I listened to a fascinating book this year by Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program Professor at Baylor University. The book, How to Think: A Survival Guide to a World at Odds, details the way we think or, more accurately, the way we don’t. Early in the book he relays an epiphany, the content of which offers a model all Christians should use during disagreements and arguments.

I can be a sarcastic and (somewhat) quick-witted man at times.

Unfortunately, that has been a dangerous combination, which has caused needless animosity between me and fellow Christians when in disagreement on political and theological issues.

Thankfully, in recent months I have been learning to rely more on the wisdom I’ve found in other Christians and in Scripture rather than my wit when in disagreement.

I listened to a fascinating book this year by Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program Professor at Baylor University. The book, How to Think: A Survival Guide to a World at Odds, details the way we think or, more accurately, the way we don’t. Early in the book he relays an epiphany, the content of which offers a model all Christians should use during disagreements and arguments.

The “give it five minutes” rule, as Jacobs calls it, is simply stated: when you see someone presenting an argument you disagree with, give it five minutes to see how or why you disagree with it before you respond. Those five minutes usually give you enough time to listen to what the other person said, then allow your emotions to die down before you say something you wish you could take back. Christ said words matter (Matthew 12:36), so we should be intentional when we speak – especially in disagreement.

The late literary critic Wayne C. Booth in his 2004 “manifesto” The Rhetoric of Rhetoric distinguished what he called “win rhetoric” (the kind I’m keen to use in a nasty display of wit) from “listening rhetoric,” in which people engage in the “systematic probing for ‘common ground.’”  In biblical terms, James 1:19-21 summarizes the essence of the rule:

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”

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