Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (updated with two new chapters)

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.

I now think we should be the most refreshingly unoffendable people on a planet that seems to spin on an axis of offense.

Forfeiting our right to anger makes us deny ourselves, and makes us others-centered. When we start living this way, it changes everything.

We’re told to forgive, and that means anger has to go, whether we’ve decided our own anger is “righteous” or not.

Why do we decide to read the Bible that way when it comes to this issue?

Why, when I talk about anger on my radio show, do so many believers instantly go to the scripture about “In your anger, do not sin,” and then skip the rest of the paragraph? Why ignore the context? Do not be bitter or angry.

Paul was saying, clearly, that, yes, we will get angry; that happens; we’re human. But then we have to get rid of it. So deal w...

God is “allowed” anger, yes. And other things, too, that we’re not, like, say—for starters—vengeance. That’s His, and it makes sense, too, that we’re not allowed vengeance. Here’s one reason why: We stand as guilty as whoever is the target of our anger. But God? He doesn’t. For that matter, God is allowed to judge too. You’re not. We can trust Him with judgment, because He is very different from us. He is perfect. We can trust Him with anger. His character allows this. Ours doesn’t.

we like being angry. We don’t like what caused the anger, to be sure; we just like thinking we’ve “got” something on someone. So-and-so did something wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, and anger offers us a sense of moral superiority.

in Jesus’ teaching, there is no allowance for “Okay, well, if someone really is a jerk, then yeah—you need to be offended.” We’re flat-out told to forgive, even—especially!—the very stuff that’s understandably maddening and legitimately offensive.

The thing that you think makes your anger “righteous” is the very thing you are called to forgive. Grace isn’t for the deserving. Forgiving means surrendering your claim to resentment and letting go of anger.

King says, “I must not harbor anger,” and the author says, “I agree; let’s use our anger constructively!”

Claims to agree, but then says basically the opposite

we do this with Jesus all the time. We take something like “Love your enemies” and “Pray for those who persecute you,” and tack on “But, really, holding on to anger is justified.”

We think that when he said to put anger “out of your life,” he really meant “except when it’s constructive.” I’ve yet to hear us apply that logic to the rest of his teaching in that verse: “Get rid of your evil words—except when it makes sense,” or “Rid yourself of evil words—except when they really had it coming.”

we can recognize injustice, grieve it, and act against it—but without rage, without malice, and without anger. We have enough motivation, I hope, to defend the defenseless and protect the vulnerable, without needing anger.

Seek justice; love mercy. You don’t have to be angry to do that.

Choosing not to take offense is not about simply ignoring wrongs. If someone, say, cuts in front of you in line, you can address the situation. You don’t have to simply accept it. But you can act without contempt, anger, and bitterness.

According to the radical teaching of Jesus, I stand as guilty, morally, as any other sinner, period.

merely “reasonable” isn’t what we’re going for here. We want to follow the gospel, wherever it takes us.

Are we to cling to anger at their sin? God took out His wrath on Jesus for other people’s sin. And I believe Jesus suffered enough to pay for it, and my sin too. I’m so thankful for that. He will deal with others’ sins; it’s not my deal.

in the Bible’s “wisdom literature,” anger is always—not sometimes, always—associated with foolishness, not wisdom.

my heart isn’t deceptive because it fools other people. It’s deceptive because it fools me.

Living the usual way, we’re prone to offense simply because people can’t help but stand in the way of what we’re straining to get.

Anger and rest are always at odds. You can’t have both at once.

“Trust in yourself” sounds like a perfectly normal thing to do. Problem is, for the believer, it isn’t biblical at all.

We struggle with trusting God to mete out justice. We’re afraid He won’t mete out justice, that people won’t get what they deserve. So perhaps our entitlement to anger is our little way of making sure some measure of “justice” is served.

We are too good at deceiving ourselves to know if we have “righteous anger” or not. Maybe this is why there is no such allowance in Scripture.

Truth is, we want Jesus to leave our self-righteousness intact. He wants to smash it.

I doubt people will love God more because of my list of moral accomplishments. They’re more likely to be annoyed, and I don’t blame them. Even worse, at least one person would probably think, Yep, Brant’s morally better than me. I’m a loser, just like I figured.

precious few people are attracted to displays of moral fastidiousness.

Refusing to be offended by others is a powerful door-opener to actual relationships. I don’t expect people who aren’t believers to act like followers of Jesus. Why should they?

I USED TO THINK THAT TO BE CHRISTLIKE MEANT TO BE ALIENATED and put off by the sin of others. But it’s quite the opposite. Refusing to be alienated and put off by the sin of others is what allows me to be Christlike.

Evangelicals adopted an isolationist mindset for much of the 20th century. Non-Christians, the thinking went, carried sin like a virus, and the point of following Jesus was to remain as pure as possible. Christians established their own communities, educational institutions and music festivals, separate from the rest of the world.

Somehow, I took the example of the King of kings, who wanted to be with us so much that He lowered Himself to be born in a barn full of animals and manure, and I thought it meant I was supposed to raise myself above and away from the messy lives of others.

the kingdom of God is not on defense.

I used to read, in Matthew 16, where Jesus was talking about the “gates of hell” coming against the church and how they would not prevail against it, and I’d think, That’s great! We can stand up to the worst attacks. But that doesn’t make any sense. Gates don’t attack. I’m kind of a military history nerd, and I still missed this. This reference isn’t defensive at all. It’s about being on offense. What it actually sounds like is this: Jesus is sending His followers out to love others, and they can go anywhere, even through the gates of hell, to do it.

He’s going to change us, and if we want the status quo, we don’t want Him. But that’s not a guilt trip. 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’m not responsible for changing people’s lives. I’m responsible for faithfully loving them.

the entire redemptive, narrative arc of the Bible, rather than cherry-picking a few bits that seemed, when isolated, to suggest disengagement with sinners.

There just aren’t lots of references to anger in the Bible as something wonderful. And yet we’re now told it’s a “gift” for our use when we feel it’s “reasonable.”

If this is, in fact, what we’re supposed to do—experience “righteous anger” whenever we’re made aware of one of God’s commands being broken—we’ll be precisely what the world doesn’t need and largely believes we already are: a bunch of uptight, seething hypocrites.

He’s promising something of value that no one else—and literally, no other religion—promises. He’s promising a release from the constant evaluation, never-ending striving, and relentless assessment of where we, and everyone else, stand.

Anger and action are two very different things, and confusing the two actually hurts our efforts to set things right.

The myth of “righteous anger” actually impedes the taking of action, because it lets us congratulate ourselves for a feeling, rather than for doing something.

So often it’s true: one person is angry—but it’s someone else who takes action.

The Bible gives us ample commands to act, and never, ever, says to do it out of anger. Instead, we’re to be motivated by something very different: love, and obedience born of love.

in order for us to justify our right to anger, we have to confuse ourselves with God.

If our modern writers are accurate, and Christians really are called to anger against injustice, why is that call missing entirely from these letters?

Why isn’t righteous anger ever listed among the things that a Spirit-filled life will bring us?