Responsible Influence

We have the power and the responsibility to influence other people’s behaviors for the better. We also have the power to influence them and make them worse.

I had a coworker once in the position of supervisor, who started all her interactions with tone of voice and choice of words that implied that the hearer was late, contentious, lazy, and incompetent. When her victim responded with similar tone and choice, she became worse, to the point of threats. I asked the Spirit of Jesus how to handle interacting with her.

I believed that He told me that she did not know her initial actions were nasty, and that the first time she saw nastiness in the interaction was out of the person she was talking with. As far as she knew, she was reacting to the nastiness. From the Spirit’s perspective, both of them were making the same mistake – responding to nastiness with more of it.

He told me that if I responded with the fruit of His presence (Galatians 5:22-23), she would respond in kind. I tried it. She was a different person. She was only a different person around me, though. I tried to convince some of my believing coworkers what the Spirit had shown me would work in their conversations with her, too, but none believed me.

When she left our office for another assignment, I was the only person who got a hug.