09/06/2026 - "Self-Control" (Proverbs 16:1-9, 32-33)
You can watch the sermon here.
We have reached the end of our summer series on the Fruits of the Spirit and how they show up in the Old Testament. And that means we have reached the fruit that I was not really looking forward to preaching on, and that is self-control. Whenever we think of self-control, I think our minds immediately go to that one food that we can’t keep in the house because if we did, we would have no self-control and eat all of it. For me personally, that’s snickerdoodles! And while keeping ourselves from eating our favorite treats until we get sick is a form self-control, it’s a very limited view on what it is. More than that, when pastors and priests and people talk about self-control, it can come off as us wagging our fingers at our congregation to be better because God said so, while not talking about what we gain when we do practice self-control as a way to love others and ourselves well.
So we’re going to try and do that today, using the wisdom of the book of Proverbs to guide us.
Scripture: Proverbs 16:1-9, 32-33
To people belong the plans of the heart,
but the answer of the tongue comes from the Lord.
All the ways of people
are pure in their eyes,
but the Lord tests the motives.
Commit your work to the Lord,
and your plans will succeed.
The Lord made everything for a purpose,
even the wicked for an evil day.
The Lord detests all who are arrogant;
they surely won’t go unpunished.
Love and faithfulness reconcile guilt;
the fear of the Lord turns away evil.
When people draw favor from the Lord,
even their enemies are at peace with them.
Better a little with righteousness
than great profits without justice.
People plan their path,
but the Lord secures their steps.
Better to be patient than a warrior,
and better to have self-control than to capture a city.
The dice are cast into the lap;
all decisions are from the Lord.
~
Proverbs’s name explains itself pretty well - it’s a book of sayings, proverbs, and even a few parables all put together for the purpose of spiritual and moral formation. It makes up part of what we call the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament, along with Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. And it is traditionally considered to be a collection of the wise sayings of Solomon, although the sayings in here probably come from a wide variety of people and a wide variety of places, even if they’re in the line of the wisdom of Solomon. Think more along the lines of a collection of different sayings from different zen masters, rather than a collection of sayings from the Buddha, if that helps.
Speaking of which, self-control is a value that is shared by pretty much every religion and culture.
Much of the practices of the Eightfold Path in Buddhism are aimed towards cultivating self-control in order to reach nirvana, and in most branches of Hinduism, Damah is the way to spiritual liberation.
One of the Hadiths in the Sunnah, which is a book of sayings of Muhammad that Sunni Muslims follow along with the Q’uran, says that “The strong is not the one who overcomes the people by his strength, but the strong is the one who controls himself while in anger.”
And of course we share the book of Proverbs and the rest of the Hebrew Bible with Judaism, which also teaches self-control as an important value. This shows up many ways, including in their kosher dietary laws and their practice of Sabbath and setting everything aside in order to rest one day a week.
I think we all agree that being able to control our words and actions is important to being able to live together well and not hurt someone else. But growing up I was also taught that self-control involved being able to control my thoughts, and maybe you were too.
And I wasn’t necessarily taught what that meant. Which meant when I had random thoughts that I thought would be displeasing to God, I thought that those were a sin, even though they weren’t thoughts that I was consciously thinking. So then I’d try to mentally stamp them out, but in trying to do so I’d fixate even more on the thought, so I’d keep thinking it or something similar to it, and around and around it goes, making the thought a much bigger deal than it needed to be.
It wasn’t until I got to seminary, really, that one of my professors handed me a much better, healthier way to “control my thoughts,” which actually doesn’t involve much control at all. My world religions professor was Dr. Reuben Habito, who is a Christian, a former Jesuit priest, and also a Zen rowshi. He was my first introduction to the idea of controlling thoughts by letting them go, which is a very Zen Buddhist idea. Now whenever I’ve got thoughts in my head that I did not ask to be there, I take a deep breath, acknowledge that the thought is there, and let it go.
Because we can’t control every thought that comes into our head, sometimes they just appear. This is especially true for people with OCD and PTSD, but intrusive thoughts can also just happen sometimes. There’s really no way to control them. What we can control is how we respond to it. And our response to those thoughts tells us much more about who we are than the errant thoughts do themselves.
So the best way to have self-control over our thoughts is to acknowledge that our thoughts are there, and then either act on them or let it go, whichever applies. And by being able to do that, it’s easier to have control of our actions. If we take even just a few seconds to think about if this is something we need to act on, or if it’s something we need to let go of and move on, then that’s self-control.
Which this probably isn’t a new idea to you. But I think it’s an important reminder, because now more than ever, it can be harder to do. Because in order to be able to pause and think before we speak and act, we have to slow ourselves down. And that’s a lot more difficult in our fast-paced world that demands and rewards quick responses, gut reactions, and immediate answers, no matter how little thought out they are.
Social media algorithms and the breaking news cycle run on a quick timeline with little information and plenty of misinformation. So we get pressured into communicating in similar ways, with similar speed and first reactions rather than sitting with and thinking about something. On top of that, we also are more exposed than ever to how different people live; their homes, their travels, their wealth and possessions, perfectly curated, to the point where it may be more fiction than fact. But still it can pressure us to match their lifestyle, keep up with the Joneses, so that our kids fit in at school and we feel like we fit into our community. And on top of that we’ve got demanding jobs, kids and aging parents to take care of, health concerns to manage, and friends and neighbors who need help. We’re stretched thin on time and energy, so with the world and our lives moving so fast around us, no wonder we can snap and say or do things without thinking them through because we’re trying to get to the next thing and the next and the next so that maybe we’ll be able to be in bed at a decent time before we have to get up int he morning and do it all again.
Self-control is the opposite of all of that rush. Self-control is being able to push back against the pressure to react, to resist flying through the moment we’re presently in.
Self-control is the call to stay and be and work for and invest in the good, and to talk and act in a way that encourages others to do the same.
And one of the people who I think embodied that the best, along with love and joy and generosity, was Dolly Parton.
Now I may be reading that into this passage somewhat, because I am honestly still in mourning after her passing. I love her music, especially since a mutual love of her music and philanthropy was something my grandma and I shared, especially in my grandma’s last few years. It kept us together even when we faced serious disagreements on politics and religion. But more than that, Dolly Parton was just this special person. Because how many people could win eleven Grammys, an Emmy, and countless other awards, get inducted into the Rock n Roll hall of fame, be one of the best-selling music artists ever, and yet when they pass away, their obituaries hardly say anything about their music?
Because every obituary I saw instead talked about how selfless she was, how grounded she was even as a superstar. They talked about her work revitalizing Sevier County in Tennessee by creating Dollywood and other entertainment spots, providing jobs and a tourism industry to an area that desperately needed income.
They talked about her philanthropy work increasing graduation rates and literacy rates through her Imagination Library and donating millions of dollars for medical research, including helping fund the Moderna COVID vaccine. And there’s so much more - in fact, she has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to her philanthropy. She was a beloved public figure who always remained friendly and gracious and loving to everyone she met, because she had the self-control to never let it get to her head. I’ve seen story after story about how special she made everyone feel, and how she lived in the moment and was incredibly thoughtful and kind in everything she said or did.
And along with that, she had the self-control to not hold on to her wealth just for the sake of being wealthy. She could’ve easily become a billionaire, but she never did because she gave so much money away to her nonprofits, to families after disasters, and to medical research.
She knew that it was better for her to have “little” with righteousness than great profits without justice, and that it was better to have self-control than to be able to take over a city.
Dolly Parton knew how to slow down, speak and act thoughtfully, and she made the world a better place because of it.
I’ll echo the sentiment of many of my pastor friends that I’ve seen over the past few weeks - if you’re going to be a Christian, be a Dolly Parton kind of Christian.
Self-control goes beyond just keeping ourselves from eating all the sugary treats we want, or keeping ourselves from saying something unkind or doing something to hurt someone else. It is being able to live against our culture of immediacy, whether that’s in gratification, communication, or action. It is being able to slow down and think and respond instead of react. It is being able to stay in moments with others and not be thinking about what’s coming in the next moment. Because at the end of the day, all we can control are our words and actions at any given point in time.
Which is a part of self-control in some ways - recognizing that we only have control over our own actions and words, and not others. We can’t make other people say or believe or do things they don’t want to do. The paths they make are theirs, we can’t make them for them. But we can control our response to them, and we can control our next steps in response to their actions and words.
And like the Proverbs remind us, we can’t control the world. We can’t single-handedly stop wars in Iran, prevent floods in Nepal, and take bacteria out of our food supply.
But we can use our words to call for peace, we can donate our money to help flood victims recover, and we can help keep our friends and family safe and fed by helping them replace food that they may have had to throw out.
Our actions may be small, but they can ripple out to bigger and bigger impact if we intentionally speak and act when and where we need to.
And it all begins with resisting the pressure to react instead of respond. It takes us slowing down, taking a deep breath, and keeping ourselves in the moment, knowing what we have control over.
So maybe then we can be a little more like Dolly Parton, able to be in the moment with people as we meet them, and able to do more good in the world than we could’ve ever imagined.