"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger."
Proverbs 15:1
Today at work I had cause to think about this scripture. Someone wrote a post on our site complaining about something, and he was very angry and said some inappropriate things. The first response to him was also mean right back in a sarcastic way, and said that he was exactly the kind of person that we need on the site, except the first guy didn't realize it was sarcastic, and he immediately backed down and explained specifically what he was trying to figure out.
I mean, the story doesn't have a happy ending really. He ended up quitting the site that he had just joined like an hour beforehand, and although I tried to remedy his core concern, it was a little late, and I'm pretty sure that he still wasn't happy. However, those first few posts were kind of a reminder of how things could have been. We might have been able to edit his post back to something calmer and had a real conversation and improved the process with him involved rather than in his absence.
I think that we go through similar things a lot in our lives, and whether we are playing the person bringing up a concern or the person responding, we too often start out attacking or defending rather than calmly asking or listening. It's understandable of course to react in kind... but it isn't what God asks of us, and it isn't his path to peace. Today, maybe we can work on changing the way that we approach problems, and work on asking questions in a non-confrontational manner and listening and "softly" answering even when others do so. Let's learn how to de-escalate situations rather than making them worse... and let's do our best to love people, no matter how they approach us.
Proverbs 15:1
Today at work I had cause to think about this scripture. Someone wrote a post on our site complaining about something, and he was very angry and said some inappropriate things. The first response to him was also mean right back in a sarcastic way, and said that he was exactly the kind of person that we need on the site, except the first guy didn't realize it was sarcastic, and he immediately backed down and explained specifically what he was trying to figure out.
I mean, the story doesn't have a happy ending really. He ended up quitting the site that he had just joined like an hour beforehand, and although I tried to remedy his core concern, it was a little late, and I'm pretty sure that he still wasn't happy. However, those first few posts were kind of a reminder of how things could have been. We might have been able to edit his post back to something calmer and had a real conversation and improved the process with him involved rather than in his absence.
I think that we go through similar things a lot in our lives, and whether we are playing the person bringing up a concern or the person responding, we too often start out attacking or defending rather than calmly asking or listening. It's understandable of course to react in kind... but it isn't what God asks of us, and it isn't his path to peace. Today, maybe we can work on changing the way that we approach problems, and work on asking questions in a non-confrontational manner and listening and "softly" answering even when others do so. Let's learn how to de-escalate situations rather than making them worse... and let's do our best to love people, no matter how they approach us.
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