How to respond to rude people: 3 simple but effective steps

Visit any Department of Motor Vehicles building, and you quickly encounter rudeness.

Impatient truckers grumble, hot-head bikers fume, and carbon-copies of Ursula, the sea witch from The Little Mermaid, suck the life out of you before snapping your driver’s license photo.

Rude people anger us, irritate us, and drain us.

If we’re not careful, their unfriendliness engulfs us.

Here are some ways you can fly above rude people’s assaults.

Don’t get mad. Just keep smiling.

Educator, author, and speaker Dr. Adolph Brown said when people mistreat him he smiles at them. It’s not to irritate the rude person, he said — although it does confuse people — but rather so they don’t get the upper hand.

“If people can make you angry, they can control you,” Brown said.

In flashing his pearly whites, he’s not giving into anger. So maybe you’d rather not smile when some nincompoop in an all-black Dodge Challenger cuts you off in traffic. Regardless, don’t react negatively.

Take a breath. Sing a happy song. But don’t let anybody cut you off from a good day.

If people can make you angry, they can control you.

— Dr. Adolph Brown

Don’t dwell. Feel Swell.

Rude comments linger. Impolite words are forged to stick around.

It’s easy to dwell on ill-mannered statements made to you or about you. These words eat you up for hours, days, weeks, months — maybe forever — if allowed an incubator.

We must capture our thoughts.

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. — 2 Corinthians 10:5

We must pray for God’s help. If we ask, he can and will take away the rude comments pestering our minds. With his help, the sting of salty sentences fades — the darkness of discourteous deeds lifts.

Even when others hurt us, we must bless them.

Don’t curse, bless.

Here’s a list of comebacks I’ve heard (and some I’ve used myself) thrown at rude people:

1. “Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?”
2. “Who died and made you king?” And,
3. “Off with you!”

Those are the G-rated replies. But any comeback falls short of the standard Christ set.

Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.

— Luke 6:28, New Living Translation

Jesus prayed for those who verbally attacked him; he blessed those who beat him.

As hard as it may seem, we should take every opportunity to pray and bless those who spew venom at us.

Christ doesn’t command us to put people in their place.

He calls: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:19 ESV).

We can’t make disciples if we’re making enemies.