I saw it in myself before I could name it.
This person hurt me. That person misunderstood me. Nobody really sees me.
For a long time, those were the lenses I saw through. Every disagreement touched old wounds. Every misunderstanding became further proof that I wasn’t valued the way I wanted to be. And underneath all of it sat a quiet, aching question:
Why doesn’t anyone really see me?
I want to talk about this honestly, because I don’t think we can teach people how to love well until we’ve dealt with something that comes before it.
You cannot give away a currency you’ve never held yourself.
The Greek word most often translated offense in the New Testament is skandalon. It’s a vivid word. It originally described the trigger-stick of a trap—the small mechanism an animal steps on that springs the whole snare shut.
That’s not a poetic flourish. It’s a precise description of what offense actually does.
It looks small in the moment—a comment, a slight, a misunderstanding—but stepping on it springs something much larger closed around you.
Once it’s triggered, you’re caught.
And a caught animal isn’t thinking clearly.
Trying to protect itself from further harm.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8
Combine those two ideas together and something should start to make sense.
A lion doesn’t chase down the strongest, most alert animal in the herd. It looks for the one that’s already caught, limping, and isolated from the group.
And once you’re caught in it, you become remarkably easy to devour—easy to manipulate, easy to isolate further, easy to convince that everyone really is against you.
This is why offense is never a minor issue.
It’s not merely an unpleasant feeling to manage.
It’s one of the enemy’s most effective strategies for taking someone who was walking freely and turning them into someone caught, defensive, and alone.
When you get victimized, you start seeing through victim’s eyes.
Once a person has been caught in offense long enough, it stops being an event and starts becoming a lens. Every new situation gets filtered through old wounds. Every disagreement becomes further evidence that nobody sees you, values you, or understands what you’ve been through.
I know this pattern from the inside.
There were seasons where every story I told led back to the same place:
“This person did this to me.”
Every version of that story ended with me defending myself, shifting blame somewhere else, and all the while wondering, why I still felt invisible.
The longer I stayed caught in offense, the more everything became about what everyone else wasn’t giving me.
I wanted people to see me.
But underneath all of that wasn’t really a lack of recognition.
It was a lack of rest.
I was asking other people to give me something only the Father in heaven could settle in my own heart.
Here’s what’s painful about this.
The very posture that feels like self-protection is often what keeps a person from ever being truly seen.
The more defensive you are, the more it pushes people away before they can get close enough to actually know you.
Blame-shifting conveniently keeps you from the one thing that could actually change something:
Honest ownership of your own heart.
This isn’t new information.
It’s the oldest pattern there is.
Adam and Eve wrote the original script.
“Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9) God asked Adam—not because He didn’t know, but because He was inviting him back into the light.
“I was wrong, and I need You.”
He immediately shifted the blame—to the woman, and beneath that, to God Himself.
“The woman You gave me.”
Eve did the same, pointing to the serpent.
Neither of them could simply own up to what had happened.
The trap had already closed.
And once it closes, everything becomes everyone else's fault except our own. Defensiveness becomes the default language of anyone caught inside it.
That’s what I mean by victim-eyes.
Not necessarily dishonesty.
But pain that has made us so hard that we now have a lens that can no longer see clearly because it’s too busy protecting itself from being hurt again.
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” — Mark 12:31
That phrase—as yourself—is huge.
Jesus isn’t adding a nice detail.
He assumes that loving our neighbour flows from a heart that has first learned to rest in the Father's love.
If that isn’t settled in your own heart, the command doesn’t just become difficult.
It becomes impossible.
You cannot hand someone a security you’ve never received.
This is why so many of us love from a place of proving rather than fullness.
We serve people hoping to earn a sense of worth that was never meant to come from them in the first place.
We stay in unhealthy relationships because some part of us believes love is scarce, so we grasp instead of freely giving.
That’s not loving your neighbour as yourself.
It’s trying to find yourself through your neighbour.
Eventually, that kind of love always breaks down, because you cannot outrun what you haven’t allowed the Father to heal.
And offense—the trap, the skandalon—is often exactly what’s keeping a person from ever getting there.
As long as you’re caught defending yourself, you can’t rest long enough to receive the same love that would set you free.
Freedom doesn’t begin with trying harder to forgive.
Or trying harder not to be defensive.
It starts with letting the Father’s love reach the place where the trap first closed.
“I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me. You must continually let my love nourish your hearts.” — John 15:9
Then—and only then—does giving become sustainable instead of another performance.
You cannot give what you do not have.
The love you’re trying to offer others has to become something you’ve first learned to receive yourself.
Sit with these honestly.
Is there a story I keep telling about what someone did to me, that always ends the same way?
When I feel unseen or misunderstood, is my first instinct to defend myself, or to become curious about what’s actually happening in me?
Have I been asking people to give me something only the Father can settle in my heart?
Do I actually believe that I am deeply loved—not because of anyone else’s response to me, but because of the Father’s heart toward me?
Father, today I choose to step out of the trap of offense. I no longer want to see my life through the lens of what others have done to me. I acknowledge that I’ve looked to people to give me what only You can provide. Today, I let that go.
I receive Your love. I receive Your acceptance. I receive my identity as Your beloved son or daughter. I choose to believe that I am fully known, fully seen, and fully loved—not because of how others have responded to me, but because of who You have revealed Yourself to be.
Where I have blamed others instead of allowing You to search my own heart, I choose honesty. Where I have hidden behind defensiveness, I choose humility. Where offense has kept me trapped, I choose forgiveness and freedom.
Holy Spirit, continue to renew my mind and reshape my heart. Teach me to live from the security of Your love rather than the approval of people. May the love I have received become the love I freely give.
Today, I choose to walk in the freedom that has always been mine in Christ. Amen.