“You’re so ugly Hello Kitty said goodbye to you.”
“You are so ugly that when your mama dropped you off at school she got a fine for littering.”
“You must be the arithmetic man; you add trouble, subtract pleasure, divide attention, and multiply ignorance.”
Dissing people has become an art form for some, for others it has become a competition of wit and creativity. Dissing has inundated our culture. From Kanye interrupting Taylor’s acceptance speech in 2009 to the recent Golden Globe (and most awards shows) where Ricky Gervais was evaluated on how well he made fun and criticized presenters and nominees, our culture not only expects people dissing each other, but has began to elevate people who can do it well.
We are living in a culture, a generation that feels dissed, overlooked, treated unfairly, unimportant, devalued, disrespected. Because we feel like we are dissed, we tend to live like it. How we look at ourselves, how we treat other people and definitely how we see God and how we think God sees us is dramatically shaped by what we are personally experiencing and what we have adopted as truth.
Dissed is defined as being disrespected. The crazy thing, most of the time we are not dissed based on fact, but instead from a made up accusation or a flippant comment that has no truthful basis. The even crazier reality is that we tend to give incredible weight to the diss.
How can we navigate our lives spent living in a culture of disrespect and chaos and yet maintain an accurate view of who we are.
DEFINE REALITY – You have been dissed. You have been disrespected. Accept it. Identify who has dissed you. John 8:44 says that there is an enemy and he is the father of lies. From the beginning this enemy has done his best to diss you. He has disrespected your image of yourself, your confidence, you joy, your purpose, your value to God and the depth of God’s love for you. The enemy is the ultimate disser, perhaps you can call him the father of diss. Here is the second part of reality that is important to realize: The enemy doesn’t hate you that would mean he cares about you – he doesn’t care about you – HE HATES GOD and since you were created in God’s image, the enemy hates you and wants to diss you! There is no community in hell, the enemy isn’t trying to populate hell, the enemy’s big plan is to separate people from God.
KNOW THE TRUTH – Have you ever been dissed and secretly wanted to know if that was true or not, like are you fat, stupid, not as good as other people, weird, disfigured? To combat the reality that you have been dissed you need to know the truth. John 8:32 says, “You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” There is a powerful promise in this verse. When we invest in knowing the Truth about God, about ourselves, that Truth will set us free from the power of a diss, from the cost of a mistake, from the perception of a person. The challenge is, will you take the time to invest in knowing the Truth? Will we let the Truth set us free?
The bigger challenge, perhaps opportunity for our generation, is deciding if we will continue to be a dissed and dissing generation or will we fight to bring Truth back to this generation.
The enemy has dissed this generation, will we choose to let the TRUTH set us free?