Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

by Brant Hansen

Yet another wrinkle: when there are two “sides” to a story, we tend to think the first one we hear is the right one. I learned this, of course, by watching The People’s Court after school every day. I always thought the plaintiff had a great case . . . until I heard the other side. This bias is universal. It’s not new, either. Check out Proverbs 18:17: “The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him” (NKJV). Life is full of conflicts, disputes, differing perspectives . . . and in all of those, guess whose perspective I hear first? That’s easy: mine. I establish a story line, and I can get angry before I even hear the other side, which is yet another reason to be very suspicious of ourselves. So let’s have the guts—and the humility—to believe what the Bible says about us, and what the research shows us. We simply can’t trust ourselves in our judgments of others. We don’t know what they’re really thinking, or their background, or what really motivated whatever they did. And since we don’t know, let’s choose ahead of time: we’re just not going to get offended by people. If I don’t need to be right, I don’t have to reshape reality to fit “The Story of My Rightness.” That makes life much easier, and makes us much more peaceful, and even fun to be around.