Silly boy ya’ self-destroyer. Paranoia, the destroyer
Self-destroyer, wreck your health, Destroy friends, destroy yourself
The time device of self-destruction, Light the fuse and start eruption
“Destroyer” The Kinks

The Kinks, that strange English group from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, had it right…however, they didn’t take it far enough. Paranoia will not just stop at the paranoid person, but like a pebble tossed into a puddle, the ripple effects reach out and affect everyone connected to the paranoid person. Let me give you one small example to show you what I mean:

It was my first year as Senior Pastor of Kent City Baptist Church. To say I was overwhelmed with the new responsibilities would be an understatement. I will never forget the second month into my new position a close friend came into my office to tell me how one of our regular families was leaving our church to start going to a church down the road. I really liked this family so I wanted to know why they were leaving. “Well,” said my friend, “Apparently you were stopped at the stop sign before school, and this person was stopped across the road at the opposite stop sign, she waved to you, and you didn’t wave back. She is convinced it is because you don’t like her and she feels you are now too important to give a simple wave.”

So subsequently, she left a loving community while whispering to her friends that remained in the church just how hurt she was by my callous inconsideration.

I couldn’t believe it. A person was offended because I didn’t wave back at a stop sign? Now that, my friends, is called paranoia. If truth be told, I was probably trying to get my kids (through some high decibel verbal coaxing) to put on their shoes and grab their lunches before I dropped them off to school. But this lady was firmly convinced I was a cold-hearted, arrogant man. She pulled her kids from our youth group, distanced herself from former friends who stayed at the church, and over the years she refused to even look me in the eyes. Paranoia not only affected her, but it oozed out and poisoned everyone and anyone who would listen to her.

We now live in a society that is forming laws, college policy, and public behavior built on the same type of paranoia. No one is allowed to be offended any more, even if the offending party had no idea what they were doing. One of the primary ways this new culture of paranoia is splashing ashore is through a relatively new sociological theory called “Microaggression.” Here it is defined:

The term “microaggression” was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color, other minorities and women.”

So in this brave new world of microaggression, if you are an African American and you wave to your friend at a stop sign and they don’t wave back, it is probably a case of hostility that needs to be hunted down and punished. We once were taught to look past unintentional slights, as Jack Sparrow says, “Sticks n’ stones love, sticks n’ stones.”  Now, all unintentional behavior is to be analyzed, rooted out and destroyed. Professors at college are being dismissed for that one errant word, companies sued for not hiring the guy with the funny name, and bathroom doors are being swung wide open just so the transgendered male/female with a beard doesn’t feel bad when he or she isn’t accepted by your average juvenile students in the other bathroom.

Whatever happened to “kids will be kids”? It is to be no more! The thought police is everywhere, walking on the street, sitting on the park bench, riding the subway…so look out! And liberals call Donald Trump a Nazi?

Why am I writing about this? Because I hate how this seepage of paranoia’s poison is twisting me; especially when it comes to the way I view myself. I now feel like I am an incredible person if I am nice to a black waiter, or I smile at a female basketball player, or I shake hands with a man in a wheelchair. Morality is now defined by niceness toward those I am scared to death to offend. The problem with this mentality is that everyone around me has reason to be offended…so my life has careened down onto the proverbial “eggshell highway.” Everywhere I step, every look I take, every word I utter could be hiding unintentional aggression.

If I run into a person who has piercings in their nostrils, tongue, eyelids, and navel with an assortment of sexual and demonic tattoos plastered all across their body I must not stare like I used to when I would spy on the Carnies at the fair. (Question: why else would a person decorate themselves like a freak show artist if they didn’t want to be noticed? Isn’t that their point? Don’t they secretly want to be noticed and to shock? So if I am shocked I am just confirming what they wanted, right?) If a man who is 300 pounds is dancing in a ballerina outfit talking about invisible fairies and ponies as if they were his best friends, am I supposed to treat this as normal? How come when black people play basketball with other black people….you know where I am going with that.

I know the naysayers of this post will say we have to be sensitive, respecting the emotional scars of people’s past hurts and give everyone respect. But as a society, the paranoid have moved way past general respect and they want me to accept everything they do as normal. Much of this is not normal! What I find completely illogical is when transgendered or homosexuals talk about all the hurt and scars they have sustained from the past, and yet they promote and even encourage others to adopt the lifestyle that brought so much ridicule and hurt upon them. Yes, ridicule is wrong, disrespecting others is wrong, but so is setting those you love up to be emotionally scarred as you were the rest of their life because you are telling them abnormality is normal. And the paranoid feel perfectly justified in passing down their paranoia to their kids and friends so every bad look, and every person who doesn’t wave at a stop sign, must be a devil from hell.

If you want to have an emotionally healthy world, we need to teach everyone Proverbs 12:16, “A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a wise person looks past insults!”

I was the youngest brother of six feisty and verbal siblings growing up. That means I was always surrounded by ridicule and insults, it was normal life for me. My three “evil” sisters (tongue in cheek of course) loved to sing me a song that they knew would make me go unhinged, “Christopher Joseph four weeks old, how do you like the world so far? There will be swings to be swinging on, toys to be wound up…” It was a baby song and it made me furious. I would yell for them to “stop it, stop it, stop it!”  One day as I was running through the house screaming for them stop, my dad grabbed me by the arm and sternly said, “Grow up, the sooner you stop getting mad the sooner they will stop. And by the way, this is no way for an 18-year-old to act. (Actually, I was only 12 at the time.)”

That day taught me a valuable lesson, “A true adult lives above, perseveres under criticism, ignores the ignorant statements of others, shuts his mouth when they feel hurt, and proves himself through action and not litigation.” It is paranoia that makes children out of us all!

It really will destroy ya!