“A soft answer turns away wrath; but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1).

Someone is angry at you all out of proportion to the situation.  Their energy in attacking you catches you off guard and your first reaction is to strike back in self-defense.

What to do.

My friend Bobby started ministry as a musician, then became a missionary and later a pastor of several churchs. These days, he and I are both doing retirement ministries. Our friendship is a half-century old.

Recently Bobby was telling me of a time during his church musician period when he was going to a program in another church. To get there, he had to meet friends at the junction of a couple of roads.  He arrived early and pulled off the highway, stopped in front of a house, and killed the engine. A few minutes later, a man burst out of that house, waving his fists and shouting all kinds of profanity.  He ran to the car and around to the driver’s side, still hurling his threats.

Bobby rolled down his car window and let the man finish.  Then he said calmly, “You don’t remember me?”

The man was someone Bobby had known all his life.

The fellow took a good look at him, recognized Bobby, and suddenly, his anger dissolved and he became a different person.

He sheepishly explained that people had been ruining his grass parking in front of his house and he was determined to put a stop to it.

Bobby said to me, “You know the Bible says ‘A soft answer turns away wrath.’ It sure does, doesn’t it?”

I thought of something a relative of mine did recently.  He’s given me permission to mention it.

Jon was in the left lane of a four-lane thoroughfare in our city.  Traffic was heavy and running at 40 or 50 mph when suddenly, the driver in the right lane rolled down his window and spat a glob of something out his window that landed on the side of Jon’s car.

Uh oh.  Not good.

A half minute later, the cars ended up side by side at the next traffic light.  Jon rolled down his window and called over, “Hey buddy! That sucks!”

The driver, obviously a dropout from charm school, cursed and asked what he was talking about.  As the light changed, Jon was trying to tell him what he had done.

Next traffic light, they arrive in the same positions.  The other driver is irate now and challenges Jon. “Do you want to make something of it?”  Jon allowed as how yes, he wouldn’t mind making something of it.

“Follow me,” Jon called.  The offending driver got behind him and followed.

A few blocks later, Jon pulled into an empty parking lot and got out.  The other fellow parked and exited his car.

Hearing this story from Jon, at this point I’m thinking “This is not going to be good.”

The other guy said, “All right, mister. Show me what I did.”

Jon walked around to the side of the car and showed him.  The fellow said, “Oh man. I’d hate like crazy for some guy to do that to me.”

He went into his car and came back with some tissues and a bottle of water, and washed it off.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said.  They shook hands and went their separate ways.

“You dodged a bullet,” I told Jon.  “This is New Orleans.” (Well, the metro area anyway.) “You can’t just challenge wrong-doers on the street. Some have been known to pick up guns and kill the other driver.”

Jon pointed out correctly that it had worked out all right. I expect driving a few blocks before they got out to “talk” helped some, giving both time to consider what they were about to do.

Soft answers are hard to come by when rage is (ahem) raging inside you. (In this case, both Jon and the other driver had anger issues.)

You want to strike out, to retaliate, to put the other guy in his place, to teach him a lesson.

But there is something else you want far more than this, when you stop to consider it. You want to come away from this confrontation intact, with matters settled in a healthy way, and with the satisfaction that you did it right.

Ideally, you’d like to drive away from such a confrontation feeling good about yourself, knowing you have shown yourself to be a mature person.

A soft, gentle answer–clearly the mark of a mature individual.  Definitely not something that comes natural to most of us.

Where exactly does one find these “soft words” with which to respond to wrong-doers? 

Don’t look at me.

You’ll notice I didn’t tell you a story of how my self-control kicked in when some crude person did something offensive and a sweet word from me saved the day.

If I have any stories of my own like that, which I seriously doubt, they are buried in the archives of my brain’s basement.

The right answer, of course, is the Holy Spirit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and SELF CONTROL” (Galatians 5:22-23).

From what I know of the fruit of the Spirit, the Lord does not specialize in one particular kind of fruit in each Christian–this one gets love, this one joy, that one peace–but bears all nine Christlike qualities in the lives of every believer as we abide in Him day after day, year after year.  This is not a fast process. It takes time to bear Holy Spirit fruit.

The more we live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, the more we will resemble Jesus Christ and do Christlike things.

This is how Jesus was. The cross is the ultimate picture of a soft answer turning away wrath. (Don’t ask me to parse that theologically, please!)….

“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously….” (I Peter 2:21-23).

If we understand such “weakness” from the heavenly slant–see II Corinthians 12:9-10–we will eventually begin to see that weakness is the new unstoppable force.

Smiley-face goes here. And on your face too!!