sleeves, some are just more easily able to let the hurt pass or internalize it and not let it be seen by anyone, especially the one who did the hurting.

As a Christian, I try to be mindful of what I say or do in order to minimize any chance of hurting someone’s feelings or offending them; some would call that being politically correct, but the truth of the matter is, Paul taught in his writings that we are to be mindful of other’s feelings at all times. Jesus told us to be mindful to not offend, as well. So why is it that some folks tend to take great joy in deliberately doing/saying things that will offend or hurt the feelings of those around them? Even those they claim to love most deeply. We’ve even come up with a term to justify our doing these types of things, “tough love”. I would challenge anyone who practices this brutality to justify their actions with scripture. There’s not a single scripture that gives us license to hurt anyone’s feelings or offend anyone and justify it by claiming “tough love”.

It’s time we all started remembering to treat others the way we want to be treated and to respect the feelings of those around us, whether they are our family and friends or someone we don’t know. Just as human beings we should be mindful of the fact that we don’t like having our feelings hurt or being offended, therefore we should be careful to not do so to others.

That’s not to say each and every person doesn’t have the right to their opinion and the right to express their opinion, but there are ways to do so without offending others, intentionally.