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.

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.

“The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20 ESV).

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).

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).

Being offended is a tiring business. Letting things go gives you energy.

It’s

true that sometimes people try to offend us, and they’re intentionally hurtful and spiteful. And yet, there Jesus is, on the cross, saying, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” A fair question, then: Is that same Jesus, living in and through me, still saying that?

Your life will become less stressful when you give up your right to anger and offense.

In fact, the stuff that usually might offend us is a huge opportunity! Jesus told us we will be forgiven as we forgive others.

Fact is, most of us don’t get that many opportunities to forgive. Once I realized that, traffic went from being an exercise in anger to “forgiveness practice.” Life is so much better that way.

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.

Quit thinking it’s up to you to police people and that God needs you to “take a stand.” God “needs” nothing. Quit trying to parent the whole world. Quit offering advice when exactly zero people asked for it. Quit being shocked when people don’t share your morality. Quit serving as judge and jury, in your own mind, of that person who just cut you off in traffic. Quit thinking you need to “discern” what others’ motives are. And quit rehearsing in your mind what that other person did to you. It’s all so exhausting.

I’ve tried appraising people, determining their value based on how they treat me. I’ve tried holding on to anger, harboring resentment, and doing the necessary mental gymnastics to justify myself, even if only in the court of my own opinion. I’ve tried evaluating everything everyone else says, sifting through it to find if there’s some way I’ve been slighted. I’ve tried resisting God’s clear command to forgive as He has forgiven me, and I’ve gone to the great effort to explain—again, if only to myself—how

how whatever I’ve done really isn’t as bad as what that other person is doing to me. It’s really hard. It’s really time-consuming. It’s really a drain mentally, spiritually, and even physically.

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil. (Prov. 3:5–7

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.

Even so, we can fool ourselves into thinking we’re innocent, or justified, or victimized. This human trait goes way back. Study Adam and Eve and their interactions with God right after they disobeyed Him. Adam’s very first reaction was to blame Eve. Eve’s very first reaction was to blame the serpent. Victims.

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.

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.

We think we want a right to “righteous anger.” It takes a tremendous amount of humility, an extraordinary “dying to self” to hand over this desire, this job, this obsession, to God. But He made us, and He knows how we operate best.

“You must be willing to suffer the anger of the opponent, and yet not return anger.”6

We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know that you love them.

My anger isn’t a sign of trust; it’s the very opposite. I’m worried someone’s going to get away with something, like God’s not noticing and it’s all up to me.

I trust in God’s justice and release anger and a desire for personal vengeance. It does not mean that I minimize or mitigate or excuse what he has done. It does not mean that I pursue justice on earth any less zealously. It simply means that I release personal vengeance against him, and I trust God’s justice, whether he chooses to mete that out purely, eternally, or both in heaven and on earth.10

Naturally, if you love people, you’re going to worry about them. But do you know where constant worry comes from? It’s rooted in an arrogance that assumes, I know the way my life has to go, and God’s not getting it right. Real humility means to relax. Real humility means to laugh at yourself. Real humility means to be self-critical.3

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

I’m now convinced of this—most people who genuinely want to know God are not living in a persistent, perpetual state of amazement at His love. And yet, His love is amazing. And 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.

In fact, if this is true, that very love toward one another would be an accurate test of whether we really believed all this. If we loved others with a newfound patience, a refusal to take offense, and a lack of self-seeking, it would be evidence that all this is real.

There are those of us who pat ourselves on the back for loving our families and friends. “I’m loyal to the end; I’d die for my kids,” we’ll say. Truth is, that’s not really terribly remarkable. Everyone, or practically everyone, feels this way. What is terribly remarkable is when someone is willing to love a person, in the name of Jesus, whom they would otherwise despise. It makes no sense otherwise.

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.1

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?

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. 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. When we choose, ahead of time—before conversations, before meetings, before our day begins—to be unoffendable, we’re simply choosing humility. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.5 People like that are difficult to offend.

Research shows us consistently that chronic anger can lead to high blood pressure, headaches, serious digestion problems, heart issues, and even skin disorders.