A Gentle Answer: Our 'Secret Weapon' in an Age of Us Against Them

by Scott Sauls

They got to know one another’s families, exchanged cards and gifts during the holidays, and supported one another in their shared struggles related to health and aging. After Falwell’s death in 2007, in a eulogy published in the Los Angeles Times entitled “My Friend, Jerry Falwell,” Flynt said the following: The truth is, the reverend and I had a lot in common . . . We steered our conversations away from politics, but religion was within bounds. He wanted to save me and was determined to get me out of “the business.” My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures . . . in the end, I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling, and we found a way to communicate. Every time I’d call him, I’d get put right through, and he’d let me berate him about his views . . . I’m sure I never changed his mind about anything, just as he never changed mine. I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions . . . but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

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For if Christians don’t go first in offering a gentle answer to those who oppose us, can we ever expect those who oppose us to make a similar move? And if Christians don’t take the first step to humble ourselves and become less testy, less defensive, less easily offended, and less vindictive when we experience milder forms of opposition and criticism than the global norm, who will?

there are times when God gets angry with those who oppose him and his ways.

C. S. Lewis reminds us, “Christianity is a fighting religion . . . [that thinks] that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.”9

In our current culture of outrage and us-against-them, what does it mean for us to be angry and sin not?

forms of anger are not equal, and not all forms of anger are wrong.

nice people aren’t always healthy people. Nice people, in their reluctance to confront, can sometimes work against the purposes of God.

scripture assures us, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He invites the weary and burdened to come to him for support and comfort (Matt. 11:28–32). Yet Jesus is also a consuming fire who sets us straight when we are out of line. Sometimes Jesus puts us in our place—not in spite of the fact that he loves us, but because he loves us. Jesus got angry.

true love detests whatever injures or destroys those we love.

Pippert wrote, “the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.”10

Do we assume that Christians are supposed to approach conflict by merely speaking and acting politely? Do we think it’s godly to just “play nice”? If so, we’ve got to come to understand that Scripture does not support this position.

Shouting our pain to God is one of the most reverent things we can do. It reveals that we recognize a God who is there, a God who cares, a God who can take action on our behalf.

Rather than striking back to even the score, the spiritual person prays his or her hurt and angry feelings directly to God.

Toxic anger works against shalom. Instead of promoting life as healthy anger does, toxic anger destroys and diminishes life. It is not restorative; it is retaliatory and punitive, vengeful and aggressive,

things better. It makes things worse. Anger can be compared to fire. Fire, like anger, has a lot of redeeming uses. It protects and warms us in the colder months, creates lovely ambience with a fireplace or a candle, and kills the destructive bacteria residing in our food. But if we don’t keep fire inside boundaries, if we let it run wild, then it has the potential to destroy an entire house, or a forest, or human life. Let fire rage and it will steal, kill, and destroy whatever and whomever lies in its path.

What can we do to keep it from spreading like wildfire? It starts with the little things. It starts with how we handle the things that trigger us most easily.

George Carlin do a special on what causes road rage. In his remarks, he said that “anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anybody driving faster than you is a maniac” according to a survey about driving habits.

Another thing I have discovered about my misophonia—my little pet peeve—is that it is God’s gift to me for the formation of my character.

Instead of harboring or expressing impatient, aggressive anger when I don’t like what I hear, I can yield to the Spirit’s work of growing patience, gentleness, and self-control in my life.

Each daily challenge or pet peeve presents us with an opportunity to either feed or starve our toxic anger impulse.

John Owen wrote, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

“To slander is to throw acid onto the face of another’s reputation. It mars them in the cruelest ways . . . Slander is Sin with a capital

“Scott, my brother, you forgot that you’re not supposed to wrestle with pigs.”

when we “wrestle with pigs,” we run the risk of becoming pig-headed ourselves in the process, with everybody ending up muddy.

Scripture says of this dual reality that we are saints and sinners, old man and new man, flesh and spirit. We are, as Luther said, simul iustus et peccator—at the same time righteous and law-breakers.

God responds to our sin with reassurance instead of shame, kindness instead of punishment, mercy instead of judgment, and love instead of abandonment.

Because we are not yet what we are meant to be, we need people in our lives to remind us that we have not arrived.

“Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.”

One of the most important things is how essential it is to position ourselves to regularly receive critique from those around us—especially those who know us best, such as colleagues, friends, and family members—and also to receive it humbly, with gratitude, and with resoluteness to change.

We must pay careful attention to those parts of the Bible that we underline, but also and especially to those parts that we don’t underline.

sometimes bringing out the best in someone includes lovingly exposing the worst in them.

there is another view that is now ascendant,” Jones continued. “It’s a horrible view, which is that ‘I need to be safe ideologically, I need to be safe emotionally, I just need to feel good all the time. And if someone else says something that I don’t like, that is a problem for everyone else, including the administration.’”

safe spaces undermine the entire purpose of education, which is to teach students to think for themselves:

Jack had a unique way of responding to critiques that were, in his opinion, unfair or even untrue. Miller said that whenever somebody criticized him unfairly or painted a negative caricature of him, he would turn to the person and say, “You don’t know the half of it.” Being aware of the darkness of his own heart enabled him to regard an unfair criticism as charitable compared to the true things about him, of which his critics were unaware. Miller became known for saying, “I am much worse than I think I am, and so are you.”

Pastor Tim Keller once posted a tweet that said, “Even if only 20% is true, we can profit from criticism given by people who are badly motivated or whom we don’t respect.”

even unfair criticism calls for careful consideration and a gracious response. Even unfair criticism should be examined for kernels of truth that present new opportunities for repenting and drawing near to Jesus.

forgiveness involves wanting the best for the offender,

It costs us dearly to forgive somebody. It costs us even more not to forgive.

book, Exclusion and Embrace, Volf suggested that people enact vengeance on other people not because they believe in God’s judgment, but because they don’t.

if there is no God and therefore no judgment, then human beings have nowhere to go with pain that has been inflicted upon them by others. If there is no God and no judgment, our only options are to suffer the injury of injustice on our own or to fight back in retaliation.

Denhollander spoke in court in January 2018 at the sentencing of Larry Nassar, an athletic trainer and therapist who had systematically sexually abused woman athletes for years. Denhollander, one of his many victims and also a Christian, said the following to the defendant: If you have read the Bible . . . you know that the definition of sacrificial love portrayed is of God himself loving so sacrificially that he gave up everything to pay a penalty for the sin that he did not commit. By his grace, I, too, choose to love this way . . . you have damaged hundreds . . . The Bible . . . carries a final judgment where all of God’s wrath and its eternal terror is poured out on men like you . . . And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. And it will be there for you.

Forgiveness Is Not Acting Like a Doormat

Forgiveness Is Not Automatic Trust

Forgiveness Is Canceling the Offender’s Debt

Forgiveness Is Compelled by Pity

is hurting people who tend to do most of the hurting of others.

Nowhere in scripture does it say that it is repentance that causes God to be kind. On the contrary, scripture insists that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repent (Rom. 2:4).

Bishop N. T. Wright once said that God has forgiven each of us a bucket filled to the brim with water, and in turn requires that we forgive others a total amounting to a single drop from that same bucket.

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.”

“Is it I?” response to the Lord, as opposed to an “It is he!” response, is a key indicator of a healthy, self-aware, non-presumptuous, gentle posture of faith.