Demonstrating gentleness toward others, especially when they’re against us, means we’re walking in the humility needed to handle others with care in the ways we speak and the ways we act. Gentleness is a determination to encourage and bless others as we interact with them. So in the face of persecution, we shouldn’t be angry, meeting aggression with aggression. When we meet aggression with aggression, we only create more aggression. But when we meet aggression with gentleness, we stop escalation in its tracks.
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In some ways, this was the brilliance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy during the civil rights movement. He knew that to heal his country and address systemic oppression, he had to stop the cycle of aggression and retaliation not by passively accepting the status quo, and not by violently fighting against it, but by living for the kingdom of God here on earth, in gentleness, meekness, and peacefulness.