daily java

Daily Java:

Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent. (Proverbs 17:28)

I read an article by a woman who was in a demonstration in Portugal several years back when she was just sixteen. She wrote that permission to have a demonstration was denied by the government. The government was in constant fluctuation at the time and it was feared a strong left-wing takeover would come. A lot of people were afraid of this and wanted to demonstrate but were not allowed.

One person came up with the notion that a demonstration was yelling and noise and all, so if they remained silent, it wouldn’t be a real demonstration. So they walked across the city in silence, a whole huge crowd of people.

When they got to the facility in question, she found herself in front facing an armed contingent of guards. Still silent, she was afraid to run for fear that they would begin to fire. The young people stood with their signs and because they stood, the adults had to also and then the media noticed them and the need was gone.

All because a group of people remained silent. If they had begun to holler or run, they would have been killed. But they stayed silent.

When Jesus went before Herod, king of Galilee, at his trial, he was silent. He knew that anything he said or did would be made fun of so he just didn’t talk. The response was that he really irritated Herod. Nobody lies to be ignored and nobody wants to remain unanswered.

One of the hardest things I have ever learned is the ability to stay silent, to just sit quietly and listen. I like to talk. All preachers do. It is part of the personality dynamic. They are, after all, preachers. You don’t have a professional “sitter and listener” in a church, usually. You have a preacher. And people want to be told things. If for no other reason, they want to be told so they can find holes in what you say and attack you.

The last church I pastored had a secret Saturday night meeting. I had not yet been installed, but some were afraid that I was going to bring wholesale change to the church. This was in spite of the fact that I had never said so nor had I done anything in the couple of Sundays I had been there that would lead them to believe it. It was mainly the work of one man who wanted to run the church and have control. He had had control over the preacher before the last one and wanted it enough again that he had run off the last one and was trying to keep me from coming.

A woman on our board called me and told me of the meeting and I showed up, surprising them.

I sat on the edge of the platform and listened to them speak for almost thirty minutes. They talked about everything and you could tell most of it had come from one source. It dealt with everything from worship style to moving the pulpit to a table being placed along the back wall to me walking about while I spoke. None of it was major, all was minor and some things were just plain petty. But all I did was listen. I made no verbal responses or agreement nods or anything like that. I just sat, looked at them and listened in silence.

It all wore down and they were nervous about why I had not spoken the entire time. Finally, the lady on the council who called me mentioned that maybe I had some things to say and turned to me and asked, almost plaintively, “Do you?”

I sat for a few more moments just kind of neutrally looking at them and then talked for a moment about friction between new people and such. I never answered a single complaint. At the end, I led a prayer and everybody went home.

That silence had the effect of making someone very wary of me. I had control and he didn’t. And it showed that nobody pushes me around. He went underground, ended up leaving the church and poisoning things at a distance. I ended up leaving and the next Sunday after I had left he came back in with a triumphant roar.

But he never faced me down. He was too afraid of my silence. He came by the house and told me how sorry I was and how much damage I had done to him and his family, but again I just listened and he finally put the keys to the church on the table and left after I prayed for him.

Silence takes all the wind out of sails. It silences people. I have learned to stay silent in listening to people. I had had people tell me their whole life stories, because I just sat and listened. In that regard, people are dying for someone to listen to them. However, sometimes that can backfire because they tell you more than they want because their mouths keep running.

But, as the Proverb says, it is better to shut up than to talk. It was supposedly George Washington who said “Stay silent and the world might think you a fool. Speak and remove all doubt.”

It is really hard to remain silent but if more people were to do it, the world would be better.