Brant Hansen Quotes

Anger is extraordinarily easy. It’s our default setting. Love is very difficult. Love is a miracle.

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.

Yes, the world is broken. But don’t be offended by it. Instead, thank God that He’s intervened in it, and He’s going to restore it to everything it was meant to be. His kingdom is breaking through, bit by bit. Recognize it, and wonder at it.

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.

Jesus encountered one moral mess after another, and He was never taken aback by anyone’s morality. Ever.

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.

Choosing to be unoffendable, or relinquishing my right to anger, does not mean accepting injustice. It means actively seeking justice, and loving mercy, while walking humbly with God. And that means remembering I’m not Him. What a relief.

Choosing to be unoffendable out of love for others is ministry.

One of the hardest-to-swallow, most countercultural, counter intuitive implications of the gospel is that bearing up under a difficult burden with patient perseverance is a good thing.

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.

Grace isn’t for the deserving. Forgiving means surrendering your claim to resentment and letting go of anger.

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.

Everybody’s an idiot but me. I’m awesome.”—@branthansen)

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.

It’s true, though, others won’t understand me. I know that. I’m still an alien in the American Christian subculture. Each evening I retreat from it, and I go straight to the Gospels. It's not out of duty that I read about Jesus; it's a respite.

Whenever there’s an injury to a relationship, a hurt, a broken heart, or even a broken thing, and you are willing to forgive, you are saying, “I got this. I’m going to pick up the bill for this.” This is, of course, precisely what God has done for us.

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.

rules don’t change anyone’s heart, ever. Grace does.

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

Your life will become less stressful when you give up your right to anger and offense. And by the way, if you don’t, you’re doomed. So there’s that too.

Love people where they are, and love them boldly.

In the moment, everyone’s anger always seems righteous. Anger is a feeling, after all, and it sweeps over us and tells us we’re being denied something we should have. It provides its own justification. But an emotion is just an emotion. It’s not critical thinking. Anger doesn’t pause. We have to stop, and we have to question it.

So how about taking this idea to all of our experience: 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?

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.

Forfeiting our right to anger makes us deny ourselves, and makes us others-centered. When we start living this way, it changes everything.

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 Bible gives us ample commands to act, and never, ever, says to do it out of anger. Instead, we’re to be motivated by something very different: love, and obedience born of love.

We are capable of imagining threats and staying in a kind of constant, low-grade fight-or-flight mode. We’re capable of feeling threatened all the time, by things that haven’t even happened and may not ever happen.

Choosing not to take offense is not about simply ignoring wrongs. If someone, say, cuts in front of you in line, you can address the situation. You don’t have to simply accept it. But you can act without contempt, anger, and bitterness.

When we surrender our perceived “rights,” when we let go of our attempts to manipulate, we find—surprise!—joy.

Instead of changing our beliefs to match reality, we often just rearrange reality, in our heads, to match what we want.

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.

Why isn’t righteous anger ever listed among the things that a Spirit-filled life will bring us? If it’s righteous, why is it not akin to the “fruit of the Spirit,” like love, joy, peace, and gentleness? Why is anger in Scripture so consistently lumped in the other lists, with things like, say, slander and malice, with no exclusions for the “righteous” variety? (See, for example, Colossians 3:8.)

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!

We're told in Psalms 46:10, to "be still," or to "cease striving," and know that He is God. Some people are familiar with this verse but not the larger context, which is that of someone looking over the remains of a battlefield. The original Hebrew is suggestive of stopping the fight, letting go, and relaxing. God wants us to drop our arms. No more defensiveness. No more taking things personally. He'll handle it. Really. Trust Him. Rest.

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.

It makes you wonder about God: What kind of father wants to be pestered? Probably one who really loves his children and is hoping they don’t wait until the perfect moment, or until they are perfect themselves, before they finally talk to him.

I suspect our sense of entitlement to anger is directly proportional to our perception of our own relative innocence.

Proverbs says to ask for wisdom. Wisdom means perspective. It means knowing what matters.

(There’ve been many who’ve reached thousands for Christ who’ve been found out as utter frauds. In the Old Testament, God once spoke through a jackass, and yes, He’s still doing it.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jesus is exactly what I would hope God would be: a blunt-speaking, underdog-loving, field-leveling, jaw-droppingly brilliant, authority-challenging, short-story-telling, self-sacrificing, bring-the-children-to-Me . . . healer.

The good news: It seems like you really want more of God. And, from what I read, that’s a really good thing. You’re going to get what you’re looking for. If you want more of God, you’re going to yearn. And yearning isn’t bad. Yearning happens when you love.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is too easy, then, as someone who’s felt rejected, let down, even made fun of by church people, to simply refuse to love them. It’s too easy to live my life in reaction to them. Yes, I can easily craft a false narrative about how awful others are and how much better than them I am, but it excuses me from the hard work of forgiveness and patience.

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!

The absence of feeling is not the absence of love.

Our feelings have nothing to do with whether God loves us or is still involved in our lives.

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

When you’re living in the reality of the forgiveness you’ve been extended, you just don’t get angry with others easily.

we should not borrow trouble from tomorrow.

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.

deciding “I’m not going to let people offend me” will make for a far more restful life.

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.

In this culture, “nothing” sticks out like crazy, like, say, a city . . . on a hill . . . or something.

Taking offense is so often a lot of work. It can wear you out; but for some, it really becomes a lifestyle.

I get the impression from Scripture that God would rather be in communication with an immature, selfish person than be ignored by a theologically fastidious one.

Yes, the wounds are real, but you know what? Healing is real too.

What if an aching dissatisfaction, even frustration, might be evidence of a right relationship with God?

Grace isn’t for the deserving.

The men we need are men with the right ambition: to o into the mess, into the chaos, into the mystery, knowing the Lord is with them... and then see what happens.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9 ESV)

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.

We’re all ultimately incompatible. If I were to meet my exact clone, it would just be a matter of time before I and me would go our separate ways.

There’s an old song about how breaking up is “hard to do,” but you know what’s harder than breaking up? Not breaking up.

He knows what it’s like to be misunderstood. No one—not even His closest friends—understood Him.

1. Humans make no sense. 2. Love them anyway.

It seems like being “passionate for something big” is something positive, but I keep running into Jesus telling us to be like children. And children are small. Maybe you’ve noticed that too. They do little things, and they’re okay with it. Jesus seems passionate about other little things too. Mustard seeds. Sparrows. Lilies of the field. Single days, like today, instead of The Big Future. Little acts of our will.

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.

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)

From what I’ve seen, the world is deeply, profoundly broken (even my atheist friends allow this), and every human I’ve ever gotten to know turns out to have issues. We’re inconsistent, in certain circumstances untrustworthy, and we don’t even live up to our own standards, let alone God’s.

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.

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.

You can take a kid to a thousand lessons and offer them the finest tutors, but that’s not the objective of a parent. Your main task here is not to impart skills. You do not exist to make your kids marketable to the corporate world. You are here to shape character as securely and fully as you can before they leave your home.

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.

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.

A very wise counselor friend of mine put it another way. After observing his own kids and the young people he works with in his practice, he said the correct answer to the question, “When should I get my child a smartphone?” is “Whenever you want their childhood to end.” Your kid gets just one childhood, and they get just one you to protect it.

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.

Honest question: If I am a good Christian, and have faith and stuff, will God protect my children? Honest answer: He might. Or He might not. Honest follow-up question: So what good is He? I think the answer is that He’s still good. But our safety, and the safety of our kids, isn’t part of the deal. This is incredibly hard to accept on the American evangelical church scene, because we love families, and we love loving families, and we nearly associate godliness itself with cherishing family beyond any other earthly thing. That someone would challenge this bond, the primacy of the family bond, is offensive. And yet . . . Jesus did it. And it was even more offensive, then, in a culture that wasn’t nearly so individualistic as ours. Everything was based on family: your reputation, your status—everything. And yet He challenges the idea that our attachment to family is so important, so noble, that it is synonymous with our love for Him. Which leads to some other spare thoughts, like this: we can make idols out of our families. Again, in a “Focus on the Family” subculture, it’s hard to imagine how this could be. Families are good. But idols aren’t made of bad things. They used to be fashioned out of trees or stone, and those aren’t bad, either. 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 what He can provide. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. For that matter, God is allowed to judge too. You’re not. We can trust Him with judgment, because He is very different from us. He is perfect. We can trust Him with anger. His character allows this. Ours doesn’t.

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.

Make no mistake. Foolishness destroys. Being offended is a tiring business. Letting things go gives you energy.

Truth is—and you already know this—most of the time, whatever it was that we were taking personally, it really didn’t have to do with us. Some people are rude, or selfish, or whatever, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens. We can take it personally if we want . . . but why?

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.

Life is full of conflicts, disputes, differing perspectives . . . and in all of those, guess whose perspective I hear first? That’s easy: mine. I establish a story line, and I can get angry before I even hear the other side, which is yet another reason to be very suspicious of ourselves.

He realized he couldn't be a believer in Jesus and remain angry with his family's killers. He realized it was simply incompatible.

This is the part about ambition with regard to relationships, which, naturally, brings us to FAQ #1,214: “Brant, would you kindly illustrate what you’re saying by using a proverb about oxen?

A good father provides shelter—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. If you’re a wise father who loves your children, you will shelter them. You will protect them. You will shield them. You will filter the world for them. You will do your best to know what and who is influencing them, even if it means inconvenience to you or feeling like you’re the only parent on the block who might care.

In our affluent Western culture, growing up for many of us is weirdly optional. Historically, men have had no choice but to grow up. They had to work to eat. They had to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. But most of us here and now can choose the life of an entertainment consumer, just moving from one experience to the next.

Our default setting is to stay comfortable, to stay clean from the mess. That means sticking to our own areas of expertise and excusing ourselves from the parts of life that make us say, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” But that’s not what men are called to do. We’re called to take part in God’s “family business” of entering into chaos and bringing order.

The way Jesus explains the kingdom of God (and he talks about it more than anything else in the Gospels), it works very differently from the rest of the world. The weak are made strong. The last are first. The humble are exalted. The proud are brought low. The widow, the alien, and the orphan are valued highly. The unfairly treated are defended. The seemingly insignificant go to the head of the class. The lost are found. And the broken are healed. Imagine men like you and me taking whatever strength we are given to defend and expand that kingdom rather than our own temporary, throwaway, little ones that will never last.

Living in humility is refreshing. It’s also incredibly difficult, at times, because it means trusting—really trusting.

Buy a little inflatable pool, put it outside your trailer, and spray your trailer kids with your trailer hose. It's like fancy water park without the lines and the $14 turkey legs. They'll love it. And they'll never forget it, Dad. All that time playing and giggling with you.

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.

What we pay attention to is everything. We should note just how the word “pay” fits. Our attention is a limited thing, and we have to manage it like finances. When I’m “paying” attention to something, I’m buying a ticket so my brain can attend.

If I want to shape who I’m becoming, I’ve got to put my mind on other things, better things, and I actually can do that. I am responsible for what I do with my thoughts. I can take them captive, Scripture says, and break them like an experienced rider can break a wild horse.

If I want to shape who I’m becoming, I’ve got to put my mind on other things, better things, and I actually can do that. I am responsible for what I do with my thoughts. I can take them captive, Scripture says, and break them like an experienced rider can break a wild horse. “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:5.

Do evil or foolish thoughts, or just plain dumb thoughts, pop into my head? Oh, heck yes, they do. But I can catch on. I can recognize what they are. I can replace those thoughts with better ones. I can get busy doing something else. I don’t have to beat myself up for stuff that pops into my head. When that does happen, I can move on. I have to move on, or I will never be the man I need to be, and could have been, for others. I can’t mess this one up. Everyone around me is depending on it. It’s the same with you. What you pay attention to will affect the people around you, for good or ill. If the keeper’s heart is lost, the garden is lost too.

Ask God for wisdom. It’s the most important thing you can request, and he promises he’ll give it to you. Wisdom will spare you and others around you immense pain. That’s the thing about foolishness: It always, always, always brings pain. As I mentioned, wisdom is knowing what matters. Wisdom is understanding the true value of things.

If I know how something ends, and that it ends well, I have a totally different experience watching it or living it. There’s no reason to be anxious. The ref makes a terrible call? That’s frustrating, but not really, because I know how it ends. And Jesus’ words assure us that he knows how it ends. Death is the ultimate weapon of our spiritual enemy, but two thousand years ago, it was disarmed. God is ultimately going to take care of us. Plus, he said, worries don’t help, so what’s the point? Worrying about tomorrow just makes today miserable.

When we’re hit with a temptation that could destroy everything, we rarely think, This will destroy everything. It will cost me dearly, possibly for the rest of my life. I will live with regret about the ongoing devastation I’ve caused. But I’m going to do it. No, we usually narrow our focus to avoid thinking about what we’re really doing, which is misusing our freedom to hurt and destroy all that we’ve worked for and all those around us.

You’re not going to like this, but face it for what it is, and say it out loud: “That person I’m angry with? I’m worse.

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.

Letting go of offense and anger means forgiving, and forgiveness means sacrifice.

we don’t need Dolce & Gabbana Belt Buckle Preacher Guy. In a subscribe-to-my-YouTube-channel world, we don’t need men of God who still need our constant admiration and approval. But a man who is able to sit and listen, to root for others, to be a voice of affirmation and guidance with no significant payoff in mind? Yeah, that guy is refreshing. There aren’t many of that type. We need more. We need you to become that guy. And this isn’t about taking on a tough, I-don’t-need-anybody persona. That’s immaturity too, because you’re still trying to prove something. The point is to recognize this desperate, yawning gap in our lives, this drive for significance, and find satisfaction for it in our relationship with God instead of in one more promotion or compliment or whatever.

When I handed her my iPhone, I silently thanked God, knowing hat, through His people, He had just rewritten her life story.

When I handed her my iPhone, I silently thanked God, knowing that, through His people, He had just rewritten her life story.

But I'm convinced of this: once we've see the reality of the kingdom of God, it's very hard to walk away. It's just too good.

Weirdly, people resented it even though Jesus was saying in so many different ways, "Look, folks: God is better than you think. You can trust Him. Because of Him, you're safe in this world. You can go all in with Him. Even in the worst-case scenario: He's still got you.

I figure if God listened to a desperate kid in assumption, Illinois, maybe He'll listen to other desperate people anytime, anywhere. Including you.

All will be made new. Healing is coming. For now, we get mere glimpses, but make no mistake, it's going to happen. And this is how the world ends: not with a whimper, and not with a bang either. It ends with a new beginning.

There's freedom in being uncool. But there's also a risk: people will enjoy you more when you don't mind being uncool, and that makes you cool again.

We still get to be part of something wonderful, but we can relax about the outcomes. it's not on us. We don't have to do what we can't do.

But he told me hat this is what faith s: having confidence in God's character and capability, knowing that one day your loyalty o god will be vindicated.

It doesn't make the pain disappear. Not at all. It accompanies the pain. The loss is real. The grief is real. The immense hurt is real. But so is this deep and persistent sense of well-being.

That maybe a loving Creator of the universe isn't overwhelmed, even if we are.

I'm showing up for my walk with God. And I'm bringing my dog.

So you’re a sinner? Yes. So am I. But we can’t let our guilt push us away from God instead of toward him. We have to keep interacting in spite of ourselves. Real, raw prayer—the kind where you’re thinking about what you’re saying—forces honesty.

Loyalty means not letting our sinfulness keep us from God. Focusing on our sin can push us away. Trust me, he is not shocked by our sin. He paid a steep price because of it. He knows we’re sinners. But as we continue to focus on living a loyal life, turning our attention repeatedly to him and interacting with him, we will change and grow. I’ve seen it happen in my own life.

Women don’t want to be around angry guys. They want to be around clearheaded men who manage to get things done without the rage. Angry guys aren’t attractive. Men of action are.

Choose the people around you, the people closest to you, wisely. You’ll become like them. Their thinking will shape yours. They will help you order—or disorder—your values and desires. They will affect your attitude toward life itself. Do not underestimate this. They will change who you become.

We create ourselves over time. We are becoming something, and that something is more and more pronounced. People don’t suddenly become angry, bitter caricatures at age seventy. No, they were working on it a long time ago, step-by-step, decision by decision, attitude by attitude, reaction by reaction.

I’m a history nerd who’s been to Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Roman Colosseum, and Windsor Castle, and I’ve never heard any tourists talking about the amazing foundations. I never even thought about their foundations until now, actually, and that’s just the point. Men who are honorable serve as foundations for their families and communities, but they may never be fully appreciated.

To my great relief, I have realized over time that God really wants one thing from us, and here it is, so gird yourself: Loyalty. A believing, trusting loyalty. And it’s loyalty to him specifically. Loyalty through everything. No matter what.

The great news is that God specializes in changing people. That is, when they’re humble. So you can become less needy. It’ll happen when you actively turn your attention to God more often, spend time praying and communicating with him, and ask him to grow your desire for him. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s something that comes from changing the inputs in our lives, altering our schedules, reshaping our habits, and putting our minds repeatedly on the right things. You can be the guy who’s a source of significance and blessing for others. You’ll still struggle with yourself, but you’ll become more and more like Jesus. The enemy tempted him with everything the world had to offer. Power! Significance! Prestige! And Jesus said no. He didn’t need it. He knew who he was. I hope you do too.

I hope you caught the part that says, “in light of the fact that they have all been loved by Jesus himself . . .” This is why we can, and should, overlook offenses. This is why we give up our “right” to anger, however justified we feel in it. If I’m to love people the way God loves me, I have to love them faults and all. It’s that simple . . . and that excruciatingly difficult.

Not only can we choose to be unoffendable; we should choose that.

Forgive in the big things and the small things. Don’t take 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.

God sees things we don’t. He must, because He hasn’t vaporized us yet. He must look at a seriously messed-up world and still see what can be done with it. He sees what it can and will be.

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.

Forgive in the big things and the small things. Don’t take offense.

Offense obscures our vision. Removing offense enables us to see people in wonderful, new ways.

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.

Axel, Babette’s Feast.

Prayer is a big deal. It changes the world. There’s power in prayer. It’s also a big guilt-trip for me, because I’m terrible at it. It’s embarrassing. I’m in my forties. I always thought that I’d be good at this by now.

I have to serve someone, somehow. Now.

One thing that works, and it’s something I can do even while alone in the car: I can pray for my enemies. Jesus told us to do it. Difficulty level: 10.

I’m merely saying Jesus-followers should be sillier than everyone else. We should set the pace for silly, out-sillying the world. Even those of us who struggle with depression can be good at it. Why? We’re already aware how this is going to end.

But if I actually do something that cuts against the grain of my natural tendency, well, that sounds like obedience, which God apparently regards as pretty spectacular, indeed.

When Jesus walked among us, it’s how He demonstrated His very identity: A lame man walks. A girl is raised from the dead. No, I do not want to walk away from this. On the contrary, I want to be part of it.

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

Once I realized that, traffic went from being an exercise in anger to “forgiveness practice.” Life

He apparently sees us the same way. He’s not just an artist, of course, like Chris. He’s also a Father. Good dads are like that. You may be a drop-out, underachiever, whatever, and a good dad will still love you, but he’ll push you to change, because he sees a different you ahead. He sees a finished product, an adult who uses his or her talents and is a blessing to others. He sees something wonderful.

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.

...so many of us are one way skeptics. We find that religion "doesn't work" without seeing the obvious: irreligion doesn't work either.

A guy once asked me to go with him to Indonesia to help people after the latest tsunami hit. I said yes. I had no idea what I was doing. We arrived in Banda Aceh two weeks after the destruction. (Indonesia alone lost a mind-bending two hundred thousand lives.) We weren’t welcomed by everyone. Most people love the help, sure. But I felt unwelcome when a group of Muslim separatists threatened to kill us. (I have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.) They were opposed to Western interference in Aceh and didn’t want us saying anything about Jesus. I just wanted to help some people. I also wanted a hotel. I wanted a safer place. I didn’t want to die. I had no idea what I was getting into. We took supplies to what was, before the tsunami, a fishing village. It was now a group of people living on the ground, some in tents. I just followed what the rest of our little group was doing. They had more experience. We distributed the food, housewares, cooking oil, that sort of thing, and stayed on the ground with them. That’s how our little disaster-response group operated, even though I wanted a hotel. They stayed among the victims and lived with them. After the militant group threatened to slit our throats, I felt kind of vulnerable out there, lying on the ground. As a dad with two little kids, I didn’t sign up for the martyr thing. I took the threat seriously and wanted to leave. The local imam resisted our presence, too, and this bugged me. “Well, if you hate us, maybe we should leave. It’s a thousand degrees, we’ve got no AC or running water or electricity, and your co-religionists are threatening us. So, yeah. Maybe let’s call it off.” But it wasn’t up to me, and I didn’t have a flight back. As we helped distribute supplies to nearby villages, people repeatedly asked the same question: “Why are you here?” They simply couldn’t understand why we would be there with them. They told us they thought we were enemies. One of the members of our group spent time working in a truck with locals, driving slowly through the devastation, in the sticky humidity, picking up the bodies of their neighbors. They piled them in the back of a truck. It was horrific work. They wore masks, of course, but there’s no covering the smell of death. The locals paused and asked him too: “Why? Why are you here?” He told them it was because he worshiped Jesus, and he was convinced that Jesus would be right there, in the back of the truck with them. He loves them. “But you are our enemy.” “Jesus told us to love our enemies.” The imam eventually warmed up to us, and before we left, he even invited our little group to his home for dinner! We sat in his home, one of the few in the area still standing. He explained through an interpreter that he didn’t trust us at first, because we were Christians. But while other “aid” groups would drive by, throw a box out of a car, and get their pictures taken with the people of his village, our group was different. We slept on the ground. He knew we’d been threatened, he knew we weren’t comfortable, and he knew we didn’t have to be there. But there we were, his supposed enemies, and we would not be offended. We would not be alienated. We were on the ground with his people. His wives peered in from the kitchen, in tears. He passed around a trophy with the photo of a twelve-year-old boy, one of his children. He told us the boy had been lost in the tsunami, and could we please continue to search for him? Was there anything we could do? We were crying too.

to anger makes us deny ourselves, and makes us others-centered.

So what if --- just dreaming out loud, here ---Christians were known as the people you couldn't offend?

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?

Love people where they are, and love them boldly. And if you really want to go crazy, like them too.

Real love means waning the best for someone.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

Here she (Teresa of Calcutta) was, an outspoken follower of Jesus on an international stage, but when it came to warm, religious feelings, she had nothing. And that bothered her deeply. she kept serving the poor, kept praying, kept leading but she confided in her letters to confessors that she also felt like God had abandoned her. She wrote that "the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.

You know that feeling when God is right there, this close, and you can just feel His loving arms around you, and you can literally hear His voice whispering in your ear, telling you how much He loves you? I don't. I never have.

Every now and then we'll ask listeners on our radio show, "What if you were trapped on an elevator with Jesus? What if you knew it would be a couple hours before the rescue crew got there? You could talk about anything. What would you ask Him?" Most people want to ask about pain and suffering and why God allows it. Or they want to know how their grandma's doing. That kind of thing. Fair enough, but I know what I would want to ask Him. If I could choke out the question, I'd want to ask this: "Am I a fraud? Please tell me I'm not. Please tell me You're proud of me. Please tell me You know I struggle, but no, I'm not a fraud at all. I'd love to hear it.

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.

You have the responsibility of guarding your heart. You have the say in whether you will allow God to shape who you are becoming. No one else will do this for you.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. (Gen. 2:15 NKJV)

But real women do. They will call you out to become a keeper of the garden.

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

God sees things we don’t. He must, because He hasn’t vaporized us yet.

But of all the things we delude ourselves about, our moral “goodness” is our biggest self-deception.

The kingdom of God will outlast them all. Every single power structure; every royal family; every government; every banking system; every mighty army; every seemingly insurmountable, immovable ruler . . . all will pass away. But this is the kingdom that simply can’t be shaken, and that is the basis for this joy, this sense of well-being that transcends circumstances.

Some people will say they don’t believe in God because of suffering. They can’t come up with a reason why He would allow that. I understand where they’re coming from, but I also know that I don’t know everything. Just because I can’t come up with a reason doesn’t mean a reason can’t exist. My mind can’t conjure up an exhaustive list of all possible reasons. When I’m humble, I’m quick to realize that.

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.

God loves you and thinks you’re special, but no . . . you’re not God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

God doesn’t love all the things we do. He loves us in spite of the things we do.

Look, you have free will, and you can be perpetually shocked and offended. But be honest: Isn’t it kind of exhausting?

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.

Susan Weinschenk is a psychologist who wrote that dopamine doesn’t actually bring us pleasure. It merely makes us keep looking for more. “The latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search,” she wrote. It “doesn’t have satiety built in. . . . This constant stimulation of the dopamine system can be exhausting.

My sin isn’t sin because it’s on a random list of activities that God just doesn’t happen to like. My sin is sin because it stops me from being who I’m supposed to be and what I could have been. It’s a shortcut that leads away from the kingdom of God, where I can flourish, to a different kingdom—the kingdom of me.