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

by Brant Hansen

We should forfeit our right to be offended. That means forfeiting our right to hold on to anger. When we do this, we’ll be making a sacrifice that’s very pleasing to God. It strikes at our very pride. It forces us not only to think about humility, but to actually be humble.

When it comes to human motives, deciding why people do the things they do—you know, who’s righteous and who isn’t—we’re actually worse than clueless, because while we’re being clueless, we’re simultaneously under the impression that we’re brilliant.

War is not exceptional; peace is. Worry is not exceptional; trust is. Decay is not exceptional; restoration is. Anger is not exceptional; gratitude is. Selfishness is not exceptional; sacrifice is. Defensiveness is not exceptional; love is. And judgmentalism is not exceptional . . . But grace is.

Because that’s the thing about gratitude and anger: they can’t coexist. It’s one or the other. One drains the very life from you. The other fills your life with wonder. Choose wisely.

When they grow up, they’ll have the option to reject God’s love, to go their own way, to buy in to the idea that “freedom” exists elsewhere. Or they can trust that God’s way brings us freedom. He has our best interests at heart. When God shows us how to live, He’s doing so because He wants us to flourish, like Snowball.

He wants us to want Him. Not ideas or abstractions about Him, but Him.

There’s a lot less stress when you’ve been found out. Pretending doesn’t come so easily. You can’t convince yourself that you’re not just as guilty as everyone else anymore. You know the truth, and the truth has a way of setting you free. And that includes a freedom from anger.

But let’s stop aspiring to be “weaker brothers,” or letting outlier scenarios give us an “out” from venturing into people’s lives. Love people where they are, and love them boldly.

His desire to change us is just further evidence that we matter to Him, and He loves us.

Welcoming people into our lives isn’t “glossing over important issues.” Refusing to be angry about others’ views isn’t conflict avoidance or happy-talk. It’s the very nature of serving people. I don’t pretend the differences aren’t there; I just appreciate that God has a different timetable with everyone.

a recent study found that people who join causes online are not more apt to actually do something—they’re less likely to take action.

Let’s face it: we’re positively in love with “taking stands” that cost us absolutely nothing. We even get to be fashionable in the process.

We hold on to worry because we don’t trust God. We hold on to anger because we don’t trust God. We feel threatened because we’re insecure, and we’re insecure because—surprise!—we don’t trust God.

When you start practicing it, you realize: choosing to be unoffendable means actually, for real, trusting God.

But if you find your value—your “glory,” as Scripture refers to your self-worth—in anything besides your identity as someone loved by God, you are never going to be truly content. That means ever-present threat, which makes being offended a way of life.

God wants us to want Him for Him, not His gifts. And this is the whole point of trust.

His love is persistent and perpetual and unrelenting, even as our emotions, and our attention spans, aren’t. The goodness of God is not dependent on my attentiveness to it. It does not come and go, wax and wane, or suddenly vanish like my misguided, untrustworthy emotions.

But really, so what? Now, try an elitist, annoying activist for a political cause I oppose, with no sense of humor, who prefers Chopra to Chesterton, genuinely thinks Midwesterners are intellectually inferior, and consistently insults people like me. Do I love this person? Not merely tolerate, but actually love this person? If I do, well, we’ve got something unique and beautiful here.

Ideally, however, the church itself is not made up of natural “friends.” It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything of the sort. Christians come together, not because they form a natural collocation, but because they have been saved by Jesus Christ and owe him a common allegiance. In the light of this common allegiance, in light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus himself, they commit themselves to doing what he says—and he commands them to love one another. In this light, they are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.

I’m not “winning” or “losing” because I’m not even playing that game anymore. I’m off the board. Jesus is giving us a completely different way to live, and it’s one that sets us free from anger, free from ever-present guilt, free to really love people, free from constant anxiety, and free to get a good night’s sleep.

Choosing to be unoffendable means choosing to be humble. Not only that, the practice teaches humility. Once you’ve decided you can’t control other people; once you’ve reconciled yourself to the fact that the world, and its people, are broken; once you’ve realized your own moral failure before God; once you’ve abandoned the idea that your significance comes from anything other than God, you’re growing in humility, and that’s exactly where God wants us all.