Proverbs 15:18

The book of Proverbs gives us insights into so many different areas of life. The book gives us instruction on how to live our lives for God. Here is a proverb that gives us insight about anger:

Proverbs 15:18 (ESV Strong's)

 A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,

but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.

Solomon writes a lot of proverbs on the topic of "anger." That may be because he observed a lot of it or experienced a lot of it. But whether he had a temper or saw others lose theirs, his words often give us insight into the positive attribute of controling our emotion and the negative aspect of having it explode beyond our grasp. In the above proverb we have a simple warning that should cause us pause in regard to anger and our temper. When we have a controlled approach to temper we have a "calming" affect on a dispute. The Hebrew word here for "calming" is to "be quiet" or "make quiet" in this case. When we can control our own emotions we can have a postivie affect on others controling there own. In Ecclesiastes 10:4 we read that this is a great thing when working with leadership. However, when we don't, the converse is true. The first line of the above proverb states that if we don't control our emotions we actual add to the strife ... we stir it up. The phrase "pot-stirrer" comes to mind. When we are in a volatile situation we do well to keep our own emotions in check. That will have a large effect on whether others keep their emotions in check.