A Gentle Answer – Proverbs 15:1

In an excerpt from his book, A Gentle Answer: Our Secret Weapon in an Age of Us-Against-Them, Scott Sauls cites the example of John Perkins, civil rights activist and community developer: 

John Perkins knows suffering. His mother died when he was a baby. His father abandoned him when he was a child. His brother was killed during an altercation with a Mississippi police officer. As a black man during the civil rights era, he endured beatings and imprisonments and death threats. Since that time, Perkins has faithfully confronted injustice, racism, oppression, and violence while also advocating valiantly for reconciliation, peace, equality, healing, and hope.

“Yielding to God’s will can be hard,” Perkins wrote in 1976. “And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace…You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate—but I don’t think being a dreamer is all that bad…I’m an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.”

A soft answer turns away wrath,

but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1, ESV)

Have you seen this in action?  Do you have the discipline to do it?  Or perhaps it takes more than discipline.

What is at the heart of a person who can give a soft answer in an angry situation?  How about:

• A genuine love for the angry person
• A concern that more anger will only lead to greater frustration, deep divide, and alienation
• A concern for any onlookers who will also be divided and tempted to borrow the anger
  

A man is never in worse company than when he flies into a rage and is beside himself.