The Excuse That Made It Worse

Watch what happens when you decline something.

The no itself takes four words. Then comes the rest: the thing that is on that week, the other thing that moved, the person who is visiting, the state of the car. Four reasons, and by the time you have finished, the message is a paragraph and you have read it back twice.

And here is what I want you to notice about that paragraph, because I do not think anybody has told you.

It reads as a cover story.

Not because you are lying. Everything in it is true. But a person who has one reason gives one reason. A person who gives four is doing something else, and everybody who has ever received a message like that knows it at some level, even if they could not say what they know.

So the explanation, which was added out of kindness, is the part that makes the whole thing feel evasive.

I want to talk about where that habit comes from, because in my experience it does not come from cowardice. It comes from hospitality, which is a virtue, pointed at the wrong thing.

Seasoned with salt, not buried in it

Paul gives an instruction about how believers should speak, and it is more specific than people remember.

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. (Colossians 4:6)

Seasoned. That is a word about proportion.

Salt is added in a small quantity to bring out what is already in the food. Nobody seasons a dish by burying it. The word carries its own limit, and the limit is the point of choosing it.

And then look at the purpose clause on the end. That ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. This is a verse about answering people, which is exactly the situation we are in.

So the instruction is not be gentle at length. It is speak with grace, in proportion, so that you know how to answer. Answering is the goal. Not softening, not padding, not building a case.

You are permitted to answer rather than to argue, and it was never the length that made an answer kind. Colossians 4:6 chooses a word about proportion and ties it directly to knowing how to answer a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that land in somebody who has been mistaking volume for warmth.

Now, why does the case get built?

Because you are trying to make the no survive a cross examination that is not going to happen. Somewhere in the writing of that message there is an imagined version of the other person asking why, and you are answering them in advance, and the four reasons are the answers to four questions nobody asked.

You have been answering questions that were never put to you, and there was never a case to defend. Colossians 4:6 aims at answering a real person rather than at anticipating one. The Spirit of God is the one who can quiet an imagined conversation in somebody's head.

The thing an explanation invites

There is a practical cost to the paragraph, and it is worth naming because it is the one that actually hurts.

Every reason you give is a door.

If you say the week is full, they can offer another week. If you say the car is not right, they can offer a lift. If you say a relative is visiting, they can ask when the relative leaves. None of those responses is unkind. Each one is somebody being helpful about an obstacle you handed them.

So the explanation converts a decision into a problem to be solved, and now there is a negotiation nobody wanted, and declining a second time is harder than declining once, and by the third exchange most people say yes out of sheer exhaustion.

The short version has no doors in it.

I cannot do this one. Thank you for asking me.

That is the whole message and there is nothing in it for anybody to helpfully fix.

You are able to give an answer with no handle on it, and the plainness was always the kinder thing. Colossians 4:6 sets the standard at proportion and ties it to answering rather than negotiating, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes brevity feel like respect instead of like coldness.

What replaces the reasons

I am not going to hand you a curt message and call it done. In my family a bare no would be a wound, and I suspect in yours as well.

So put the warmth somewhere other than the reason.

Thank you for asking me. I cannot do this one. I hope it goes well and I would love to hear how it went.

Count what is in there. Gratitude, an answer, and interest in the thing itself. That is three warm elements and not one of them is an excuse, and it is shorter than what you would normally send.

The warmth in that message is real and the no in it is unarguable, and those two things are not in tension. They only seemed to be because the reasons were doing a job they were never any good at.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. (Proverbs 25:11)

Fitly. Fitted to the moment, which is a matter of proportion again.

You have warmth available that does not weaken anything, and it was never the excuse that carried the kindness. Proverbs 25:11 praises the word that fits the moment rather than the word that fills it. The Spirit of God is the one who can hold somebody steady while they send something short.