TEMPER:
ATTEMPTS TO EXCUSE; TEMPER: PROVOCATION

We have all noticed how quick many people are to excuse themselves for some outburst by pleading that they were provoked to it. Thus their own wrongdoing is laid to others. What is overlooked in this neat trick of self-exoneration is that provocation cannot stir up what is not there. It never adds anything to the human heart; it merely brings out what is already present. It does not change the character; it simply reveals it.

What a man does under provocation is what he is. The mud must be at the bottom of the pool or it cannot be stirred up. You cannot roil pure water. Provocation does not create the moral muck; it brings it to the surface.…

It may bring some kind of cheap consolation to the man who has just lost his temper or let himself go in a display of bad disposition to consider that he was provoked to it by the act of another, but if he values his soul he will not thus excuse himself. Honesty will compel him to admit that he had a bad disposition to start with and the provocation merely brought it to the surface. The fault is his own, not that of the one who exposed it.

Genesis 3:12; Matthew 15:18–19; James 1:13–15

The Price of Neglect, 65, 66.