Dan Kent challenges us with the words of the Apostle Paul to respond to polarization by letting our gentleness show. He explains what gentleness is and is not, and outlines the inherent power and the freedom we experience when we obey this command to gentleness. 
Dan Kent encourages us to heed the command to walk in gentleness. He opens by reminding us of Jesus’ Great Commission, which includes “teaching to obey all that Jesus commanded.” This is a challenge today because most people bristle at the thought of rules. We don’t want people telling us what to do. We hear commands, and we think rules that hinder our freedom.
There are, of course, commands in the New Testament that are prohibitive, and these are given so that we can avoid actions that actually hinder our ability to live freely. However, the focus of this sermon is on the positive command to be gentle, which is an imperative that helps us be free to live into our say-so and to walk in the power of who we are designed to be.
To the church at Philippi, Paul wrote a letter addressing conflict and polarization. He told them, to “rejoice always” and to “Let your gentleness be evident to all…” The Greek word for “gentleness” means something like reasonableness, forbearance and moderation. It speaks to how one responds to being attacked by another, with ties back to the attitude of Jesus when he said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).
Dan addresses three aspects of the imperative of gentleness which demonstrate the inherent power that it possesses. First, he proposes that it is emotionally empowering. This is rooted in the word “let” as it assumes that we have a choice in how we respond in a time of conflict. Many people operate according to a pattern called emotional determinism. There is no gap between the stimulus and the response. The imperative “let” affirms our center of agency and personal power. We have the choice to respond differently than how we are treated.
Secondly, this command gives us an immunity to propaganda. Propaganda influencers live off the reactions that they can create through peddling fear and anger. To foster this, they try to convince us that we are in danger and vulnerable. Therefore, we need to buy into their solution. To this, Paul says, “Let your gentleness show.” This response is what Dan calls an expression of anti-fragile faith. This is a faith that grows stronger under pressure. When we encounter conflict and polarization, we have the opportunity to respond with gentleness and allow the experience to grow our faith.
Third, to let your gentleness show is spiritually stabilizing. In a world of harassed and helpless people, who are terrified and outraged, tossed to-and-fro with every wave, Paul implores us to choose gentleness. We are to live from our security in Christ, not according to the ups and downs of the latest rhetoric. This is not merely something that benefits us. It also brings life and light to those around us.
In his book The Strength to Love, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “We must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding. We must seek reconciliation, not victory.” This is only experienced as we make space for the power of Christ’s gentleness within us.
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Dan, for somebody who seems paranoid about advanced technology, I believe you just answered your own question with the whole Gentleness command thingy going on. We can overcome the current gossip networks on steroids. We have the Immunity to Propaganda as you said so yourself!
Question: what does “rejoice always” mean? Are we rejoicing always for polarization???
P.S. Have you uploaded the Musecast yet? Last I checked, the vid was removed.
Hi Sarah,
We rejoice always “for Christ.” We rejoice in the midst of polarization, oppression, stagflation, consternation, and whatever. We never rejoice “for” polarization, though.
Yes, the MuseCast was uploaded. Check the Woodland Hills page on youtube.
Thanks Sarah!
Dan Kent
So how does one become gentle, patient, kind? I think most Christians would agree we should have these qualities. This really frustrated me. Because all through the bible we exhorted the be this way. One can pray that the holy spirit give to us but is there anything else we can do on our part?
Then I found these verses:
2 Peter 1
3 His divine power has given us everything we need to experience life and to reflect God’s true nature through the knowledge of the One who called us by His glory and virtue.
4 Through these things, we have received God’s great and valuable promises, so we might escape the corruption of worldly desires and share in the divine nature.
5 To achieve this, you will need to add virtue to your faith, and then knowledge to your virtue;
6 to knowledge, add discipline; to discipline, add endurance; to endurance, add godliness;
7 to godliness, add affection for others as sisters and brothers; and to affection, at last, add love.
8 For if you possess these traits and multiply them, then you will never be ineffective or unproductive in your relationship with our Lord Jesus the Anointed;
9 but if you don’t have these qualities, then you will be nearsighted and blind, forgetting that your past sins have been washed away. The Voice
I appears that internalizing God’s forgiveness of our past sins is tied to having a Christlike disposition. Maybe there are other verses that could help? Post more if you know of any.
Thanks
Thanks for the comment, Tim.
Great verse in 2 Peter!
Regarding your question: “How does one become gentle, patient, kind?”
I think it ultimately comes down to each moment and each situation. Whenever something or someone makes us feel like being harsh, that’s where we must respond with gentleness—calm voice, gentle demeanor, soft affect, and so forth.
Of course, this assumes we have control over all that. Many people grow up assuming we don’t have such control. “That’s just who I am,” they say. Yet scripture seems to assume we do have control over how we react to others and to how we treat others.
Things like gentleness might not come naturally to many of us, but that’s a matter of habit and momentum. We get into a rhythm of living, reacting thoughtlessly, responding on auto-pilot. The thought of holding gentleness for someone actively trying to make us hostile might even seem absurd to how we normally live. It goes against all our scripts. But the Bible claims the scripts can be re-written.
I like how Paul works to re-write his scripts: “how does one become gentle, patient, kind?” (1 Corinthians 11:1)
It also helps to ask one’s self, in as many situations as possible, “why do I want to respond like this?” Looking under one’s own hood and interrogating one’s own choices might just lead to profound epiphanies. Maybe a person has a hard time responding with gentleness because they have a obese sense of dignity—”I’m not going to let him treat me like that!” Maybe we think harshness will be the chisel that corrects our adversary—”I’ll teach him a lesson!”
Meanwhile, the scriptures encourage gentleness. For me, I’ve found that gentleness is most empowering and dignifying (many times a harsh response is just what my adversary wants, so how wonderful it is to wield self-control and not give them the reaction they want). I’ve also found gentleness—though it might not “teach them a lesson”—influences others most effectively in the long run (only a person immune to the patterns and scripts of the world can help others escape it—we’ll never learn financial management surrounded by people who are bankrupt and debt-ridden, we need to find people who are prudent and maybe frugal, and we must learn from them).
Anyway, thanks for the comment, and thanks for watching my sermon!
Dan