Sugar or Smacks

Some people approach the poker table the way they approach a basketball game. They seem to borrow from the old book Winning Through Intimidation, and try to "psych out" their opponents by talking them down with semi or full-fledged insults.

This has many street names -- from "trash talk" to "talking smack." Yet when we visit a poker table, we take exactly the opposite approach. We think it's a much more godly approach.

"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones," says Proverbs 16:24.

You can boast about yourself or put down others -- as some people seem to have forgotten Muhammad Ali did in his boxing prime. Or you can do what the apostle Paul recommended in I Thessalonians 5:11. "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up...."

The latter approach is what many youth league coaches tell children to take. We're old enough to remember when it was called sportsmanship. Which approach do you think makes a poker table more pleasant and more fun -- and might actually gain you more friends?