“A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” (Proverbs 15:1, KJV)
As a late teen/young adult, my daddy would regularly use this scripture to encourage me to temper my responses when I was angry so I didn’t break or destroy what didn’t need to be broken or destroyed. After my mama died, I developed a very sharp tongue (or perhaps it was already there, lying dormant, waiting to be unleashed like the Kraken 🤷🏽♀️ ), which I didn’t mind using to hurt people when I thought they were trying to hurt me. So in the middle of conflicts and disagreements, I’d weaponize my hurt and words to destroy confidence, self-esteem, peace, happiness, intelligence, relationships, anything I could get a hold of, metaphorically speaking. Knowing that I proverbially gutted you like a catfish was satisfaction enough for me…we never had to be cool again.
However, the older I get, the more I heal, and the more God makes me over, the more I realize softness is the winning factor in contentious situations. Softness, which is a byproduct of humility (a work of God’s Spirit), disarms and allays the fear behind contention and disagreement. Sometimes, your soft answer wins the other person because you avoid unnecessary conflict escalation in the name of preserving the connection or relationship. Other times, the soft response may only beat that old version of yourself that you told God you didn’t want to be anymore. In both cases, God wins. 🏆
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