Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 16.32
What's this proverb
about? To use a familiar phrase, it's about self-control. Now, that sounds
familiar enough, but try to define self-control … without using the word
'control'!
How about this:
making wise choices when it comes to responding to life. Consider some of the
ways that you actually do respond to life. For some of us, a bad day is dealt
with by bingeing on Netflix, buying something that's on your Amazon wish list,
yelling at someone (anyone!), eating a bunch of chocolate or just falling
apart. None of those are a wise choice when it comes to responding to a bad
day. Choosing any of them is a lack of self-control. In that kind of situation,
choosing to respond in any of those ways will only make matters worse. Here,
witness the failing lives of so many. Thus, the proverb.
Now, the wise choice
in that situation doesn't have to be finding your Bible and reading it for the
next hour or two. It just may be that the wise thing to do is to go out for a
quiet dinner with your spouse or a good friend just to chat about stuff. And
there are, in fact, those times when the wise response to some situation is to
get very, very angry. Jesus was not out of control when He tossed tables and
whipped people. That was the wisest response for that situation. So, don't
equate being self-controlled with some supposed Christian version of being an
unfeeling Stoic.
But that leaves this
question. How can we become people who are self-controlled? For one thing, it
is something that we need to set our sights on.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control… 2 Peter 1:5–6
Becoming
self-control needs to be something that we want to see more of in our lives.
But here, many of us need to be very careful. How does growth in self-control
happen? It's not something we can make happen. Rather, it grows by the blessing
of the Spirit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… Galatians 5:22–23
All the discipline
in the world will not result in self-control, not the real thing. It's
something that only the Spirit gives. And the way that He brings it about is by
pointing out those times when we sin, when we choose foolishly, when we show
that we don't have the self-control that we need. That's when He calls us to
respond with repentance and faith. And we do that in the hope that the Spirit
will respond to our wise choice of repentance and faith with His blessings of
more self-control. After all, that is what He has promised.