Every day we are exposed to countless arguments. We witness them on the news, online, and sometimes in our own homes.

I’ve noticed a pattern. A lot of people try to belittle someone else’s viewpoint to make their own sound superior. There are two simple steps in this process.

Step one: Oversimplify someone’s viewpoint to make it look dumb or bad. Step two: Repeat step one over and over again with increasing volume!

Once you are able to identify it, you start to see it everywhere. 

When two people are trying to explain their position, another trend is to interrupt them. Sometimes that is just bad manners. But other times it seems to be a way of stopping the other person from sharing the fullness of their idea. This too can be a function of oversimplification.

All of this is made worse by a sound-bite culture where sustained and thoughtful analysis of anything is increasingly beyond our capacity and short attention spans.

So, why am I telling you all of this? 

First, perhaps you get frustrated when people oversimplify your views or beliefs. You don’t like how it makes you look dumb or bad. If so, perhaps this devotional will help you gain a clearer understanding of what might be going on.

Second, perhaps YOU are the person who is quick to oversimplify someone else’s views. Maybe your desire to be right is so militant that you are unwilling to listen and appreciate the nuances of what someone else is trying to say.

James was a prominent leader in the early church in Jerusalem. Those were tumultuous times. It would have required a certain amount of fortitude and wisdom to remain in leadership for that long. Here is James’ counsel: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20).

Talk about wisdom for the ages!

QUICK to listen. SLOW to speak.

I hope people don’t oversimplify your viewpoint in an attempt to make you seem dumb or bad. But we can’t control other people, can we?

But what we can control is ourselves. Let us stand firm and love well. Let’s be people who listen and are thoughtful. If it really bothers us when other people oversimplify our viewpoint in an attempt to make us look dumb or bad, why would we want to do the same?

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

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Notes:

—New Podcast: “What’s the deal with ghosts?” In this episode I answer a question in a Q & A Forum about ghosts. Are they real? Are they good or evil? Click here, or tune in to ‘The Pulse Podcast with Matthew Ruttan’ wherever you subscribe.

–Bible quotes are from the NIV.