The Courage to Be Misunderstood
- Dave Crandall
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
As I was sitting in the waiting room for my number to be called I began to scan the walls. What first caught my eye was the well known cat hanging from a branch motivational poster that simply read, “Hang In There”. Of course my cat dislike took over and I thought, “No, let go little fella, it’ll be fine!”
Then I saw another poster, this one was in simple black and white with stick figures. One solitary figure walking down the middle of a path with two groups of people on either side. The crowd on the left, pointing and whispering. Crowd on the right, arms crossed, judging quietly. The caption underneath:
If you want to be authentic, be prepared to be disliked.
If you want to be private, be prepared to be gossiped about.
If you want to stick to your boundaries, be prepared to be seen as unfriendly.
If you don't want to explain yourself, be prepared to be misunderstood.
Not a bad list, if I’m being honest, but there’s more to it than that.
The crowd on both sides are the same
Neither one is walking the road. Both are standing at the edge of it, arms crossed, mouths moving. The man in the middle is the only one actually going anywhere.
That's every room you've ever stood in. The people with opinions about your choices are rarely the people making any good ones of their own. Solomon wrote it plainly:
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice" (Proverbs 12:15).
Notice the fool doesn't lack opinions about you. He lacks the wisdom to examine himself first.
The whisper campaigns will start the moment you stop explaining yourself. What you may not know, is that the whispering isn't a sign you did something wrong. It's the toll booth on the only road that goes anywhere.
Authentic and disliked
Jesus wasn't liked by everyone. And even those that once did like Him, often turned against Him later. The same crowd shouting hosanna on Sunday was screaming crucify him by Friday. If the most authentic man who ever lived couldn't clear that bar, you won't either, and chasing it will only wear you out .
"Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets" (Luke 6:26).
Read that again. Universal approval isn't the mark of integrity. In Scripture it's closer to a warning label.
A man who is liked by everyone has probably never stood for anything significant. He's been managing perceptions instead of building a life. Disliked by the right people, for the right reasons, is not a failure state. It's evidence you finally stopped negotiating your values.
Private and gossiped about
People fill silence with speculation because speculation is easier than asking you directly, and asking you directly requires a relationship most of them haven't earned. I love this quote, attributed to actor Christian Bale:
"If you have a problem with me, text/call me. If you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me."
"A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret" (Proverbs 11:13).
You don't owe the room a play by play of your finances, your marriage, your prayer life, or your struggles. Privacy is not deception. Privacy is stewardship. What you don't explain, you don't have to defend, and what you don't defend, you get to actually live instead of narrate.
Let them talk. A closed mouth was never the problem. Feeding every open one is.
Boundaries and unfriendly
This is the one that gets men the most. You say no to a request, hold a line on your time, or stop being available on demand, and somewhere a voice says you've gotten cold. Distant. Not who you used to be.
Watch what Jesus did with the crowds that wanted more of him than he was sent to give. He withdrew to lonely places to pray (Luke 5:16), and he left towns that wanted him to stay and perform miracles on command (Mark 1:35-38). The Son of God said no to people who “needed” him and called it obedience, not rudeness.
A boundary is not the absence of love. It's the fence that makes love sustainable. The man with no boundaries isn't more loving. He's more available for people to use, and eventually he has nothing left to give the ones who actually deserve it.
Being called unfriendly by someone whose only complaint is that you stopped being infinitely accessible is not an indictment. It's a receipt. Learn how to set boundaries with grace, and to say no with a smile.
Silent and misunderstood
Never be afraid of letting people wrongly finish your story, and don’t waste time chasing them down to correct it. Your story isn’t in their hands, and it’s not fully in yours either.
"When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:23).
That's the standard. Not silence because you have nothing to say. Silence because you've handed the verdict to someone bigger than the room.
You don’t have to explain yourself to everyone. Chasing down every misreading of you is a full time job with no end date and no pay. You’re never going to win that game, because the goal was never a fair hearing. The goal was to keep you talking instead of moving.
Don't do these things as an intentional strategy for being harder to like. That's not the point. These things are simply the cost of a specific kind of life, the one where your yes means yes, your no means no, and your reputation with God matters more than your reputation in the group chat.
Most men will read a post like this, nod, and go right back to managing how they're perceived, because being misunderstood by choice is a different animal than being misunderstood by accident. It costs something up front. It costs you the easy comfort of the crowd's approval, and it pays out later in a life that's actually yours.
Paul put it this way:
"Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10).
You cannot serve two audiences. Pick one.
Most men never will. That's exactly why the road in the middle is empty…except for you!
Live untamed.
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