Thursday, June 20, 2019

Proverbs 15:1-2 -- On Soft Answers and the Use of Knowledge

"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness."
Proverbs 15:1-2


The idea here of a soft answer is such a wise thing, but often really hard to do.  Can you imagine if we always had a soft answer everytime we faced wrath?

Part of my job is exactly this... deflecting anger.  In online communities there are always going to be people that are upset with someone, but often if you respond to their anger with kindness, and have a level head when they don't, they calm right down and are able to cope with the situation better.  In a past job I would often have people who wrote into the site cursing about something, and was often able to get them turned around 100% and willing to join in and participate in the site, just based on how I reacted to them.

This of course doesn't always turn people around, and I'm definitely not immune to anger.  I sometimes react badly too, especially when I don't have that helpful distance of being able to type instead of speak.  It's always harder when it is personal, or when we are scared or otherwise emotional.  When something happens in traffic, we often want to vent our fear and frustration by blaming whatever happened on someone else and yelling at them, when actually if we stopped to think about it, maybe we're just scared and a little impatient, and going a little bit more slowly or leaving more distance between ourselves and the next car would help a lot more than yelling. :)

That's where I think using "knowledge aright" comes in.  The way that we speak to people affects them.  And not just our speech, but really everything that we do, every way we react, and even just how we use what we know.  Just like almost everything else in life, knowledge can be used for good or evil.  For instance, we could use scientific expertise to design a drug to cure or relieve the symptoms of a deadly disease, or we could use the same knowledge to design an addictive and harmful new drug.  Even in the case of the good drug we could use our knowledge of the people who need the drug to inform production and pricing in several ways, making it more accessible and perhaps less profitable, or the other way around.  We can do the same type of things in our daily lives--online, in traffic, or even in the gospel.  We can use our knowledge of God's laws to change our behavior and our hearts, or we can use it to condemn others.

Today, perhaps we should get some practice in with soft answers and using knowledge aright.  We aren't always going to make the best choices at first, but the more we practice being kind and calm in the face of wrath, and using knowledge in positive ways rather than negative ways, the more we'll get the hang of it, and the better we'll do.  Let's look to God for help with being calm and positive. :)

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