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.

Actually, it’s not even “forfeiting” a right, because the right doesn’t exist. We’re told to forgive, and that means anger has to go, whether we’ve decided our own anger is “righteous” or not.

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 won’t often admit this, but 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.

We humans are experts at casting ourselves as victims and rewriting narratives that put us in the center of injustices.

That’s the whole point: 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. Anger is extraordinarily easy. It’s our default setting. Love is very difficult. Love is a miracle.

I think 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 do it with the apostle James, who, in the Bible, said point-blank that anger does not produce the kind of righteousness God wants in us: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20 ESV). We do it with Paul when we read one of his many lists of sins, like Colossians 3:8: “But now also put these things out of your life: anger, bad temper, doing or saying things to hurt others, and using evil words when you talk” (NCV).

Here’s what I think, given that we’re to “get rid of all anger”: Anger will happen; we’re human. But we can’t keep it. Like Reverend King, 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. People say we have to get angry to fight injustice, but I’ve noticed that the best police officers don’t do their jobs in anger. The best soldiers don’t function out of anger.

Anger does not enhance judgment. Yes, God is quite capable of being both just and angry, but if I’m on trial in front of a human judge, I’m sure hoping his reasoning is anger-free.

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.

Whatever anyone’s done to me, or to anyone else, I stand just as guilty. People have lied to me, but I’ve lied too. People have been unfaithful to me, but I’ve been unfaithful too. People have hurt me, and I’ve hurt them. I get angry toward murderers, and then here comes Jesus, telling me if I’ve ever hated someone—and I have—I am the murderer’s moral equal.

But merely “reasonable” isn’t what we’re going for here. We want to follow the gospel, wherever it takes us. God has a way for us to live—a humility that He has called us to—and it’s the way we humans happen to really flourish.

in the Bible’s “wisdom literature,” anger is always—not sometimes, always—associated with foolishness, not wisdom. The writer recognized that, yes, anger may visit us, but when it finds a residence, it’s “in the lap of fools” (Eccl. 7:9).

Thinking we’re entitled to keep anger in our laps—whether toward the sin of a political figure, a news network, your dumb neighbor, your lying spouse, your deceased father, whomever—is perfectly natural, and perfectly foolish. Make no mistake. Foolishness destroys. Being offended is a tiring business. Letting things go gives you energy.

Truth is—and you already know this—most of the time, whatever it was that we were taking personally, it really didn’t have to do with us. Some people are rude or selfish or whatever, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens. We can take it personally if we want . . . but why?

That’s amazing. Think about what Paul was writing there: He doesn’t know anyone’s motives. Not even his own.

God knows others’ private motives. We don’t. God knows our private motives. We don’t. We think we can judge others’ motives. We’re wrong.

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.

Oh yes, the heart is deceptive. And that calls for humility above all else, because my heart isn’t deceptive because it fools other people. It’s deceptive because it fools me.

He told me he would just talk to people about the goodness of God, because he knew, deep down, that everyone is yearning for a God like that.

She knew he wasn’t offended by her. He loved her, and not just as a project. He liked her, even.

Christians in the community wanted Michael to be offended, to draw another line in the sand. You’re supposed to get angry, and maybe even picket those kinds of people. Michael fed them strawberries. He was less interested in what some Christians thought than he was about his chance to introduce “offensive” people to a God who loves us all and wants to change us all. Love, as it turns out, covers a multitude of offenses. It sure opens doors. And hearts too.

And by the way, if you don’t, you’re doomed. So there’s that too. C. S. Lewis wrote: One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.1

I used to be scandalized by others’ moral behavior. I’m just not anymore. It frees up a lot of mental space, and we probably need more of that, to pause and reflect on what matters in life.

It’s not that I think that potentially offensive behavior is “right” or “good.” Not even close. It’s just that it’s not about me. I’m not going to be threatened or scandalized by someone else’s immoral behavior.

So what if—just dreaming out loud here—Christians were known as the people you couldn’t offend?

I’m not entitled to anger, because I’m me. I can’t handle anger. I don’t have the strength of character to do it. Only God does. We can trust Him with it. Jesus gets angry, but His character is beyond question, so He is entitled.

Anger is like the One Ring. But the Lord of the Rings analogy breaks down here: There’s not a single, hyperdestructive One Ring to be thrown into the cracks of Mordor. There’re, like, six billion. Drop yours.

He looks at Bill and sees Bill as he could be, as he was made to be. He’s not being naive; he’s being like God, “who gives life to the dead, and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Rom. 4:17 NKJV). I love that. He “calls those things which do not exist as though they did.”

God sees things we don’t. He must, because He hasn’t vaporized us yet. He must look at a seriously messed-up world and still see what can be done with it. He sees what it can and will be.

He apparently sees us the same way. He’s not just an artist, of course, like Chris. He’s also a Father. Good dads are like that. You may be a dropout, underachiever, whatever, and a good dad will still love you, but he’ll push you to change, because he sees a different you ahead. He sees a finished product, an adult who uses their talents and is a blessing to others. He sees something wonderful.

MH

Jesus is this way with the most morally embarrassing people. You can’t find a single story in the Bible where He’s so disgusted, so scandalized by someone’s moral behavior, that He writes him off. It just doesn’t happen.

So think about this: When Peter insists that he is even willing to die for Jesus, Jesus tells him, “No, you’ll betray Me. You’ll deny Me—three times. But don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in me. I’m going to prepare a special place for you—and I’m coming back to get you!” Jesus wouldn’t even let hypocrisy, betrayal, backstabbing, lying, and abandonment stop Him from loving Peter. He saw something in Peter that Peter could not have possibly seen in himself.

Jesus isn’t shocked by self-centeredness. Neither is He scandalized by others’ moral behavior. Ever. He knows how we are. He knows how the human heart works.

Perhaps a big part of being less offendable is seeing the human heart for what it is: Untrustworthy. Unfaithful. Prone to selfishness. Got it. Now we don’t have to be shocked.

He knows the human heart. And so should we, so we can quit being shocked and adjust our expectations accordingly. Perhaps you’ve noticed: Jesus encountered one moral mess after another, and He was never taken aback by anyone’s morality. Ever. I can’t find any stories (maybe you can find one?) where Jesus sees an immoral person and says anything like, “Wow! Okay. Well, that really is disgusting. That’s just too much.”

So how about taking this idea to all of our experiences: You really can’t believe politicians would lie? You can’t believe a preacher would cheat on his wife? You can’t believe someone would try to steal from you? You can’t believe a neighbor would set off fireworks at 2:00 a.m.? You can’t believe a world leader would tyrannize his own people? Are we going to live in perpetual shock at the nature of man?

So humans are judgmental? Okay. Established.

Look, you have free will, and you can be perpetually shocked and offended. But be honest: Isn’t it kind of exhausting? This is not cynicism; this is living with realistic expectations—the very same understanding of our nature that Jesus has.

Okay, we recognize that we humans are prone to dig in and make excuses for ourselves . . . but then you have that talk with a friend who did something to you, and he actually humbles himself and apologizes? That’s a beautiful thing.

Yes, the world is broken. But don’t be offended by it. Instead, thank God that He’s intervened in it, and He’s going to restore it to everything it was meant to be. His kingdom is breaking through, bit by bit. Recognize it, and wonder at it.

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.

Recognize our brokenness, and then gaze at the beauty of God’s manifested love and grace breaking into the world.

But grace has no borders. Love breaks through, and—just as Jesus said of the church—the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Yes, the world is broken, and selfishness is our default setting. But that’s all the more reason we get goose bumps when there’s a ray of light and we can suddenly see the kingdom from here, where things are set right.

Yes, we all deal with crazy people. Judgmental people. People who believe, deep down, that their job, after being invited into the party that is the kingdom of God, is to keep others out of the party, and then pat themselves on the back for “taking a stand.” I hear from them often. But then there are people like this imprisoned man, who, after being taken from his family, unjustly tried, and beaten senseless . . . hugs his jailors.

When we recognize our unsurprising fallenness and keep our eyes joyfully open for the glorious exceptions, we’re much less offendable. Why? 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 He says to get rid of anger, to serve others, and to die to ourselves, it’s in our best interests to obey. He knows how we can thrive.

I don’t control the world, I don’t control Bob371, and I’m not going to cancel out every strand of thought on the internet with which I disagree.

God is in control; I’m not. Is Bob371 a mortal threat to the kingdom? No, Bob371 is not a mortal threat to the kingdom. God is patient with Bob371.

Choosing to be unoffendable not only helps me sleep at night rather than worrying about my latest online “Stand for Truth,” it also helps me remember that Jesus didn’t even ask me to take a stand for truth on everything. He told His followers to go and make disciples. Make other followers.