Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 16). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) The truth is we can’t even trust our judgment of ourselves.   Brant says, “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.   We should abandon our ‘right’ to anger, simply because we can deceive ourselves so easily.” Proverbs 18: 17 says, “The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him” (NKJV). Brant goes on, “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.” Brant then says,

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 11). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Now we may not say that out loud.   Well maybe we do at least once a week but we do think it more that we say it.   Don’t we? Brant says, “Many times in my life, I’ve vocalized, in traffic, something like, ‘Man, what a jerk.’ I can’t remember ever, not once, saying, ‘Man, I’m a jerk.’ Why? Because I’m a victim. My intentions are pure. Other people are the perps. I’m never a perp.”   We think that too many times, don’t we? He goes on, “It’s as natural as breathing, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s as universal as eating, but that doesn’t make it right either. Because whatever they did? We’re just as guilty.” He continues, “I’m not entitled to my anger against them, and I’m not entitled to think I’m entitled to my anger. And yet, many tell me

A thought by Brant Hansen (2015-04-14) from his book, Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better (p. 5). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Well, I won’t admit that it is true.   But then maybe he’s right.   I know he is right. Brant continues, “We don’t like what caused the anger, to be sure; we just like thinking we’ve ‘got’ something on someone. So-and-so did something wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, and anger offers us a sense of moral superiority.”   Oh no.   Here comes that pride thing. He goes on, “That’s why we call it ‘righteous anger,’ after all. It’s moral and good, we want to think. Problem is, ‘righteous anger’ directed at someone is pretty tricky. It turns out that I tend to find Brant Hansen’s anger more righteous than others’ anger. This is because I’m so darn right. I’m me. I tend to side with me. My arguments are amazingly convincing to me.   But inconveniently, there’