Unoffendable Quotes

“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!”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Loving others means divesting ourselves of our status. We're not being naive in doing it. We've surrendered it for good reason, believing that there is something better in exchange.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Choosing to be unoffendable means choosing to be humble. Not only that, the practice teaches humility. Once you’ve decided you can’t control other people; once you’ve reconciled yourself to the fact that the world, and its people, are broken; once you’ve realized your own moral failure before God; once you’ve abandoned the idea that your significance comes from anything other than God, you’re growing in humility, and that’s exactly where God wants us all.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“If you call yourself a Christian, and you want things to be fair, and you want God’s rewards given out only to the deserving and the upstanding and the religious, well, honestly, Jesus has got to be a complete embarrassment to you.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“When we surrender our perceived “rights,” when we let go of our attempts to manipulate, we find—surprise!—joy.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Loving people means divesting ourselves of our status. We’re not being naive in doing it. We’ve surrendered it for good reason, believing that there is something better in exchange. We decide to be unoffendable because that’s how love operates; it gives up its “status” entirely.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Instead of changing our beliefs to match reality, we often just rearrange reality, in our heads, to match what we want.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Our anger is valuable to us. That’s why we want to hold it, to savor it. It means something. It means we’ve been wronged, we’re in the right, and we’re the victims in an unfair exchange. We want to even out the scales, and one way to do it, at least psychologically, is to stay offended.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“My radio show’s producer, Sherri, is African American. She just got back from a trip where she was a guest speaker at a youth event in a church that was primarily white. Just before the Sunday morning service, she was called into the minister’s study for prayer, and she met a man who was overtly hostile to her. The way he looked at her, dismissively and contemptuously, made her feel hated. She felt utterly unwelcome, lonely, and out of place. After she spoke, the same man approached her, took off his glasses, and started crying. He told her that hers was the most influential talk he’d ever heard, and it had affected him particularly because he is very racist against blacks. She was stunned by his honesty. “We’ve always been this way. My family has always been racist. I’ve learned this from my dad. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to change,” he told her. “I can see Jesus is using you. And he’s using you to change me.” Sherri then asked to meet his dad. She did. And she hugged him. I know Sherri takes racism very, very seriously. But, she says, she also has to forgive racists, because she has to love people in her family. And they are part of her family. She has to love them as Jesus loves her. Sherri’s love is not naive. But that’s exactly why it’s so profound. She’s setting her offense aside, not because it doesn’t matter, not because it isn’t completely understandable, but because of what Jesus has done for her. She’s choosing against offense, not just because God loves these men but also because God loves her and has set aside her very real offenses in order to be with her. 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 he or she would otherwise despise. It makes no sense otherwise. Why would we ever regard someone as family who would otherwise be an enemy? Why ignore his faults, or cover her wrongs with love? Without Jesus, it simply makes no sense. Sherri’s very refusal, and our very refusal, to take and hold offense is evidence of the existence of God. This is how they’ll know we belong to Him, Jesus says. So let’s love—from this moment forward—because He first loved us.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Yes, we get angry. Can’t avoid it. But I now know that anger can’t live here. I can’t keep it. I can’t try it on, can’t see how it looks. I have to take it to the Cracks of Doom, like, now, and drop that thing, much as I want to wear it awhile. (Note: I’m really going to try not to use four thousand Lord of the Rings analogies in this book. I may fail.) 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. We all think that we deserve to carry anger, but it will destroy us unless we let it go. We have to deny ourselves, die to ourselves, and surrender ourselves. Whatever it takes. 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’s, like, six billion. Drop yours.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“We can play pretend and try to set up an aquarium-type existence, devoid of interaction with anything or anyone who might challenge or upset us, but that's not the world Jesus came to save.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“I’m already a believer, but the kingdom of God is so shockingly opposite the way the rest of the world works that I need constant reminding of what it looks like and how good it is.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Since anger has value, giving it up requires a sacrifice. And, as we’ve explored, it’s one that’s simply not optional for the follower of Jesus. The cross simultaneously stands as a constant reminder of His willingness to “pay the bill,” and as an indictment on us when we are unwilling to do the same for others.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“I suspect our sense of entitlement to anger is directly proportional to our perception of our own relative innocence.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Choosing to be unoffendable not only helps me sleep at night rather than worrying about my latest online “Stand for Truth”; it 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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“There’s a story in Luke, where an apparently “good,” religious, and rich young man approaches Jesus, wondering what he must do to inherit eternal life. Ultimately, Jesus places a demand on him—sell everything and give to the poor—and we’re told the young man heard that and walked away, sad. I think for many of us who live in this society that is so riven with anger, even addicted to it, Jesus is giving us a similar demand: “Give up your anger. Because of what I’ve done for you, give it up, and forgive.” Sadly, our response is, “That’s not fair.” And we walk away too. One thing that strikes me about the rich young man story: Jesus doesn’t leave him with room to wriggle. The man will either do what Jesus says, or walk away. There’s no splitting the difference, paying lip service, or trying to split theological hairs. But we love to do this with forgiveness. Jesus tells His followers to forgive as we have been forgiven, yet we find reasons why this doesn’t quite apply in our situation. (Maybe He didn’t anticipate what I was going to have to endure . . . Does He realize what He’s asking?) But we don’t walk away sad, like the rich young man. Instead, we tell ourselves that we can live a Christian lifestyle, and integrate our own decisions about whom to forgive, and when. This is especially dangerous, because when we do that, we’re walking away. But we’re not aware we’ve walked away at all. We’ve just de-radicalized the very nature of following Jesus, because we think we know a better way.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“It takes childlike humility to embrace the love of God, to realize how "unfair" it is, and then quickly add, "but I'll take it!”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“So let’s review: Choosing to be unoffendable means choosing to be humble. Not only that, the practice teaches humility. Once you’ve decided you can’t control other people; once you’ve reconciled yourself to the fact that the world, and its people, are broken; once you’ve realized your own moral failure before God; once you’ve abandoned the idea that your significance comes from anything other than God, you’re growing in humility, and that’s exactly where God wants us all. It’s contrary to seemingly everything in our culture, but the more we divest ourselves of ourselves, the better our lives get. Jesus told us as much. He said if we’d give up our lives, for His sake, we’d find real life.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“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”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“we should not borrow trouble from tomorrow.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil. (Prov. 3:5–7 NKJV)”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9 ESV)”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“just because you haven’t had the opportunity to follow through on what you’d like to do, you’re not morally superior to someone who has had that opportunity.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“When you’re living in the reality of the forgiveness you’ve been extended, you just don’t get angry with others easily.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“No more defensiveness. No more taking things personally. He’ll handle it. Really. Trust Him. Rest. Quit thinking it’s up to you to police people, and that God needs you to “take a stand.” God “needs” nothing.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better