Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end. – Proverbs 29:11

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 18, 2019): Proverbs 29                          

Nineteenth-Century American journalist and civil war veteran Ambrose Bierce said that “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” I know from experience Bierce is right. The things that I regret saying the most, I said while I was angry. In my youth, I would often go off to a secret place. During my teenage years, that place was a tree in the middle of a grove of other trees, and it was there that I would sit, with my back against the tree, while my anger simmered. Only when I felt that I was calm enough, would I allow myself to go back to the situation that had angered me. It is a practice that I slowly lost in my adult years; that loss was to my detriment. Jesus may have caused good things to happen when he got angry at the presence of the money changers in the temple, but that has never been my experience. When I speak while I am angry, I almost immediately regret my words.

Solomon argues that there is another difference between the fool and the wise. The fool gives full vent to their rage. In our culture, this might be the equivalent of those who claim that they “are just being real.” They yell and scream or write posts that never should have been written on social media. There is no consideration of the weight of their words. They cause a stir and then walk away leaving disaster in their wake.

The wise person does things differently. It is not that the wise do not allow their anger to escape their beings. The wise are not the ones who keep everything bottled up inside, damaging their health in the process. But they do consider how to express their anger. They do not go overboard. Their anger is proportional to the situation. And when it is revealed, their anger is spent toward solving a problem.

The reality is that there might be an objective way of telling the difference between a fool and a wise person. Fools vents their anger; they are disruptive and damaging to those around them. The wise judiciously release their concerns in an appropriate manner so that order can be restored and problems identified and solved. “The wise bring calm in the end.”

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 30