NOW, why do I love this? Well, I have had the opportunity to meet many people in my life who are NOT this way. They are certainly decided in their beliefs, but they take to ridicule instead of understanding as a way to communicate their opinions. Their speech is demeaning and destructive. Unfortunately, I think that many of these individuals take to a profession focused on the art of argumentation...in short...law.
OF COURSE, this is not true of many people who become lawyers. I have some exceptional individuals in my own family that are lawyers and who demonstrate the ideal articulated in the phrase "The Decided are Always Gentle."
Bearing that in mind, I realize that the small sampling of attorney's attitudes I have had at my current job will only expand as I enter law school and come into contact with lawyers throughout my life.
So, friends...in short, I love this quote because it embodies what I hope to someday be. I do not think I know enough about law to be decided just yet, but when I do, I hope that I am always gentle in the way I conduct and express myself. Lawyers with this focus would do our world a lot of good.
Well said, Bekah! This is Julia by the way. I commented on your last post although Hyrum agrees with me so I speak for the both of us. :-) I agree that if more people embodied the principle of gentle persuasion it would do the world a lot of good. Let's hope we can all be a good example of this! Love ya, Bekah! Thanks for thought-provoking posts. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting on this Bekah! This is something I really need to do better on. I get so excited when I learn something new that I feel it needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and people often feel my shouting was blasting their eardrums, doing little but annoying the tarnation out of them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I hope Parker's half birthday bash was enjoyable. Luke has class Wednesday nights and I don't feel like going to parties without him, but I'm sure it would have been fun if we had been able to drop by.
I came across this article (first the previous) after our Elders' Quorum meeting today. I appreciate you commenting about this quote. I'm just now considering it for the first time. It seems very difficult to be fully decided considering the risk of being wrong or ego-driven (which I struggle with). I might consider the word "decided" as being "stubborn", but I think that the intended meaning here is that the person feels that they are grounded in truth. Truth, especially as spoken by God including through His servants, is a rock and foundation. Truth will prevail. When we are based on truth, the truth speaks for itself. People with eyes to see and ears to hear will do so, and those who do not, won't for now. However, being gentle can soften hearts, and help those who don't want to see or hear truth to get there maybe a little sooner than otherwise. There is no need to contend about truth. The question is how we can find it and kindly share it with others in a way that they can hear it. As the adage says, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
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