“When we believe or say we’ve been offended, we usually mean
we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy,
embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our
interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it
ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me.
Indeed, believing that another person has offended us is fundamentally false.
To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed
upon us by someone or something else. In the grand division of all of God’s
creations, there are things to act and things to be acted upon. As sons and
daughters of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral
agency, the capacity for independent action and choice. Endowed with agency,
you and I are agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon.” –
Elder David A. Bednar
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