De-Escalating A Conflict

Have you found there are certain conversations among family members or outside of your family, certain conversations that just are kind of off limits these days? Scott Sauls has some counsel for all of us. If you're in a run-of-the-mill conversation about something that's important to you and it's important to somebody else, oh, let's just pick a hypothetical subject in September 2020, politics. Red state, blue state. And, you know, it's getting heated. Here's what Jesus says.

Deal with the log in your own eye first so that you are now qualified to deal with the speck in somebody else's eye. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com. In the midst of this cancel culture where we feel like we're dancing on eggshells if we're going to try to say anything to anybody, Scott Sauls says the Bible has a lot to say to us about what healthy communication should look like. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I've been sitting here thinking, if you asked me what kind of answers would you like to be known for? So, I'm just meditating on this. If people were saying, when I think of Bob Lapine, he's a guy who always gives blank answers. I would think right would be the thing I'd want, right? I would say wise answers. What would your kids say? Snarky would be probably what they'd come up with. I've heard some snarky answers from Bob Lapine. I've been known to do that. It'd probably go a while before you'd get to the biblical response there, and the Bible commends particular kinds of answers. Well, hey, you know, since you brought it up, I'm going to ask my wife. Your spouse knows you better than anybody.

Honey, what kind of answers do I give? Thoughtful. Thoughtful? Yeah, because you don't love conflict, and so before you'll engage in anything, I think you're pretty wise in thinking about it first. Well, that's good.

Yeah. What would you say about me? Thoughtful's good. Yeah, what about her? I was going to say she does like conflict. Fiery? That might be the first word.

That's probably correct. I need a book. Yeah, you do. Wouldn't it be nice if somebody would write something? We all need a book, and we've got a friend who's written one, Scott Sauls, who's joining us again on Family Life Today. Welcome back.

Thanks for having me back. This is always fun to have Scott joining us. Scott's a pastor from Nashville, Tennessee.

He's an author, a well-known speaker, and somebody that I know I can count on to give thoughtful, measured, and usually gentle answers in the midst of what can be difficult times. I mean, we have been living through some difficult times, and these are not times when gentle answers are instinctive for us. It's not the first place we go, is it?

That's correct. Some have called the current culture a culture of outrage. New phrases, new terminology like cancel culture have hit the scene, and yeah, it's an us against them climate.

Everywhere you go, just pick your subject. There's some subjects that are more amplified than others currently. We're in election season, too, which has people's nerves amplified as well, so. The amplification of those nerves happen in families. Among extended families, when you're having Thanksgiving dinner with Uncle Ralph, and he starts talking about what he saw on TV, or when your kids come home from college or with their kids, and you say, you think what? There are a lot of differences across generational lines.

I think in my lifetime, probably. Younger generations and older generations are on different pages more than ever in my lifetime that I can remember on certain issues, which on the one hand is problematic because of all the fighting and bickering, but on the other hand, I think it's a great opportunity because the best way to learn is to be in the right place. We're in community or in family with people who see things differently than you do, and the reason why it's the best way to learn is that either it gives us an opportunity to change our minds if we happen to be wrong and have blind spots, or it gives us an opportunity to refine the right things that we hold to and believe by virtue of having them tested. It's the best way to learn if you're humble and teachable. If you're not humble and teachable, then all it is is just an explosion going off inside a relationship.

Yeah, either an explosion or a withdrawal, both of which are heartbreaking. So how did you come up with a gentle answer? I mean, I love the subtitle, Our Secret Weapon in an Age of Us Against Them, and so we've already talked about there's an us against them. Especially, I mean, Scott, you're one of the guys I like to read your blog because what Bob said, it is gentle, but it's firm. That's why I read it. It's like, I know I'm going to get a measured response. I mean, there's enough firmness there, and there's even an angst, but it's not angry.

So when I read your title, Gentle Answer, I thought that defines you in my opinion, but where did that come from? Well, thanks, Dave. I wonder if my wife and daughters would agree with you on that. Maybe we should call them.

No, I think they're busy right now. A Gentle Answer Turns Away Wrath, that's Proverbs 15.1. So the book's title is based on that proverb.

It's not original, didn't come out of my brain. A combination of an awareness of that verse and a grief over how much bickering there is right now. I mean, it really is interesting. If you're in an argument, especially Bob mentioned in a home with your family, in your neighborhood, think about it. If one of us is escalating and the other escalates, obviously you're going to go there, but if one escalates and the other de-escalates, Gentle Answer, it's really hard to keep escalating. I mean, you can, but you sort of look like an idiot, don't you?

Well, because you are an idiot. If you keep escalating when somebody else is trying to calm everything down. I think it's important when we talk about de-escalating conversations too, that doesn't mean becoming a doormat because that's really unhealthy. That's called codependency. It's called dysfunction.

If truth is at stake, if two people in a family or any other kind of relationship are at odds, the healthy goal will be, hey, let's get to the truth together. And we realize it might be like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together and the heat's going to go up and we're going to feel the friction. But when you rub two pieces of sandpaper together long enough, both of you become smoother.

You're smoothed out. And it's really so much more, Dave, about the how than it is about anything else. How do we have those discussions? We're supposed to disagree because we're all flawed and we all have blind spots.

We all have, you know, sins in our lives. We are all contributors to the problem, whatever the problem is, in some way, shape or form. And so we all benefit from the friction. And so really what's important is a climate that allows for friction, a climate where friction doesn't introduce the threat of rejection or the threat of bullying or one person shutting another person down because they're the more powerful person.

Yeah. I know that, you know, the verse, the gentle answer, when you respond gently, and I'm sure you're going to talk about this, it invites a response. When you don't, it pushes people away.

I've shared this when we speak at marriage conferences. One day I was pulling out of my subdivision. It was early in the morning. A bunch of cars were coming down the street and I couldn't get out.

And so you get frustrated. I got to get out, got to get out. And so there's this tiny little gap and I go, well, I can do it. I pull out.

But as I pulled out, I realized I really did cut a guy off who was coming pretty faster than I thought. So, you know, you do the old look in the mirror and see of how he's going to respond. He is irate. He's on my bumper. I can't hear him, but he's yelling, hand gestures, the whole thing. Anyway, long story short, I end up, we're in one lane, but as the light comes up about two miles later, there's two lanes and I'm hoping he doesn't pull beside me.

Of course he does. And I'm in the left lane and he's right over there and I can hear him, but both our windows, his are up, mine are up. And so I just, I didn't want to look. I'm just like, so I finally say, okay, I'm going to look. So slowly I just look over and he is window down now, yelling, I'm a jerk, the whole thing. He's like, and so all I did is I remember I just turned to him and I just put my hand up and I go, Hey, my bad.

Sorry. Just mouthed it. I mean, he couldn't even hear me. I just said, Hey, sorry.

I'll never forget this. Immediately, he's like, you are the big, Hey, no problem. That's what he did. I mean, he just went like, Hey, no problem. See, I just sort of waved. And I remember sitting there going, what just happened? And that verse hit me. A gentle answer turns to my wrath. I mean, I'd never seen something that quickly changed, but I thought, wow, I responded gently.

It totally changed the demeanor. Now we're all saying that doesn't always happen like that, but it was a picture of God's truth is truth. This guy immediately, his whole demeanor changed because somebody responded gently.

So apply that to a family or even online. When we do that, is that what happens? Well, I think that that episode you just described illustrates a reality about the human heart. If somebody cuts us off, whether it's in traffic or you get cut off in a conversation, if you feel like you've been disrespected by somebody, you're thinking they just care about themselves. And what you did, Dave, in that situation is he was assaulting you for only caring about yourself, which he paid for, at least in his mind. And then you said, I'm sorry.

It seems like maybe his perspective immediately shifted to, Oh, you're caring about me right now. Like you see me as a human being. I matter to you.

You're not just here to win and to get ahead. And that traffic incident can be a metaphor that applies to family life as well, where when parent communicates and the kid gets it, that I care about you, that your opinion matters, that your feelings matter. And my authority matters as well. But if all I'm doing is asserting my authority and in such a way that doesn't communicate you matter, your opinion matters, your feelings matter, you're not going to win them. I mean, people don't get scolded into being persuaded.

People get loved and cared for into being persuaded. I can say something that's true and irrefutable. But if I say it in a scolding way, it's probably not going to be well received by most people. I can say a false thing in a really gentle way, and it'll be received by a lot of people. So there's a lot at stake here, not just in our messaging, but in the way that we deliver it. The Bible talks about speaking the truth and love.

You have to put the two together. Peter talks about giving a defense for your faith, right? Apologetics, right? He says, be sure that whenever you give a defense for your faith, you do it with gentleness and respect. In other words, honor people who disagree with you.

Honor people who are on a different page than you are. And that applies at home. That applies out in the world.

It applies online. And it's just more persuasive. I mean, evangelism, think about it that way. I mean, you're pastors who've, I mean, so many people are, you know, it can be a long line thanking you guys for introducing them to Jesus in glory. I bet you not one of them would say, Dave, Anne, I just want to thank you. I want to thank your church for lecturing and scolding and shaming me into the kingdom.

I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you for that. You know, I've been a pastor for 30 years. I've never met somebody with that story. Not once. I'm sure there's somebody out there that exists with that story, but I've never met one. And I've met thousands who have the story. Somebody loved me in spite of myself. Even in your book, you talk about how Jesus befriends the sinner in us.

What do you mean by that? Well, if he did it then, he does it now because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, right? And, you know, you look at the four gospels and just think about the very first gospel.

Who wrote it? Matthew, who was a tax collector. Tax collectors were known sellouts. They were known betrayers to the Jewish community because they took their position with Rome. And Rome said, you need to collect this much for the state and anything else you can collect on top of that, you get to keep. And they had the ability to exert their power to enrich themselves at other people's expense.

And so they stole from people in a system that allowed them to do that. And, you know, here's the guy who wrote the first book of the New Testament. You take a look at Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus, who was not just a tax collector but a chief tax collector. And that particular chapter talks a lot about Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus' first encounter with Jesus is climbing up in a tree all by himself because he probably has no friends. And he climbs in a tree probably because he wants to keep a distance because he has no notion in his mind that Jesus would want to have anything to do with him. And Jesus looks up and calls him by name and says, I'm coming to your house today. Who was the last person that went to Zacchaeus' house?

Probably nobody had ever been there, you know? And here Jesus is saying, I'm going to show you the greatest hospitality you ever dreamed of in your own house. I'm going to come and I'm going to take over.

And it's going to be the best thing that's ever happened to you and the best thing that's ever happened to your home. And it changed the man. You look at the woman in Luke chapter 7, she's clearly a prostitute coming off the streets dressed in a very scandalous way. She barges into a Pharisee's dinner party that Jesus was invited to so they could ask him gotcha questions. And in she comes and pulls out all the tools of her trade, her hair, her lips, and her perfume, and uses those three things to demonstrate affection and love for Jesus. And the religious guys are, you know, they're all men, they're all, you know, scolding her, scolding him, appalled that he would give this woman the time of day. And then Jesus starts to praise her and says, she's just put on a clinic for you of what it means to love God.

You guys don't get it. And these are like the guys who'd memorized the Bible, right? And, you know, there are so many stories of how Christ would do that. He calls Judas friend while Judas is in the act of betraying him, you know, the guy that Jesus called the son of perdition. He took the time to call the guy friend on his way to hell. I mean, it's just unbelievable how kind Christ is. I'm hearing you describe these biblical scenes, and they resonate with all of us, and I'm imagining someone who's thinking, I know that's all true, but where is the standing for holiness, for righteousness? Where is the confronting sin in other people?

Are we just supposed to swallow that and ignore that? I'm so glad you asked that question. It's my favorite question to answer, and it's probably because I'm like, and I like to be confrontational sometimes. Yeah, start confronting in the mirror.

Start there. That's what Jesus said. When you're in conflict, you're the biggest problem in your own eyes. Of course, if you have a situation where there's abuse, where there's injustice, obviously the game is changed. You know, there's protection and boundaries and getting people, third parties in the mix to help protect and resolve and all of that. But if you're in a run-of-the-mill conversation about something that's important to you and it's important to somebody else, oh, let's just pick a hypothetical subject in September 2020, politics. Let's just do that.

Red state, blue state. And, you know, it's getting heated. Here's what Jesus says. Deal with the log in your own eye first so that you are now qualified to deal with the speck in somebody else's eye. He doesn't say, leave the speck alone. Because if I see a speck in your eye, Bob, you don't see it and I don't say anything, that speck could lead to infection. It could lead to blindness eventually. Like, a speck is not a good thing.

Like, my daughter, a contact got stuck in her eye two nights ago, and it was awful. You are not loving me if you allow the speck to remain. Yes, but I am not ready to confront that speck until I've dealt with my own log, as Jesus said. And I think that our current culture, this includes the culture of American society.

It includes the culture of Christians who have allowed themselves to be discipled more by American cable news culture than they are by Jesus Christ are part of this as well. It happens in families for sure that we reverse it. And we say, hey, let me deal with that log in your eye. Oh, I know you want to talk about my speck, but no, let's talk about the log in your eye. That's number one, the wrong way to approach it, because it's not humble, doesn't honor Christ, it's not what he said. And number two, you're not going to persuade the person. You're just going to make them more upset. And I hear behind that, and it's a brilliant answer, because looking at the log in our own eye forces us to a posture of humility.

If we're really addressing the log in our eye, we can't come out of that experience proud. Dave has reached for the guitar. Oh, I know. So, this is a classic Dave Wilson song.

Yeah, you're talking about Matthew 7, just reminded me of a song. If you've heard it, I won't do the whole thing because it's long, but there once was a husband came from way out west, always told his wife what he thought was best. And if she ever tried to cross this path, she was sure to receive the deadly wrath of a log guy. Log guy, log guy, you can't stand face to face with log guy. Come on, honey.

Log guy. There you go. I've heard you sing that at Weekend Remember Marriage Getaways before. There's a lot more to that song. But it gets at exactly what Scott was saying. It's a poking fun at the inability of us to see our own faults and to see very clearly everybody else's fault. And when we do see it, when we are forced to confront the log in our eye, again, we can't come away from that confrontation proud.

We can't come away thinking... I showed them. Yeah. No, now we're coming to you to say, I see a speck, but you know what?

I've just had to deal with the fact that I got a lot more going on in me than the speck I see in you. And God's dealing with me on this. Now I'm in a posture where we can have that dialogue and where you're going to receive what you're hearing from me because you're not going to perceive me coming and saying I'm a Pharisee, but I'm a fellow sinner.

Yeah. Think about, too, not only addressing the logs in our own eye, but also being willing to name what is right and good from the other person and where they're coming from. The apostle Paul does this in Athens brilliantly in Acts chapter 17. He walks in and it's all these Athenian academic philosophers and they're all kind of speculating about God. They're all sharing their own ideas about God and he's grieved because he says there's this idolatry everywhere. People are misleading themselves and each other and the stakes are high and it says he's grieved. The first words out of his mouth is, men of Athens, I can see that you're very religious.

Okay, just think about that. He's saying to idolaters, I can see you are very religious. People who are of false religion, you are very religious. In other words, you're seeking truth, you're seeking meaning, you're seeking beauty, you're seeking the ultimate answers to things.

That's good. He finds something in there and then he says, as some of your own poets and philosophers have said, and then he quotes Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, both of which are pretty toxic systems of philosophy as systems, but he cherry picks a couple of statements that are true and beautiful. The image of God is in every perspective somewhere and it can be found. So, he cherry picks what does intersect with biblical truth and he says, as some of your own people have said, hey, guess what?

And then that becomes the bridge to talk about the truth. He does that with Jewish people in the synagogues in Acts 13 and 14. He's speaking all of their language, Old Testament language. He's a genius in that respect.

He is. It's what we pastors, David, but we call it exegeting your audience. Spurgeon talked about how he would have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in another as he prepared to communicate the gospel. And we've got to understand the people that we're communicating with and respect who they are and where they're at. And this is where parents and adult children or church members who may be on different sides of a political conversation can look at one another and say, I know that what's behind the view you're holding to is that you believe in the dignity of all human beings. We're not arguing over that. We're not disagreeing over that and we're on the same page when it comes to that. What we're trying to figure out is how do we express that best?

What does that look like? Now we've just brought the disagreement. We've notched it back a level to where maybe some reasonable dialogue can occur. It's tearing down the walls. Because I feel like in my Bible I have it marked every time that Paul does that because he was a genius in tearing down walls. Because all their defenses are gone now because Paul is basically saying, I see the good in you that God has put.

And then he begins to dialogue, but I think they're probably so much more open to what he has to say because he's done that and we can do the same in our homes, as you said, Bob. Most of us are not naturally good at this because our sin nature pollutes how we do this. It's why the Bible has to correct us and say a gentle answer turns away wrath and to help us cultivate this. And, Scott, your book is really a guidebook for all of us at a needed time in our culture when gentle answers are not popular.

They're not trending. You don't get good ratings if you have gentle answers, and yet it's what the Bible tells us our manner of speech should be. We are making Scott's book available this week to any of our listeners who would like to get a copy. If you can make a donation to help further the work of Family Life Today to help us reach more people more often with practical biblical help and hope for their marriage and their family, we'd love to say thank you for your support by sending you Scott Saul's book, A Gentle Answer, our secret weapon in an age of us against them. Go to familylifetoday.com. You can make a donation online or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. And keep in mind, your donations are impacting hundreds of thousands of husbands and wives, moms and dads every day all around the world. You're making a difference in their lives, in their marriages, and in their families as you support the ministry of Family Life Today. So thanks for partnering with us. Again, we'd love to send you a copy of Scott Saul's book, A Gentle Answer, as a thank you when you donate today. Go to familylifetoday.com to donate online or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate over the phone. Now, tomorrow we're going to continue talking about how we have conversations as followers of Christ with people that we don't agree with on important subjects.

How do we do that and still represent Jesus well? Scott Saul's will be back with us again tomorrow. Hope you'll be back with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.