Ep. 433 Brant Hansen - Living Unoffended in an Age of Outrage

In this episode, Brant Hansen argues that holding onto offense is killing us - spiritually, physically, and relationally. He had to decide whether the offense he experienced as a young person should be held on to or if he should release it. It led him to a simple, uncomfortable conclusion: righteous human anger doesn't exist in scripture, and the anger we carry, however justified it feels, is not what faithful people are called to hold. We talk about forgiveness, hypocrisy in the church, and what Jesus actually intended when he told us to love our enemies.

Brant is an author of several bestselling books, including Unoffendable, and a syndicated radio host on more than 200 stations. His podcast, “The Brant and Sherri Oddcast” has more than 20 million downloads. He’s been featured many times on outlets like Focus on the Family, Family Life Today, and Good Morning America.

Brant and wife Carolyn live in South Florida. His latest book, Living Unoffended releases June 9.

Brant's Book:

Living Unoffended

Brant's Recommendation:

The Matter With Things

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Transcript

Brant Hansen: 0:00

Make it part of your morning to decide to forgive people in advance. Ask God to help you forgive people in advance, because your boss is going to do the stuff your boss does again. Your mom's going to say that thing again that she says, like people in traffic are going to do that stuff again, the people online are going to do that stuff again, the people in that political party you don't like, or both of them are going to do that thing again. Ask to forgive in advance, and have a heart and just a posture of forgiveness at the beginning of the day. I know I'm going to be dealing with humans who are broken. I know what humans are like. I'm not going to be caught surprised again. I'm going to forgive people in light of what you have done for me, I'm not going to be the unmerciful servant who is forgiven for much and won't turn around and forgive. I'm going to do this as an act of worship to you, Lord, I

Joshua Johnson: 1:03

Hello, and welcome to the Shifting Culture podcast, in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. You know, offense is everywhere right now, and not just in the culture war stuff, it's in our friendships, our churches, our family group chats, we've normalized carrying it, we've even theologized it, calling it righteous anger, as if holding a grudge is somehow faithful, as if staying mad is what justice actually requires. Well, Grant Hanson has spent years pushing back on that. He grew up in a genuinely traumatic home, a pastor father who was violent and unfaithful and terrifying, and he'd had to decide whether that was going to define the rest of his life. What he found digging into scripture and neuroscience and the lives of people like MLK and Bonhoeffer is that the permission we give ourselves to stay angry might be the most dangerous thing that we do, not just spiritually, physically, the cortisol, the chronic stress, the way we age around our grievances. Jesus telling us to forgive our enemies turns out to be less a moral demand and more a description of how we're actually made. France is the author of Living Unoffended, and this conversation is amazing. We talk about the myth of righteous human anger, what the church's stage culture has to do with all of this, and what it actually looks like to stop being shocked by the nature of people, including ourselves. What would it mean to stop carrying this anger around? What would it mean to learn how to forgive, so join us as we find out. This is my conversation with Brandt Hanson. Well, Brandt, welcome to Shifting Culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me.

Unknown: 2:55

I'm honored to be here. I will note, for people who do see this on video, that I do have a bunch of garbage behind me. I would hope, I'm hoping I was hoping I could blur it, but I can't

Joshua Johnson: 3:05

give reality. It's all too real. It is. It feels like probably a metaphor for life. And we try, we try to hide things, we try to blur it, make sure people don't see it, but eventually what we try to hide is going to come out, and yeah, things will be exposed. Well,

Unknown: 3:25

if you even want to see more, I think Claire's trash can, and there's some other books and stuff, so it's all there. It's all out there, perfect. You're gonna be talking about

Joshua Johnson: 3:36

living unoffended, so offense, it's a big theme, it's something that you've been talking about and thinking about for a long time. Where did offense really start to rub against you? And real, you started to realize that holding on to offenses is actually destroying you, or it's not good for you at all.

Unknown: 3:57

Well, in the interest of, again, not blurring my background, I tell you about growing up very briefly in the home of a very dysfunctional traumatic pastor, like he cheated on my mom, he was a big guy, he was prone to violence, I thought he was going to kill us, he was very fundamental preaching, so we grew up with that, my brother and I both, and it's the kind of thing he died a couple months ago, so now I can, I can talk about it more, I feel like, but it's the kind of thing I had to decide, like this, it was so bad, like this could define me the rest of my life, I could be living in reaction to this the rest of my life, and it would be justified on the surface, you'd be like, "Oh, of course, of course, you would like, you got you went through, and wasn't just childhoods, like our entire adulthoods too, were haunted by this guy. So that was my experience, 100% of my experience with church and stuff growing up, and all the Christian stuff, the Bible, Jesus. All of that was wrapped up in my dad and horror, so I wondered, am I supposed to be angry about this the rest of my life? Because it seems like something you could be, and then what about all the other things in the news, all the evil that goes on in the world, all the other stuff I've seen? Am I supposed to, are we just supposed to carry this anger to the grave, because we're taught righteous anger is a thing, and we're supposed to hold on to that, and it's good to be righteously angry, and I don't think that's true anymore. And having studied it and tried to find it in the Bible, and to my great shock, it's not in there about human righteous anger. It doesn't exist in the Bible, so that's counterintuitive, but that's where I'm coming from, when I write about anger and forgiveness and loving our enemies and whatnot.

Joshua Johnson: 5:45

Well, I want to push on righteous anger. Where did it come from, and why? Why is it a category that we want to hold on to?

Unknown: 5:52

Well, I think it, I think we like our anger at one level. It literally feels good to be righteous, right? Like, we'll justify anything, we know that humans will do that, but the problem is in Dallas. Willard said this, like anger is actually American Christians' biggest problem, because they're not taught out of it. So we interpret righteous anger, which is in the Bible. Righteous anger is in the Bible, it's God's anger. His anger is righteous. Jesus' anger is righteous. They're not sinners. They can be trusted with anger. You know what? They can be trusted with vengeance too. We can't. There's some things that that happens. We're equipped with the fight or flight response. It happens. It's not anger in and of itself. It's not a sin in and of itself to experience anger, but the right to the right to hold on to it, dress it up, call it righteous. That's not in the Bible. It's deadly, actually, to hold on to it. So we're not taught out of it. There have been some thinkers through time, of course, who've realized this, and I'm hardly the first person. It's like Mark Martin Luther King Jr. I mentioned, like his theology was that he's not allowed to hold on to anger because he's a sinner, and he has to forgive his enemies. Same thing with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer said Jesus knows nothing of, you know, a difference between righteous and unrighteous anger for humans. He doesn't, he doesn't do that, but again, we're not taught out of it, and so you've got a bunch of Christians, unfortunately, who are angry just about different stuff,

Joshua Johnson: 7:24

you do delineate anger and action, and that they are a little bit different. How do we not have, like, the emotion of anger help lead us, but maybe have that point us to what is happening, what's the problem, and lead us to action?

Unknown: 7:40

Yeah, well, I think understanding anger is a reaction. It's an, it's a normal reaction to perceived threat, so that's the fight or flight response. So other creatures on the planet have this too, and it's good for survival. The problem is humans are quite unique, both about anxiety and anger, where we can perceive threat where it doesn't even exist. So when Jesus is telling us to be like the birds of the air, they're not borrowing trouble from next week. That's quite true. We know this from endocrinologists, like only humans get stress ulcers, no other creatures on the planet get ulcers from stress, but see, they have all of this response physiologically to fight or flight, and it's a huge physiological change that happens in your body when we feel threatened. Your cortisol spikes, your adrenaline spikes, your blood pressure, your body temperature changes, their systems that start to shut down. But that's all supposed to happen for about 30 seconds for an animal. But humans can hold on to it for 10 years, and we dress it up and say it's my righteous anger against my dad or my mom or this guy, what they said, or that political party, or these evil people like it has this tremendous physiological effect by keeping all that cortisol in your system. We know this, it actually ages your skin, it breaks down your collagen, it causes heart disease? It causes people to die quicker. It puts it makes you put on weight. So, like everything that Jesus tells us, when I'm talking about this stuff, I'm actually approaching it like Jesus is a genius. He knows how we're made when he's telling us to love our enemies and pray for people who persecute us. That's for us. It's a better way of living, and so the response to anger for me has to be okay. Why do I feel threatened, and I have to be praying for the people, for literally praying for blessings on their head, like that God would bless them and their family, that they would be at peace. If somebody cuts me off, it's a good opportunity on the road to pray for somebody like that means I'll get to work or I'll get where I'm going, I will be happy, I'm not going to be angry. Like praying for your enemies is the way to approach this, and actually forgiving people, not because they deserve it. Most people will never apologize, they'll never deserve your. Forgiveness, but you don't forgive them because they, they deserve you. Forgive because you didn't deserve it, like you're, you're responding to what God has done for you. This is the resource that we have as believers to live a life of radical forgiveness, and to not be shocked continually by the nature of man, that people are jerks, like that's on us at some point. If you're still mad in traffic, like after 30 years of driving, you may want to go,

Joshua Johnson: 10:32

hmm, like, huh, humans are messed up. Who knew? Huh? I'll be darn.. I mean, I see a lot of of anger in the, in the spaces, especially around around church and around Christianity, because we have this expectation of people within that say, "Hey, I am a Christian, or "I'm a follower of Jesus, that they would be righteous, that their, their fruits would be the fruit of the spirit, right? We would actually see that, and when it doesn't come to pass, I see a lot of people angry out of it. For somebody like you who grew up in a place and you saw the underbelly of what your dad was doing, and you know it was messed up. How do you see unrighteousness things within the church happen and not hold on to that anger? Like, how

Unknown: 11:30

do we deal with that as a collective, as a church? Okay. Well, I do have a few thoughts on that, obviously, because I started having thoughts on, I was like four years old. Yeah, so the hypocrisy thing. The reason I'm a believer, in large part, is I love how Jesus deals with it. It'd be one thing if Jesus didn't talk about this right, but he does head on, and he blasts doing religious stuff to be seen by other people, that's what hypocrisy is. It's not just being inconsistent, because I'll hear some people go, "Well, everybody's a hypocrite, really. I mean, come on, we've all said stuff, and then not follow through. Like that doesn't make you a hypocrite in Jesus' sense of the word, that makes you a sinner. Maybe we're all sinners, yeah, but a hypocrite is a stage actor, and you're doing things to be seen by men, you're praying to be seen by men, you're doing your good stuff. I'm for the poor, I love the poor, and you do like I'm an activist to be seen by people, like that's hypocrisy. I love how Jesus calls that out, and I'm not surprised when a church structure, honestly, that's based on stages and platform, literally a pulpit just means a stage. There's no pulpits in the Bible. We did that. We borrowed that from Greek theater, like we make stages and platforms and spotlights and holograms and laser shows and smoke bombs and stuff on stage. Like, who do you think's gonna show up on a stage like that? Like, do you not suspect that there might be some stage actors that are attracted to stages? I'm not surprised by that. I'm in Christian media, I see it all the time. Like, this is.. I don't expect the Christian artists that I deal with. Like, some of them are just wonderful, deep people, but some of them are like, it's been on stage, man. So, again, should I be shocked at the nature of man? Should I be shocked again and again that there are people who will use if there's prestige to be found, if there's money to be found, if there's sex to be found, if there's.. if people can use whatever they can to get to that. I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised at all.

Joshua Johnson: 13:43

So then, how do we then start to delineate the stage and stage acting into Jesus and following Jesus, and and have a maybe a discernment and help groups of people or small groups of people to actually follow the ways of Jesus?

Unknown: 15:40

Well, that's a great question. I'm a, I'm trying to unlearn the whole scaling pressure, you know? Like, we're in America, this is what we do. We build businesses, we're entrepreneurial, we're enterprising, like we build something's gonna be alive. It has to grow, right? Yeah, it does. It has to grow. Living things grow, but the fruit, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. Are those things growing? And we have totally, you know, this is.. I'm sure I'm not the first person to opine about this on your thing, but like, we have completely mistaken. I heard a guy just last week.. I don't want to say who it was, but it was a big ministry scandal, or whatever. It was the guy who was a big faker. Okay, he was doing like fake prophecy stuff, and but they said, hey, you know what, you can't argue with the fruit, and by fruit they meant look, he's got 7000 people showing up to see him.

Joshua Johnson: 16:34

They meant the business, right? What they meant, yeah,

Unknown: 16:37

that's so we need to go, that's. Not actually fruit, you can't be abusing people off the stage and say, yeah, but look at the fruit, like, no, the abuse is the fruit. My dad's philandering was the fruit, the terror, the violence, that's the, that's the fruit. It wasn't love, joy, peace, what? But he could be impressive on stage. So I think a fundamental re-evaluation of what matters. This is just wisdom, like what? What should we value, and what shouldn't we? Like, I'm really impressed by faithfulness now. That's, that's.. I'm impressed by a faithful person. You keep doing your thing. If it doesn't grow, you started leading a middle school boys group 40 years ago, and you're still doing it. It's the same group, you know, same size group, that's impressive, right? Because it's the faithfulness thing, but we're so like swimming in this water of everything has to scale and get bigger that we can't see it,

Joshua Johnson: 17:33

and we see hypocrites, and we see stage actors, we, we get angry, we hold on to that anger, you're calling for forgiveness, is is something to let go of that anger, and to walk us forward. How does forgiveness not just say you get to continue to do what you get to do, and I'm just going to forget about it and move on? Yeah,

Unknown: 17:57

yeah. Well, that's a great point, because when I'm talking about forgiveness and not talking about forgetting, I'm talking literally, I'm saying that forgiveness, rightly understood, means putting away this right to anger, this right to revenge, this right to hold on to anger against somebody. You can still have boundaries, right? So I even tell people, like the way of Jesus, like if they're like, well, I have to stay in this abusive relationship, I guess, if I've had to forgive everybody, it's like, no, no, forgiveness doesn't mean you don't have boundaries, but if you don't forgive someone the way I'm talking about it, you are staying in relationship with them in your head for the rest of your life. This forgiveness I'm talking about is actual freedom, and what it will free you to do as well. When you have prayed for an enemy, you prayed for somebody who's terrible, clearly is wrong up to no good. You start to root for them spiritually, and then when you confront them to do the right thing to protect people, you'll do it in a better way. It won't be out of an ego way, or I'm going to crush this person, but you, it doesn't mean you stop defending people or doing the right thing, and I encourage people that way too, because they're like, well, we have to get mad to fight injustice, like, no, actually, you're not, you're not called to get mad, you're actually called to do something about it, so, but because we call it righteous anger, we think we have done something about, like, hey, I got really mad about that thing, I'm really mad, you should be mad, or I'm, you should be angry, or I'm angry, like, but you haven't actually done anything, and when it comes to doing something to address injustice, you'll do it better without anger, because anger clouds your judgment, so this way of Jesus of praying for your enemies, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. It doesn't mean you have no boundaries, but it does mean you'll be very clear eyed and clear headed about how you go about doing the right thing.

Joshua Johnson: 19:52

Do you have a story or an example to help unpack that a little bit?

Unknown: 19:56

Yeah, I probably have a bunch, but one I enjoy telling is because you knew this was gonna happen when I came out with a book about this called Unoffendable. You're like, okay, somebody's gonna do something, and they did. We lived in Midtown Harrisburg, which is pretty.. we loved it, but it's.. it's a high crime area, and one day my wife was walking the dogs, and it was broad daylight, and this dude comes out of nowhere. This young guy's like 20, early 20s, broad daylight with a hammer, throws it at her head, misses, she goes to pick up the hammer, she's like, "What in the world? And he comes running after her to get the hammer, she's like, I'm gonna be beaten to death. So she chucks the hammer out of the way, he grabs her around the neck and throws her around a little bit, and then throws her on the ground, and then runs off. You know, she calls me, she's upset, obviously, she's called the police and everything. The wild thing is, we live like in a brownstone or a little little townhouse, it's right on the streets, there's just there's no front yard, it's just sidewalk, and the dude keeps walking past our house every day. My wife would be like sitting by the window, and there he goes again. So I followed him to his house and called the police, and I'm like, I don't know why he hasn't been arrested yet, like here he is, here's a photo of him, here's his address, I'm watching him right now. I called the mayor's office. I called everybody, and he would still - he's still out on the street, like somebody on the same street then got killed. They got hit in the back of the head by something on that same street. So I was like, okay, we've been praying for this dude, but I'm gonna - he's got to be arrested. So no lie, I put on my little sport coat one morning, and I told my wife I'm gonna go downtown, and I'm not coming back till he's arrested. I don't even know where to go. I'm gonna find the mayor's office. I'm not leaving, like I've tried to call. I've done all this stuff, and I didn't know where to go. I parked in downtown. There's state buildings with official seals on it, and stuff, and there's city stuff. So, I went in the wrong building a few times, and then I walked in a building. I kid you not, I had no idea. I walked in the building, in the lobby, as I walked in, was a press conference with the mayor and the chief of police and the chief detective, and they were talking about crime in Midtown, and how they needed the public to come forward with information, because they can't do it on their own, like we need help. And I walked in behind the reporters, I had no idea, like, what's going on, and there's all the people I needed to talk to, they're actually doing the press conference, and it was towards the end of the press conference, and then they said, any other questions, and I'm like, I raised my hand, I was like, yeah, I got a question. So you can actually watch this on YouTube, I think. I think the headline is something like, Area Man crashes press conference or something. I wasn't angry, but I was very direct, and I said, Well, you'd like help from the public, why haven't you arrested the man who attacked my wife? And all the cameras then, like, swung around onto me. They're like, "Whoa, whoa, wait a second, this is interesting. And the mayor said, "Well, we'd like to talk about this in private. I said, "You had your chance to do that. I've called your office, I've called your office to.. we're going to talk about it now. I gave you his address, I gave you a photo. You say you want help, and now someone's been killed, but you never arrested this guy who tried to assault my wife. And again they said, "Well, this is not something for the media, we need to talk about it private. It's like, "No, it is something for the media. Now you made sure that would happen, so we're going to talk about it now. And when people saw that on the news, I had neighbors, I was like, I was like a hero or something, but they, the funny thing was, they commented on how calm I was, but how I wasn't going to drop it, and so that's a long story, I'm sorry about that, but it's just such a direct, like application of this, where I've, I've prayed for the mayor, I've prayed for these people. I've prayed for this guy who was subsequently arrested, like an hour later, by the way. They said it was a bookkeeping issue. I don't understand, but whatever. And we continue to pray for him, and I hope he's like my guess is there's a drug issue and stuff, but he's a young guy just rooting for him, my wife and I both, but yeah, I think I approach that differently, because I've been practicing this thing, and you do have to practice this forgiveness thing. It is a practice, and you, it gets easier over time. You have to, you have to do it, but then it becomes more second nature in the moment.

Joshua Johnson: 24:35

I mean, practicing that, I think when I think of forgiveness, I think if you know it's, it's all on me, but you mentioned I don't know, maybe eight to 10 times during your story about praying for different people, and prayer was essential in the forgiveness part, and in the non-anxious parts, and you were calm in the middle of it. How does prayer help? How does our connection with God help us forgive?

Unknown: 25:05

Well, when you do something for somebody, you know your heart changes for them. This is actually - there's actually a cognitive bias that's named as the Benjamin Franklin effect. Even he wanted to borrow a book from a guy who was a political enemy because he knew if the guy did him a favor, if the guy did him a favor, that that guy would feel more compassion for him. So that's just how us humans work. And I think, I think the, the genius of the way of Jesus, of course, he knows all of this, how we work better than anybody ever, but he knows that when we do something for somebody, our heart starts to change and lean toward them. If you ever do that, you've got somebody at work who bugs you, and you do something kind for them, you'll suddenly, your own heart changes. And I think the same thing goes with prayer. When I'm active, when somebody cuts me off and I'm praying, Lord, let them have a great day. Somehow it feels like they're toxic or they're not at peace or something, like, let there be peace in that guy's home. Maybe it's the first time someone's ever prayed for him, but I've just gone, you know, this is true. Like, as soon as you do that, your own blood pressure drops in real time, your own, like, your heart starts to root for this person, so that's that's the change we're talking about, where we're being formed by obeying the stuff that Jesus told us to do. We're finding freedom, the freedom that sets, like, you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. That doesn't stand on its own, it's. Before that, he talks about if you do what I say, you're my disciples, and then you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free, but you have to actually do this stuff, and it's a, it's a better way to live, it's just a, it's just a genius way to live

Joshua Johnson: 27:54

doing the stuff. How does that start to bring freedom, like obeying what Jesus says, because there's so many people talk through it feels too law based and there's grace, yeah, yada yada, but How does like actually obeying what Jesus says bring us freedom and life?

Unknown: 28:15

Well, in a lot of ways, a lot of wonderful ways, and if it sounds legalistic, that's that's too bad that our theology would stop, would stop us from obeying Jesus, because we're like, I don't want to be legalistic about it. His way of living is more restful, he said. It's lighter, it's easier, so you want to miss out on that because of legalism stuff. And I love what Willard said, because he said, grace is not opposed to effort, grace is opposed to earning, none of us earned our relationship with God or earn life with Him forever. We didn't earn that, but the way of living He's giving us is better. Forgiving people is hard at first, like I said, but it gets easier. And what's harder, forgiving people or living a life of unforgiveness, you tell me one of us goes shorter life. I'll tell you that, so it brings freedom in a billion ways. Everything Jesus tells us to do actually brings us freedom if we do it. So that's why the Great Commission isn't just, hey, go get people to convert to Christianity, it's teaching them to obey the words I have commanded. That's part of the great commission, and the reason we do that is because we love people. If we're not, if we're not teaching people to obey God or to obey Jesus, we're making life harder for them. Here's another way. I just.. there's a myriad ways, but let's just talk about.. let's just talk about letting your yes be yes and your no be no. This teaches you, it spares you from constant image management. And how much effort do we spend? There's a typical person spend in this day and age on managing and cultivating and curating. We, it's a lighter, it's a lighter way to live, learning to turn the other cheek. It means you don't, someone else doesn't dictate my next move, what they expect. If you hit me, you expect, okay, he hits me back. This is how this works, from time immemorial. But I'm, if you hit me and I don't respond, like you don't get to dictate my next move, right? So the way of Jesus is so freeing, it's freeing us from this human, unformed, immature nature that we have. It's learning that when someone cuts you off now, you respond with praying for somebody. I'm free to do that. I don't have to cuss at him, I don't have to flip him the bird, I don't have to do all that stuff. I'm free now to be fine. So, there's so many ways once you start realizing that the way of Jesus is actually a better way. There's so many ways you see that that's true.

Joshua Johnson: 30:54

When Jesus says don't be anxious and he's saying, hey, the birds are taken care of, we have a lot of worry, I mean, we're holding on to anger, but we also hold on to worry and other things that bring about anxiety in our life, that then we're holding on to different things. What does it look like for you as you're just walking through being a non anxious presence, being calm, knowing that in the, in the midst of really, it seems to be a very heavy season in this world, where there's a lot of dehumanization, and really things to be worried about. There's the skyrocketing, you know, prices, grocery prices. Oh, that's

Unknown: 31:40

kind of stuff. Yeah, we

Joshua Johnson: 31:42

can't. I'm worried about, hey, how am I going to pay my next bill? So, how do we like become non-anxious in the middle of that, and know that God will take care of us, even if our circumstances are hard and difficult?

Unknown: 31:57

It's such a great question. No matter how I respond, it's going to sound flippant, right, because there's so like nuclear war, like no matter what I say, we can be like, come on, you should be worried about this, humans have always had existential threats, so I don't know that we live in a different time in that sense, absent media that is constantly banging away on our attention to those threats constantly, so I'll say that another thing is I don't know how exactly all of this will work out, that in the end God's character is is vindicated, but I believe that's going to have. Happen, so I don't have all the answers in the world for everything, human suffering and all that sort of stuff, animal suffering, even, but I do trust God, and I believe my trust in His character will be vindicated in the end, and I think that's important, because the whole thing is about trust. This whole thing, this whole life with God is about trust. The word in the Greek that gets translated faith in the New Testament, and we love the word faith. You know, the hall of fame of faith, you know, faith, Lutheran faith. I have faith, I'm a person of faith. We love all that stuff. It just means trust. It's the same word, like, but, but trust Lutheran Church sounds a little too, like, I'm a person of, I just trust God, man, I just, I have to trust his character. It doesn't sound as stately or something, but he keeps telling us to trust him, like, you'll see this stuff, you'll go through this stuff in this world, you will have troubles, but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world, and I think he's saying you can trust me. I know how this ends. Trust me. So, the Hall of Fame in Hebrews is a hall of fame of people who just really trusted God. It just, it's the Hall of Trust. It's the same word in the Greek, it's pistis, it's the same word, but it's just trusting him. Do I trust his character or not? When he took the disciples out on the boat and tested them, that was his idea to go out on the boats, by the way, and he knew the storm was coming. He brought a cushion with him, apparently, just to prove a point, I'm going to sleep through this. I want to see how you guys handle this, and they freaked out, and he's like, "Hey, what happened to the trust? And the one other story, when I was writing about this one time, I've noticed something in Acts I'd never even noticed before. It's so funny that there's a story at the end of Acts where Paul is on a ship with 275 people, it says that's exact number of people on a ship, and there's another big storm, and everybody knows that they are going to die. It's even the captains of the ship, the staff, the crew, the salty sea hands, where they know we're duped. There's only one guy on the ship who doesn't, who's his, who's cool with it, he's fine. It's Paul, because Paul had told him, or that God had told him through an angel, that everybody was going to be okay. But if you dropped into that scene, my point with this is, and every, like, everybody's going, everybody's losing their minds. 275 people, we're gonna die, and there's one guy who's like, no, we're good. He looks like he's crazy. What's his problem? How can he be at peace? When can't you see, dude, can you not see this storm? We're doomed. What is the matter with you? I do feel like that's an analogy for our current situation. If you're somebody who has a sense of well-being, regardless of circumstances, like this deep-seated.. that's what joy means, this deep-seated sense of well-being. Yes, I know what's going on. I'm not naive. Paul wasn't naive. It's not like that this guy's calm because he doesn't know what he's talking about. He just doesn't know what we know. He's like, no, he knows what you know, but he knows more. And so I think that's what Jesus is getting at. Like, I know how this ends. It's not for lack of knowledge that I have joy. It's because I know more than what's on the surface and what I'm being bombarded with.

Joshua Johnson: 36:17

It feels like it's an eschatological hope. It's a hope that we know the end, right? Jesus is making all things new. In the end, all things will be made new. Everything will be great. So it feels like no matter what happens here in this life and now, and what's happening now, I am safe.

Unknown: 36:33

Yes,

Joshua Johnson: 36:34

because I can stand knowing that all things will be made new, including my body, including this world, there's gonna be new city, we're gonna, it's gonna be made new, we're here, we're safe. Doesn't mean that bad things aren't gonna happen, it just means that in the end, right, we're safe, we're good.

Unknown: 36:52

Well, Jesus said, in this world you will have troubles, so this is not, this is not again, it's not naivete, but we can rehearse our entire lives, we can rehearse the worst case scenarios, and the people I know who've gone through those worst case scenarios, who are believers, have a similar thing that they'll say, I can't imagine, honestly, like, lose, I just can't imagine, I don't even want to think about it, but they have a thing that they'll say, like that the Lord showed up for them in a different way, and that they somehow had a peace that went beyond anything they'd experienced before, while they're grieving, and so we can do this worst-case scenario all day long, but God shows up in a certain way. In the worst case scenarios, and we're told again that we can be, we can have great cheer, we can be of good cheer, because in the end this will all somehow make sense. We'll go, that was worth it.

Joshua Johnson: 37:55

It seems to be difficult to hold on to that hope that everything will be good when there's spiritual dryness. When, so an example like Mother Teresa goes through like almost her entire life of spiritual dryness, but she has hope and continues the good work.

Unknown: 38:18

Yeah,

Joshua Johnson: 38:19

like what? What works, what helps in the midst of, like, I don't know, I don't feel God, I don't know if he's here, so that's.. I'm just gonna keep doing it.

Unknown: 38:30

This is something, another thing, because I, from my religious background, maybe also just being an analytical sort of person, I don't.. I don't have those feelings much at all, like when somebody's like, can't you just feel God's loving arms around us right now? Like, no. But again, if you went back into my background, you might be like, well, that makes sense, man, given what you've been through, or the way your mind works, whatever the wonderful vindicating thing that I have discovered, and people are people have discovered for me and told me we think in America we think spirituality is emotion, I mean we set up church services to create emotion, we build songs to create emotion, like we'll do verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, go to a minor, everybody drop out, we'll drop the drums out, or whatever. We'll hit the course, they will modulate up, and that'll give us goosebumps. And then the drums will come back. We know how to do that. I know, as I know, if I speak in public, I know how to manipulate, and I don't want to ever do it, but I can make emotions happen, or whatever, like, but then the people who aren't as emotional will be like, what's wrong with me? I must be missing something, or I used to be emotional, now I'm not. Maybe God left. That's dangerous, because in the Bible, spirituality is not emotions. There's nothing wrong with emotions, they can tell us a lot, but it's like spirituality that God's looking for is loyalty. Like, I can do that if I don't feel God around, I'm going to talk to him anyway. And so I walk the dog in the morning, and that's that's my chance to talk to God as a regular thing about what we're doing in life together. If I'm not feeling it, I do it anyway, and it's okay, and he's been honoring to that, I believe. I think he just honors the faithfulness, and if you're not getting an emotional reward for it, well, okay, all right. I think that's growth too. It's like I'm not doing it for the emotion, I don't need that, like I'm doing it because God's good, and I don't know what life would be like without Him. I don't want that. So, I don't know if that answers your question or not, but I have definitely learned that this believing loyalty is what He's after, and for people, people who are discouraged because they don't have these feelings that other people seem to have. I'm like, I have some good news, like God's God's looking for something different.

Joshua Johnson: 41:11

And a lot of our conversation, we've talked through, you know, stage personas, you talk it through manipulating emotions and trying to get people to do something. We live in an attention economy, for somebody like you in the medium, somebody like me doing this, this podcast, we, we give out a lot of information, there's there's a lot of talk that's happening. How do you help people be formed into Christ likeness through an information type of medium, what does that look like for you? Like, what are you thinking of doing, or like, what are your.. what's your thought process in helping people be formed instead of just get more information?

Unknown: 42:00

Yeah, I'm definitely not about just information download. That's such a great question. I have to think about it a little bit, because I'm on Christian radio stations, and so I'm in between these songs and stuff. The real challenge, I picture a person listening, and what I picture, honestly, is a woman who's maybe 50 who's just finished cleaning a hotel room shift, like she's a she works at a hotel cleaning rooms, and she hit turns on the radio, and she didn't turn it on because she wants to hear me. She hit the button because she would like what we all want, which is reassurance that God's good, and He sees us, and so that forms what I talk about. So I'm not trying, I'm not trying in that moment, not, not via Christian radio, because of the room that I'm people are walking in this room, and I feel like I've got 45 seconds. What can I say that will make her go, 'I want to know God more. He's so good, and so it necessarily isn't an information download thing, people I know, Daniel Kahneman said this, the cognitive psychiatrist, but like humans are forgetting machines, we need to be reminded of stuff, so it's not always just new information, although I do like writing about new ways of thinking about stuff, but most of the time I'm trying to remind people of stuff they already knew, or or hoped was true. So, there's a lot there. If I bet you, and you would understand this, you're so insightful, but like that's quite a challenge, and it's, it's, it's fun. Okay, here's 45 seconds. Here's this woman getting in, maybe she just got off a shift at the hospital, maybe she just got a diagnosis at the hospital, and she's gone to her third chemo thing, and she's getting back in the car. You have 45 seconds to say something to her, so I do operate a lot in it's not emotionalism, but just like I'm just trying to give you reason for hope,

Joshua Johnson: 44:32

because we are forgetting machines, and we forget that we should not hold on to anger, and we forget that we should forgive what practices or things to help us be reminded that this is the way.

Unknown: 44:51

Well, first thing they do as a spiritual discipline is purchase all of my products and or services and constantly review them,

Joshua Johnson: 45:02

that is no unspertural discipline.

Unknown: 45:07

No, it's I encourage people to do this, and it's practice two things. It's gonna sound goofy, but I mean it about traffic. Traffic is forgiveness practice, and when you practice something, you get better at it. So, at first, somebody cuts you off, and you'll have your natural response, and you'll want to cuss them out, or whatever, or feel angry about it. So, it's a little harder to go, "I'm going to, I'm going to pray blessings on this person, but after you do that a few times, it becomes easier, and then you don't even have to talk yourself into it, you're not even mad after a while, you'll watch, even in the moment, you're not insulted, you're not offended, because you're practicing this way of forgiveness, so even in the moment, like you're on Twitter, somebody says something rude,"Hello, it's Twitter, that's what that's what they do, right? you're not even mad about it. Just like I posted on Twitter, what did I expect? Like, this is these are humans, so the actual practice of doing blessing your enemies will help this become knitted into your character. Just like practicing free throws, you do that 10,000 times, so that when the game's on the line, you don't have to sit there and think, where does my elbow go, where did my knees go? It's just second nature.

Joshua Johnson: 46:31

Yeah, give me the ball,

Unknown: 46:33

right? I do it, and I don't have to think about that, because I've already practiced this enough that I don't have to think about where my elbow goes. It just flows. The second thing I really recommend, make it part of your morning to decide to forgive people in advance. Ask God to help you forgive people in advance, because your boss is going to do the stuff your boss does again. Your mom's going to say that thing again that she says, like people in traffic are going to do that stuff again. The people online are going to do that stuff again. The people in that political party you don't like, or both of them are going to do that thing again. Ask to forgive in advance and have a heart and just a posture of forgiveness at the beginning of the day. I know I'm going to be dealing with humans who are broken. I know what humans are like. I'm not going to be caught surprised again. I'm going to forgive people in light of what you have done for me. I'm not going to be the unmerciful servant who is forgiven for much and won't turn around and forgive. I'm going to do this as an act of worship to you, Lord, but then that becomes a more. Morning routine, and it becomes again, it becomes part of your character, because we are forgetting machines, but this becomes just it has to be knitted into our habits and way of life.

Joshua Johnson: 47:51

I mean, if we're forgiving those that we're going to encounter throughout the day, I think sometimes it helps me remember that these people are flailing around, trying to, you know, figure this, this life out through their own brokenness, and trying to figure out how to be whole. What are you think that humans are trying as a whole to get back to, or to

Unknown: 48:16

Dean? I mean, it, when you say flailing about, that's what I think of. We are lost casting about trying to get back after this shipwreck and people are working that out how they can and I love that you said that because that's a huge help and I should have mentioned that just we're not in a battle against flesh and blood but there's spiritual stuff that's in the midst of it all around us, when you realize that, too, you can start to root for people who are evil, but I'm still rooting for them. I don't want their evil plot to, I don't want what they're doing to happen, but I want them to know the goodness of God and the peace, like I want. So you do come to a point as you practice this way of life where you are rooting for everybody, you're pulling for them, because it is a spiritual thing that's the backdrop to this. It's like I heard NT Wright say, it may have been on you, I know you had him on, like he talked about how the kingdom of God is, it's all around us, but there's a veil that we don't see through, but it's going to be revealed in total. But I think about that in terms of evil too, like it's all there's all this stuff that's going on around this, and these people are subject to it, and they're.. I feel for us, I feel for us, a humanity itself. Like, I think reminding yourself of that is incredibly helpful, and it helps you to lean in to pray for people, and then again, your heart will follow that.

Joshua Johnson: 49:45

That gives me so much grace for people, that it's actually they're on a journey, like they're trying to move forward, even if they're, they're giving into their, their evil temptations. They are on a journey that there is hope for them, there's hope for all of us. Yes, and so it's the

Unknown: 50:05

posture of Jesus on the cross, which is like, forgive them, they don't fully understand what they're doing, and that's true of everybody. They don't know very few people are self-aware, like I'm up to no good, you know, rubbing their hands together, mr. Burns style, or whatever. It's like, so, but, but it, but there's still up to, there's still, there's evil designs in there, they're a part of it. And I want that to be over. I look forward to God burning all the evil away.

Joshua Johnson: 50:43

Yeah, that'll be so beautiful.

Unknown: 50:45

What a relief for all of us. Yeah, all of

Joshua Johnson: 50:48

us. Yes, yes. Well, Brandt, if you could talk to your readers of living unoffended, what do you hope for this book, and for the people who read it?

Unknown: 50:59

Just what we've been talking about, it's about anxiety, and it's about anger, and it's about living the way of Jesus, like actually doing the stuff, and how wonderfully freeing it is. He said, "If you hear my words, he said at the end of the sermon on the mount, so I mentioned this in the book, like if you hear my words and you put them into action, you're like someone who builds their house on a rock. If you hear my words and don't obey them, you're building your house on the sand. Well, people think when Jesus, like being a disciple is hard, like it's not harder than being a non-disciple. It's actually easier, like you're both building a house. Who's got the harder life once the storm hits, though. When Jesus talks about the narrow way, he means narrow, it's straight, like look at the Greek, he's talking about it's the narrow way. Yes, it's narrow. The wide way leads to destruction, he says, like it's not harder, destruction is harder, yeah, but a highway is fairly narrow compared to if you just jump off the highway, you can drive through the fields, or whatever, like that's the wide way, but it's, but the narrow way is better, so I, I just try to come at it 100 different ways in the book, it's a lot of short essays, and I tried to have a sense of humor about it too, but the upshot is honestly like, I think I think the way of Jesus is so awesome, and I think you'll enjoy life more if you do

Joshua Johnson: 52:30

it. Amen.

Unknown: 52:31

Yeah, right. So it's the kingdom. It's like eternal life starts now. The kingdom is now available.

Joshua Johnson: 52:36

Amen. Yes, yes. Well, Brent, I have a couple quick. Questions I like to ask at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Unknown: 52:45

I was already married. We just had our anniversary, was it yesterday? 36 years.

Joshua Johnson: 52:52

Wow, congrats.

Unknown: 52:53

Thanks. So, this isn't the biggest piece of advice. There's.. I'd probably, but that's it's related to marriage, I tell my younger self to watch his tone of voice with his wife. So, like, we think as guys, a lot of times we think we're arguing and we're not raising our voices, we're just being very pointed and logical, and we're stating, like, you just said this, so I'm having a hard time interpreting how you would like, I'm not yelling, but women hear things differently. It's even their auditorium, it's just their ears are different. Yeah, they're primed to hear certain things, and our voices, we don't realize, can be very threatening. We have big voices that can scare off predators, even. And I'm here to make my wife feel secure, so I would tell my 21 year old self that, like, your role is to make your wife feel secure, not insecure, and if you're the threat, you're the problem, you're supposed to be a source of security, and when you do that, your wife will be really attracted to you, and when you don't do it, she won't be.

Joshua Johnson: 54:04

Yeah,

Unknown: 54:05

so I wish I'd learned that a long time.

Joshua Johnson: 54:09

That's good. That's really good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend

Unknown: 54:15

Ian McGilchrist. The book is called The Matter with Things. I'm on page 1009 It is very lengthy, but I'm telling you, it's the most important book I have read ever outside of the Bible. I will never see the world the same way again. And if you think I'm exaggerating, read the reviews of this. This is an Oxford scholar, retired professor, neurologist, and philosopher, and the way he views the world and the way the Western mind views the world are so different, and it's he's so brilliant about it as a scientist about what science actually knows, how life even works, like once once you see what he's talking about, you can't unsee it. I cannot recommend that enough. I think he would love it.

Joshua Johnson: 55:08

Yeah,

Unknown: 55:10

but yeah, check out the reviews and stuff, because honestly, you'll see other people going, oh my goodness,

Joshua Johnson: 55:15

yeah, exciting.

Unknown: 55:16

Oh yeah, incredible.

Joshua Johnson: 55:19

Oh, that's good, great. Well, yes, Living Unoffended will be out in june 9, right? Yeah, june 9, anywhere books are sold. And so go and get that, and all of Brandt's other books, if you want the number one spiritual discipline out there, you get all of his works. Sure, yeah, and walk through that, but this is this is fantastic. This is a synthesis of a lot of your works in the past, and just to bring it down into smaller essays by size chunks, there's some new chapters that are fantastic, and you get some doodles, which are great, and so don't forget the doodles, because they're they actually help, so when you bring things down into those simple forms, yeah, it actually helps us figure out, oh, this is actually a step that I can take. So it's really good. Brent, how can people connect with you? What you're doing? Where would you like to point people to?

Unknown: 56:22

I have a podcast called Brandt and Sherry Oddcast. You can find that. I also do a podcast now called Living Unoffended, and it's literally just a reminder, it's a weekly reminder about walking out this thing where we love our enemies and how to do

Joshua Johnson: 56:36

it. Excellent, so good. Yeah,

Unknown: 56:38

that'd be great. Look it up. And thanks for all the great questions, man. Yeah, you're like really good at this. So,

Joshua Johnson: 56:45

well, thank you. It was fantastic. I love talking to you. So, it was great. So, thanks so much, Fran. Thanks, man.