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

by Brant Hansen

Sapolsky says it’s remarkable what our emotions can do to us, physiologically, compared to other species: We’ve got the same building blocks, but we use them in ways that are unprecedented. And let me give you an example of that: Okay, so you’ve got two humans, and they’re taking part in a human ritual. They’re sitting there silently, making no eye contact. They’re still. Except every now and then, one of them does nothing more taxing than lifting an arm and pushing a little piece of wood. And if it’s the right wood, and the right chess grandmasters in a tournament, they are going through six to seven thousand calories a day, thinking, turning on a massive physiological stress response, simply with thought. And it does the same things to their bodies, as if they were baboons who just ripped open the stomach of their worst rival, and it’s all with thought, memories, and emotions.2

For the person who’s familiar with the teachings of Jesus, that theme sure rings a bell. Here’s Jesus, two thousand years ago: Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matt. 6:25–26 NKJV) Animals don’t harm themselves with worry. They don’t go into fight mode by creating threats with their imaginations. Humans do. So Jesus says to take our lessons from the birds.

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.

The lie, for most of us, is that we’ll “get there,” that we’ll somehow, someday, make it to a point where that thing, that whatever, that we think we need to be secure, is finally ours, and we won’t be threatened anymore, because we made it. But there is no “there.” It’s such a pervasive lie, this notion that security comes from something besides God Himself, that professing Christians—even accomplished people in Christian culture—inhale it.

It may not be fame for you. 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. And that state of constant threat, that way of life, is deadly.

THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO NOT BE THREATENED BY ANYTHING, AND that’s if you have nothing to lose.

But ultimately, if I’m living in fear of losing something—whether it’s security through status, looks, money, family, whatever—I’m going to be fearful, more easily threatened, and therefore prone to anger.

Idols aren’t bad things; they’re good things, made Ultimate.

We make things Ultimate when we see the true God as a route to these things, or a guarantor of them. It sounds like heresy, but it’s not: the very safety of our family can become an idol.

God wants us to want Him for Him, not merely for wha...

Here’s another thought: As wonderful as “mother love” is, we have to make sure it doesn’t become twisted. And it can. It can become a be-all, end-all, and the very focus of a woman’s existence. C. S. Lewis writes that it’s especially dangerous because it seems so very, very righteous. Who can possibly challenge a mother’s love? God can, and does, when it becomes an Ultimate. And it’s more likely to become a disordered Ultimate than many other things, simply because it does seem so very righteous. Lewis says this happens with patriotism too...

We say “I trust Jesus,” or “Trust in the Lord, and . . .” and all that stuff. But here’s where the words actually mean something: What if . . . the worst happens? Do you still trust Him? Do you believe it’s really the end of the story if it does happen? Isn’t that the point of trust itself, that you’re stepping into mystery?

Do we really believe that God is good and will ultimately set things right? The real trust comes, I’m afraid, when what we think is “right” in our present reality doesn’t happen.

The dad sat on her bed and pulled down a beautiful, embroidered picture that was on the wall above it. He was crying, and pulled down the picture and showed the back of it to us. He still thinks God is good. Somehow. “I feel like we’re only seeing this part right now, where it looks like chaos,” he said. “But someday we’ll see the front, where the stitches make more sense, and it will be beautiful. It doesn’t make sense, but I have to trust God.” There are those who would say he’s naive, but I think this is the very essence of trust, and the whole point of it.

By becoming a Christian, we say we are giving our lives to Christ. If that’s true—if we’ve given our lives to Christ—we’ve given it all. Everything.

No one can take anything, or anyone, from His grip. They can take from ours, but not His.

most people who genuinely want to know God are not living in a persistent, perpetual state of amazement at His love.

Whether or not you currently feel that God is around doesn’t alter reality. Whether or not you feel He loves you, or even that you are worthy of His love, doesn’t change reality either.

As I said, the best news ever. God still loves us. He has not abandoned us. Every hope we’ve ever had—that someone would find value in us, would think we were worthy of love, would find us enjoyable and attractive and pleasing and worthwhile—is met in Him. God Himself loves us! His love trumps everything. And nothing, Paul wrote in Romans, can separate us from that love. Nothing.

And, he also wrote, if you put your trust in Jesus, there is no condemnation for you. None. You are off the hook. This is so stunning, so hard to actually believe, because nothing else in the world seems to work that way. It’s not based on my performance? It’s based on what God has done for me? He loves me because . . . He just loves? It’s who He is? He’s not constantly evaluating my religious “goodness”? He’s not angry with me? Seriously?

But here’s a bigger problem, and it’s based on years of interacting with thousands of self-described Christians: It’s not merely that we’re not attentive to the fact that God loves us. I suspect many of us actually just don’t believe it.

And what many of us do, as far as I can tell, is strive and strain and push and pull and work and worry and even anguish to try to somehow win favor with a Father who’s already pleased with us. I could spend an hour on the radio, reciting scriptures about how we are now no longer under law, and how, if you’ve put your faith in Jesus, God has adopted you into His family, and I already know the inevitable response: Christians lined up to tell me it’s not really quite true, that the real issue is that we need to stop sinning right now and work harder. No wonder we get so angry. We’re displeased with others because we’re convinced God is displeased with us. We “believe” God loves us, but we suspect it’s provisional, based on whether we ever get our act straightened out. That’s a lot to carry.

If Christians are indeed the most easily offended people on the planet, this burden would go a long way toward explaining why. We’re the ones convinced God has six hundred–plus rules—rules we know we can’t keep—and that He’s ticked off at us. But we try to keep them anyway. It’s a prescription for immense frustration with ourselves.

You suspect you’re unlovable? He loves you. You wonder, deep down, if anyone could really, truly know you and still want you? He knows you better than you know you. And He wants you. You’ve given up on yourself? He hasn’t given up on you. This isn’t feel-good talk; it’s the rightful conclusion we can draw from the cross itself. He still loves us because He’s a Father . . . the One we’ve always wanted.

But the King of kings wants you so badly that He’d give up His only Son to be with you? He not only allows it, but desires that you and I—lowly us!—talk to Him often, whenever we want? He’s not asking us to try harder, but to trust that the work is already done to bring us into His family? He wants to spend eternity—His eternity—with us? Yes.

If we really believe it, we’ll be known for being less apt to criticize, slower to anger, more forgiving. We’ll be known for being loving toward one another, because we now have the resources to do just that. We’ve finally found what we’ve always wanted—significance and security, directly from the only One who can really give us both: the King of kings.

If this is all true, then our very refusal to be offended, and our patience with one another, would point to the truth of Jesus and that we actually belong to Him. And sure enough, in God’s Word, Jesus turns to His followers and says this about how people will know we belong to Him: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35 NKJV; emphasis added).

It is the essence of ministry. It finally occurred to me that we can’t be agents of healing in people’s lives unless we’re ready to bear their wounds for them and from them. Looking back, I wonder why it took me so long, how someone who purports to follow Jesus wouldn’t have understood this.

Choosing to be unoffendable out of love for others is ministry. And real ministry forces us to abandon our relentless search for approval from others.

Truth is, we find this very, very hard to accept, but we can’t redeem ourselves. Oh, we like to think we can, deep down, so it’s still about us. Carrying around guilt? Still about us. Feeling stupid? Still about us. Feeling like a failure? Still about us. Turning our guilt into seemingly productive energy so we’re doing the “right” things? Still about us. Seems so . . . so . . . “righteous,” and yet, when we can’t take our eyes off ourselves to celebrate the win, it’s just plain about us. That’s pride.

For anyone who believes in Him, Jesus ended the law as a means to righteousness.

We can love; we can forgive; we can refuse to be offended . . . because God loved us first. Even in our weakness, even overlooking the disaster scene that is humanity, He was not alienated. He proved it. He took on our flesh and dwelt among us. He embraced our brokenness, our smell, even our death.

It takes a childlike humility to embrace the love of God, to realize how “unfair” it is, and then add, quickly, “but I’ll take it!”

We can resent it, trip over it, or try to explain away the scandal of it, in hopes of making Jesus fit into our more equitable ideals. But if we do this, instead of humbling ourselves and just thanking God for how wonderful He is to us, we’re setting ourselves up for a lifetime of offense, because we’ll never, ever feel secure with God.

God wants us to accept gifts. It takes humility to do it, which is why kids are so much better than we are at this. No kid balks at a gift. No eight-year-old opens a PlayStation on Christmas morning and says, “No—I just can’t. I don’t deserve this. I am unworthy. No. Take it back.”

We should connect those two things. When we consider our sinfulness, consider what God has done for us. Is there anything left, anything He didn’t cover? Are we so bad that Jesus needs to suffer again? Did He not go far enough to cover my rebellion? Or yours? No way. I’m not that special, and neither are you. There’s not one thing left undone, not one more punishment God has to take on our behalf, to meet the demands of the Law. Nothing. “It is finished,” Jesus said. The Law has been fulfilled, completed. Done. And if that was too subtle, the curtain that divided God from the sinners was ripped in two.

It’s no wonder we’re so uptight, so unwilling to be graceful toward people, so quick to be offended, and so lightning-fast to justify our offense as “righteous anger.” If we’re insecure in our own position with God, there’s no way we can begin to relax, not even for a moment. We simply must be vigilant.

We humans can’t save ourselves, but we want to be our own saviors. And many of us would rather go down on our own terms than be humble. It’s that simple, and it’s that tragic.

Real humility isn’t about putting yourself down or pretending your performance is substandard at everything you try. Real humility lies in self-forgetfulness.

Few want to hear this, but it’s true, and it can be enormously helpful in life: if you’re constantly being hurt, offended, or angered, you should honestly evaluate your inflamed ego.

When you’re humble, you’re not constantly thinking, How do I look? or Am I a success? or What do they think of me? It’s just not on your radar screen. When self-interested thoughts do cross your mind, you’re able to recognize them for what they are, in most cases: downright silly.

I suspect that we, like the lady in the suite, put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be something significant, and anything that gets in the way of that, or threatens that significance, threatens us. I’ve noticed, too, that Christians are especially good at wrapping our significance in Christian terms, in ministry terms, to avoid the impression that we’re self-centered. But it’s still about us. We’re not content with what God has done and is doing, and we want the Big Story to include us in a starring role.

We like big visionaries, big planners, big capital-L Leaders. (Maybe this explains why, in Christian bookstores, there are frequently ten times as many books on “leadership” than about following.4 Given that we are called to be disciples and follow, that’s a little awkward.)

If they each do their thing, the thing right in front of them, the big picture takes care of itself.

Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

Humility means there’s so much less at stake, so much less to protect. You’ll become difficult to offend simply because there’s so much less of you to defend. When you are headed into a stressful social situation with difficult, offensive people, and you decide in advance, “I’m not going to let these people offend me; I’m forgiving them in advance,” you are dying to yourself. You are sacrificing yourself on their behalf. You are making yourself less. You’re willingly giving up your own interests and desires, because of your conviction about who Jesus is.