Unoffendable Quotes

“Taking offense is so often a lot of work. It can wear you out; but for some, it really becomes a lifestyle.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“In this culture, “nothing” sticks out like crazy, like, say, a city . . . on a hill . . . or something.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Still, it’s up to us. My kids are older now, but I want them to know that. They’re free. God knows what’s best for us. He offers peace. He offers rest. But He lets us choose.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Now I understand that Jesus was talking to a weary, religion-soaked people. They’d been given so much to do and so many rules to follow. So many rabbis had expounded so much the right ways to do things, and Jesus was saying, “My way is easy to understand. Kids understand it. It’s you adults and ‘experts’ who like to make things complex. My teachings are simple at heart.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“deciding “I’m not going to let people offend me” will make for a far more restful life.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“Grace isn’t for the deserving.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“God continually chooses the least likely to be chosen, the broken and the humble. It’s clearly His modus operandi. I’ve heard this response from people when I talk about this idea: “But how can we possibly get things done without big-time visionaries? Without massive plans to save the world?” Well, the Bible actually singles out a specific, heroic animal species to illustrate how to get things done. If you want to know how to do it, don’t go to the soaring eagle. Don’t go to the impressive, roaring lion, either. God may have a different idea: Go watch the ants, you lazy person. Watch what they do and be wise. Ants have no commander, no leader or ruler, but they store up food in the summer and gather their supplies at harvest. (Prov. 6:6–8 NCV) Yes. Watch how the ants operate. They get it. Sure enough, modern research shows just how remarkable ants are. They all know what to do and when to do it. They know when to rest, when to battle intruders, when to take care of their eggs, all of it. If there are too many ants foraging, just enough ants decide to quit foraging and take on other jobs. They know how to build massive anthills that are marvels of construction engineering. And they do it all without a hierarchy. They manage it all without management. They get it done without any one ant knowing the “big picture.” No ant is a superstar. No ant is irreplaceable. How they operate is still somewhat mysterious to science, but scientists do know that ants just use the information that’s in front of them, and then they respond. That’s it. That’s all the information an ant has. The Bible singles out a species wherein every individual member does whatever needs doing, just by responding to what’s in front of it. An ant can’t worry about the big blueprint. No ant actually has the big picture. If they each do their thing, the thing right in front of them, the big picture takes care of itself.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“But the man who owned the vineyard said to one of those workers, ‘Friend, I am being fair to you. You agreed to work for one coin. So take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same pay that I gave you. I can do what I want with my own money. Are you jealous because I am good to those people?’ “So those who are last now will someday be first, and those who are first now will someday be last.” (20:1–16 NCV) “Do you begrudge my generosity?” the landowner is saying. The answer, of course, is yes, they do. They begrudge it quite a bit. Even though it has no impact on them whatsoever, it offends them. We hate it when we are trying so hard to earn something, and then someone else gets the same thing without trying as hard. Think about this for a moment, in real, “today” terms. Someone gives you a backbreaking job, and you’re happy for it, but at the end of the day, when you’re getting paid, the guys who came in with five minutes left get the same amount you just got. Seriously? It’s imbalanced, unfair, maddening . . . and it’s also exactly what Jesus just said the kingdom of God is like. Not only is it maddening; it’s maddening to the “good” people! Common sense says you don’t do this. You don’t pay latecomers who came in a few minutes ago the same amount that you paid the hardworking folks you hired first. Jesus tells this story, knowing full well that the conscientious ones listening would find this hardest to take. And, as a matter of fact, as a conscientious one, I find this hard to take. I’m just being honest. This story does not fit my style. I’m all about people getting what they deserve. Oh, it’s offensive, too, when Jesus turns to a guy who’s being executed next to Him, and tells him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). What did the guy do to deserve that? He did nothing. 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. In fact, to so many upstanding Christians, He is. He has always been offensive, and remains offensive, to those who seek to achieve “righteousness” through what they do. Always. People who’ve grown up in church (like me) are well acquainted with the idea that Jesus is our “cornerstone.” He’s the solid rock of our faith. Got it. Not controversial. It’s well-known. But what’s not so talked about: That stone, Jesus, causes religious people to stumble. And that rock is offensive to “good” people: So what does all this mean? Those who are not Jews were not trying to make themselves right with God, but they were made right with God because of their faith. The people of Israel tried to follow a law to make themselves right with God. But they did not succeed, because they tried to make themselves right by the things they did instead of trusting in God to make them right. They stumbled over the stone that causes people to stumble. (Rom. 9:30–32 NCV) And then Paul says something a couple verses later that angers “good Christians” to this day: Because they did not know the way that God makes people right with him, they tried to make themselves right in their own way. So they did not accept God’s way of making people right. Christ ended the law so that everyone who believes in him may be right with God. (Rom. 10:3–4 NCV) It’s not subtle, what Paul’s writing here. For anyone who believes in Him, Jesus ended the law as a means to righteousness. Yet so many think they can achieve—even have achieved—some kind of “good Christian” status on the basis of the rule-keeping work they’ve done. They suspect they’ll do good things and God will owe them for it, like payment for a job well done. Paul says, in effect, if you think you should get what you earn, you will . . . and you don’t want that.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“God doesn’t love all the things we do. He loves us in spite of the things we do.”
― 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 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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“When you start practicing it, you realize: choosing to be unoffendable means actually, for real, trusting God.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“And judgmentalism is not exceptional . . . But grace is.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

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

“Your life will become less stressful when you give up your right to anger and offense.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“King says, “I must not harbor anger,” and the author says, “I agree; let’s use our anger constructively!” 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). We don’t like the “anger” part. We think that when he said to put anger “out of your life,” he really meant “except when it’s constructive.” I’ve yet to hear us apply that logic to the rest of his teaching in that verse: “Get rid of your evil words—except when it makes sense,” or “Rid yourself of evil words—except when they really had it coming.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“God loves you and thinks you’re special, but no . . . you’re not God.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“Paul was saying, clearly, that, yes, we will get angry; that happens; we’re human. But then we have to get rid of it. So deal with it. Now. We have no right to 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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Not only can we choose to be unoffendable; we should choose that. 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.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“Love people where they are, and love them boldly. And if you really want to go crazy, like them too.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“God sees things we don’t. He must, because He hasn’t vaporized us yet.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

“Letting go of offense and anger means forgiving, and forgiveness means sacrifice.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

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

“Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger. The disciple must be entirely innocent of anger, because anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour.”
― Brant Hansen, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better