​ Unoffendable-2

Righteous Indignation*

Mark 3:1-3

Review:

  • Recommended reading: Unoffendable  by Brant Hansen
  • You can choose to live unoffendable
  • Unoffendable involves letting go of being entitled to anger,  (Ephesians 4:31-32)
  • Offenses are a fact of life
  • Offenses are powerful.(ieThe Bait of Satan – John Bevere)
  • When you are unoffendable – you are free!

To live unoffendable does not mean we ignore the offense. Instead we choose to love others, even when and especially when we’ve been wronged.

Righteous Indignation  (Mark 6:1-3)

Are there times when it’s OK to get angry?
Didn’t Jesus get angry?

  • There is a difference between anger and action
Too often the world looks at Christians as self-righteous hypocrites patting themselves on the back for being angry while actually doing very little, if anything to set things right. – BHansen
  • The problem is not righteous indignation.  It’s self-righteous human anger.

Self Righteous: filled with or showing a conviction of being morally superior, or more righteous than others; smugly virtuous
  • Righteous indignation: anger about those things that are destroying the lives of people that God loves.

The difference between righteous anger and human anger

  • We can know for sure that our anger is righteous when it is directed toward what angers God himself.
  • Jesus’ anger was never expressed as an emotional outrage.Instead it always resulted in action for the benefit of others.
  • In the Gospels, and throughout the NT, there is no record of Jesus getting angry because of what people did to him.
  • The anger of Jesus was not to protect himself; his image or to protect his rights.
  • The Gospel is not about self-protection, but about self-forgetfulness.  (Php 2:3-8)

A self-righteous checklist

  1. Examine your motives.
    Why am I angry?  Am I angry about something that   angers God?  If not…you may be self-righteous
  2. Examine your emotions. Do you feel better than or superior to the person who offended you? If so…you may be self-righteous.
  3. Examine the effects. What affect is the offense having on my life?  What affect is it having on the person who offended me?

I believe righteous indignation has its place.However, the majority of the time what we call “righteous indignation” is anything but…it’s more like self-righteous arrogance and pride.

* righteous indignation: strong feelings of anger when you think a situation is not morally right or fair