Be soft of words and gentle of bearing

I will return to my series on attractiveness and modesty on a later date. I do not want to wear it out, so to speak, though there certainly is plenty still unsaid on it. My head however does not want to wrap around the subject today it seems. I guess this is one of these days in which I will blog about... nothing. Unless.. I would grab back to my "guide motive" as a woman so to speak:

Be soft of voice
and gentle of bearing
be kind of heart
and gentle of hands

be bright as the morn
and still as the evening
within you they'll find
God's love reborn.

Lately I have been rather disturbed by the tone of Christians on the internet, especially in the highly volatile topics of gay marriage and abortion. Now these are important topics and it is important to speak out on it.
Perhaps this qualifies me as a 'shrinking violet' but I often have great problems though with people who try and make a point about something they are passionate about in a sarcastic, or harsh way. If you hurt someones feelings, they will never accept what you are saying, no matter how right it is. So a question you may need to ask yourself when speaking on topics about which you feel strongly, especially on the internet is, do I mostly just want to be right? Or do I actually want to communicate something to someone.

At university we were shown at the beginning of a course the first very simple diagram of the communication process. You have a messenger, a medium, a message, and a receiver.
You(the messenger) speak (the medium) about a certain topic (the message) and a receiver actually get's the message and processes it. If while you are speaking though, you use a medium that the receiver can not receive, nothing gets communicated. For example, you could call someone who has no phone. Or you could speak really loud English to someone who only speaks French. Or you could say "Only someone who doesn't really care at all about what Scripture really says would believe..." or "That's not what I said, you idiot, I meant... and you well know it".
Whatever point you were trying to make has long gone past any receiver. If a discussion has gone to this point, you probably better just leave the subject because you are not going to communicate a message. The only thing that will happen is that you keep talking. And the more you talk, the further you will allienate the person with whom you are trying to speak. But the truth must be said, I hear some people argue, and other people may be too chicken to tell it like it is, but I am not. The truth can only be spoken in love. If your tone is angry, you are angry. If you are angry... chances are you will not only not be heard, but also speak in a way that causes you to sin.

"I call a spade a spade" is all good and well for gardening tools, but we can never allow forthrightness and frankness to be an excuse for unkindness in our words or our tone.