I heard a plea for help

Context
At my Quaker meeting we usually have a program before our meeting for worship. The program today was about handling emotions like anger and sadness while still remaining faithful to the testimony on integrity. During our discussion, one regular attender spoke about someone he knows whose life is in turmoil because she refuses to forgive her father for mistreating her. He asked if we had a suggestion for something to say that wouldn't cause her to turn on him and I said that nothing could ensure the desired response.

Commentary
I hope I wasn't too harsh with my co-religionist. My concern was that he might be seeking a magic bullet here and I wanted to discourage him in that endeavor.

I blame writers. Frequently in works of fiction on page, stage and screen, someone says something that ends all argument and sets everyone listening on the right track (I'm particularly annoyed when this happens to be the loudest voice on a TV show, but I digress). So we might come to believe that there are words that will have this effect in real life as well, but in my experience they are far fewer and further between.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea to be like a writer in choosing words carefully. I rehearse stuff all the time. In fact, this is about the third different narrative style I had considered for today's blog entry. If you would think one of the other two might have been better, oh well!

It's another aspect of fiction writing that may be getting in the way, though. Writers not only get to choose what their characters say, they get to choose how other characters react to it. I think the question posited in this Salon interview is nonsensical: "Do you think novelists are responsible for what their characters think?" If we're not responsible for the products of our own minds, we're in serious trouble!

In real life though, we cannot possibly control how people respond to us. I've been known to use the phrase "appropriate response," but realistically the question has to be, "appropriate according to what criteria?" I find I can't even predict my own response to stimuli with any regularity; a comment I would just let slide under some circumstances becomes an unpardonable transgression under others.

So am I saying my friend from the meeting should just avoid talking to this woman about forgiveness, since he can't predict her reaction? No. I just think he should pay attention to another aspect of real life that is different than fiction: the length of it. I think one of the reasons fiction writers use these "magic bullet" lines is because they need to wrap up a plot in a finite amount of time. We are under no such constraints. We can talk to a person about forgiveness and even if they yell at us, even if they add us to their list of unforgivens, we still may have an impact long down the road.

I believe this is why the Bible calls us to faithfulness, not necessarily effectiveness. Or at least, not effectiveness that we can easily measure. Time and again in God's Word, prophets are praised for bringing a message, whether it appears to be working or not. And some of the effect isn't known even during that prophet's lifetime. It comes when I read the message and learn something. Talk about an unanticipated response!

What did you hear today?