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

by Brant Hansen

To all those who want grace for themselves but struggle to extend it to others. Wait: that’s everybody. Anger is the most fundamental problem in human life. —Dallas Willard1

I used to think it was incumbent upon a Christian to take offense. 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. 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.

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.

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.

(Inspiring quote for you to highlight and tweet, immediately: “Everybody’s an idiot but me. I’m awesome.”—@branthansen)

As for my own sin, well, He says He’s taken that sin away from me as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12). I suppose I could whip up some anger, but I’m honestly just stuck feeling grateful right now.

Let that sink in. When anger lives, that’s where it lives: in the lap of a fool.

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.

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

I can let stuff go, because it’s not all about me. Simply reminding myself to refuse to take offense is a big part of the battle.

In my experience, people—all people—thrive on being offended. It makes us feel more righteous to get aggravated at the behavior of other people. And that’s true of all of us, not just religious folk.

I can let stuff go, because it’s not all about me. Simply reminding myself to refuse to take offense is a big part of the battle.

And here’s another tough question: Are we really, honestly aware of just how little we actually know about other people?

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.

As for myself, I do not care if I am judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I know of no wrong I have done, but this does not make me right before the Lord. The Lord is the One who judges me. So do not judge before the right time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light things that are now hidden in darkness, and will make known the secret purposes of people’s hearts. Then God will praise each one of them. (1 Cor. 4:3–5 NCV)

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.

The Truth About Us.

If we don’t need to be right, we don’t have to reshape reality to fit “The Story of My Rightness.” That makes life much easier, and makes us much more peaceful, and even fun to be around.

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

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

That person you find so offensive? Somehow, God sees something there. Something you don’t. Ask Him what it is. Maybe He’ll show you. I bet He wants to.

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.

Jesus is not a cynic. He’s never scornful, hopeless, or jaded. It’s purely about growing up enough to recognize just how messed up our world really is, and how messed up humans are.

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.

The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.”

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.

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.

the Master is very, very good.