I recently read the book Unoffendable by Brant Hansen. This was a timely read as I had been struggling with a dear family member who was adamant that I was overly judgmental of her when I didn’t feel judgmental of her at all.
She decided to walk away from our relationship, which was devastating to me. No matter what I said to try to apologize or fix the situation without setting aside my love for Christ or my own convictions, she would change her mind.
So, the main point of this book is that as followers of Christ, we have the power through Christ to choose to not be offended in every situation. In fact, we should actually forfeit our right to be offended because of the great sacrifice that Christ made for us to pay for all we have done that deserved offense in Him and those who have walked with us in this life.
As believers, we often hold on to verses like, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27.)
However, we don’t continue on to the verses a little further down, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
The book points out that as believers we sometimes believe we have righteous anger because Jesus and God have righteous anger, but we forget that we aren’t God. God’s anger is satisfied in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus for all who repent and believe.
Hansen goes through many very poignant stories and examples of how to put off anger. The difficulty with his ideas are that they are often a struggle to walk out.
However, he makes some very good points and uses humor and real world failures to make his point, despite our failures to actually walk in forgiveness all the time.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is struggling to forgive or holds anger in their hearts.
“Unoffendable” by Brant Hansen can be purchased at Amazon.com.
