A Soft Answer - Pt 2

A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish. It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury, much less for a slave to rule over princes. Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. (Proverbs 19:9-11 ESV).

The second principle in our series dealing with using soft answers to deal appropriately with conflict is to forgive offenses against you. In our reading today we find the wisdom stated clearly: Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11 ESV). This proverb describes the wise person, a man or woman who’s living with the grain of God’s wisdom. The wise person learns to overlook offenses. The word "overlook" here is the same Hebrew word translated "cover" in the previous proverb. To overlook an offense is to forgive that offense. This is describing a kind of emotional toughness that allows insults, hurtful words and sarcasm to bounce off. The decision to love gives the wise person the capacity to forgive. There are two ideas presented here:  Forgiveness is not pretending that the offense never happened. Acknowledgement of the offense is simply believing the truth. Forgiveness does not bury its head in the sand ignoring the truth of the hurt or the offense.  Forgiveness is making the choice to not hold onto an offense. I shudder to think what life would be like if Mary pointed out every little offense I commit. I am grateful that her love leads her to simply cover it, to let it go. Often it is the “letting go” of the offense that we struggle with the most. Our memories are often much too long in that regard. There are times we do need to confront a person in order to work through the process of forgiveness. When the offense is a pattern of behavior that’s slowly alienating us from the person, we need to confront. Or when the offense is self-destructive or dangerous, like drug or alcohol abuse, we need to confront. In these cases, we need to confront the person about the offense, but we confront in love in order to work through to forgiveness. We should exercise great caution, however. It is always easier to be good at “truth-telling” and very poor at “grace-giving.” Again our perfect example in this balance is Jesus. When he met with the woman at the well, his confrontation was full of grace and truth. That restored her to a position she had never experienced. It was so astonishing she went and told the entire town about her experience. We can use every experience of conflict to do the same if we will practice real forgiveness.