A Choice in a World Enraged: Provoke or Promote?

Influence. The word conjures up alchemy and magic.

How do you influence others?

Our modern media (especially social media)provokes, writing headlines that spark outrage. Editors and influencers write terrifying headlines about how the latest food is poison. All they want is to elicit fright. A report on losing financial benefits ignites anger.

There’s a reason. Marketers learned that anger and fear spread six times faster than hope and joy. If you want to get attention, don’t quote Jesus, quote Hitler.

So, our provocative world hooks us on the opiate of the next news feed that yanks at our emotions. Soon callouses grow thick over the soul.

The New Testament counsels fathers not to “provoke children to wrath.” You hear the damage done with each word or action.

Isn’t there a better way? It may not get “eyeballs fixed on a screen,” but it would strengthen lives.

Instead of provoking, promote. If your words can travel around the world in a heartbeat, what message would you choose to amplify?

The Hebrew writer, attempting to influence Hebrew Christians to maintain steadfastness, gives us direction.

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24–25, ESV)

Listen to words of grace…stirred to good works and encourage. They drain the simmering hate out of the pot.

At the dawn of the 19th century, William Wilberforce fought against the slave trade in England. Others tried moral outrage, to no effect.

Wilberforce appealed to people’s better natures. He gave a promising vision of what life could be when a nation upheld human dignity regardless of origin.

He condemned wrong when he saw it but chose to also appeal to charity and justice that eroded the foundation of the slave trade.

Wilberforce seemed to have failed, but on his deathbed, news reached him that his labor had won the day.

His tactics of promoting good overcame the provocative scare tactics of others.

Can we not do the same in our own way?

Treat every post, comment, share, as a chance to promote good rather than provoke destruction. Each interaction will soak into dry soil and loosen it.

So examine your words,  that come out of your mouth and that issue from a keyboard. Do they provoke or promote?

I choose the latter.