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Time To Stop "The Silent Treatment"Life for a 19th-century sailor was hard. Months at sea accompanied by constant danger and deprivation, seeing the same few people every day—a situation where one obnoxious person can make life miserable for everyone. So, sailors used a tried and true technique called “the silent treatment.” They would ignore him completely for weeks on end. It might seem relatively harmless, but in truth, it was far from it. The silent treatment was “a process so effective in the monotony of ship life as to make strong men weep.”Sailors aren’t the only ones using the silent treatment It happens in work environments, neighborhoods, families, and especially in marriages. Someone does or says something hurtful and we react by punishing them. To be honest, it’s immature and selfish, but we do it because it is devastatingly effective in imposing pain on the recipient. So much pain, in fact, that it can leave a relationship in permanent ruins and a marriage in divorce.Obviously this is not how God intends for his children act. The silent treatment never solves problems—it intensifies them. God counsels us to humble ourselves and seek reconciliation by speaking the truth in love and offering forgiveness. The Apostle Paul said, “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Eph. 4:26). In other words, “Solve today’s problems today…”