How can we manage to turn the other cheek?

There’s hardly anything more challenging than behaving like a Christian, if you take the job seriously and genuinely try to do what you’re supposed to.

For me, the hardest part is controlling my reactions to those who malign me or turn the slightest difference of opinion into an ad hominem attack. I’ve been working on this my whole adult life and haven’t mastered it. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever will.

I return to this topic periodically in this space, I realize. But it’s important.

In our current era, civil discourse seems sometimes to have disappeared. Online, the vilest, nastiest headlines and comments invariably get the most clicks, an unfortunate fact that only encourages further meanness.

Our political parties have devolved into the worst mudslinging, rumor mongering and name calling I can remember. The right lives to “own the libs.” The left exalts its supposed moral superiority by canceling those on the right. It’s all infuriating and exhausting to the rest of us.

Even in highway traffic, it seems more and more people act obnoxiously: tailgating, flipping off other drivers, rolling down their window to shout obscenities. It’s as if the zeitgeist gives boneheads permission to expose their innermost demons.

All this makes it tough for me to act right myself. I emerged from the womb spoiling for a fistfight, or at least itching to give obnoxious folks a radioactive piece of my mind. There was, and is, a flaw in my wiring.

However, long ago, after I became a practicing Christian — practicing being the operative word here — I ran smack dab, face first into the teachings of Jesus, St. Paul and a world of other saints who seemed bent on re-arranging my paradigm.

“Love your enemies and pray for them,” Jesus commanded. “If anybody slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek and let him slap you there, too.”

“Never repay evil for evil,” St. Paul warned. “Instead, overcome evil with good.”

And this, also from Paul: “Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. … Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.”

Yikes. Those were the toughest commandments I’d ever encountered. And I still battle with them. But if they were ever needed by each of us individually, and by our careening society, it’s now.

Which brings me to a question I weigh constantly: How can we manage to turn the other cheek?

Whatever my imperfections, I’ve discovered a few answers in my years of trying and largely failing. During conflicts, I find myself responding more peaceably if I remember the following rules. Maybe they’ll help you. If not, ignore them with my blessing:

■ Try to imagine the other person as God might see her. The person who’s acting indignantly toward you isn’t doing so in a void. She might have been abandoned as a child or molested in her teens. She might have lost her business or her marriage. She might be in the throes of mental illness. Or all those things.

As I heard a Bible teacher say once, “Hurt people hurt people.” The person lashing out at you is almost certainly bearing deep pain. Try to view her with compassion.

■ Take a minute — or a day or two — before you respond. As a newspaper columnist, I’ve gotten my share of hate mail. Early on, I’d read one of those missives and the Tabasco would come boiling up from my spleen, and in 10 seconds, I’d be typing my response so furiously the keys on my computer would melt. My standard opening: “Oh yeah? Let me tell you something, buster!”

But there are a couple of problems with that approach. First, I never once changed a critic’s mind by giving him a piece of my own. Instead I just made him more hostile. Second, if I gave the situation a little time and space, my Tabasco subsided. I could respond kindly — or else not respond at all.

To go all biblical on you again (sorry): “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”

■ Remember that, in the long run, most things we get irate over don’t matter. We sometimes feel as if somebody else’s idiocy must be addressed. But the world is chock-full of idiots. If you go around trying to set all of them straight you’re going to waste your life on a futile, soul-crushing mission.

Just let it go. Smile. Hum a happy song in your head. Get a cup of coffee. By tomorrow you won’t even remember why that yahoo had you so exasperated.

■ Pray for grace. You can pray inside your head, under your breath, whatever, wherever. My prayer goes something like this: “Lord, we both know how I am. Save me from myself. Keep my head on straight and my mouth shut. Help me become a bearer of your kindness and mercy. Amen.” Sometimes it even works.