What Difference does Deference Make?

Deference. There’s a word we don’t hear often. It’s all about deferring to or giving preference to another. True deference is given with a tone of respect and honor, not with a resentful “OK, I’ll let the big baby have his way” attitude. It turns out that showing deference is a good way to live life, but a choice I sometimes struggle to make.

We can give deference to strangers or our closest family and friends. Here are a few examples of how you may have shown deference, perhaps without thinking about the word.

You may have shown deference to strangers when you offered your seat on a bus or subway to someone standing. You show deference when you pull your car over to let a funeral procession pass. Or let someone merge in front of you in traffic.  Or give way to another person where two aisles intersect in a store. Or try to engage in local customs when travelling as a guest in another country.

This kind of deference to strangers was called good manners when I was growing up. For me, as the speed of life increased in my adult years, my frequency of deference decreased. I had places to go and things to do and doling out deference took precious time. But now, as the speed of my life starts to decrease, I’ve been trying to show deference to strangers more often. The lesson I’ve learned is that it returns a certain amount of calm. Had I taken time to offer more deference along the way, I would have been a nicer person and maybe felt less rushed, in a counterintuitive sort of way. Over-deferring to strangers makes me a doormat. Under-deferring makes me a jerk. Deference makes a difference with strangers.

Then there is deference with our family and friends. Honoring the people we already love by doing things their way sometimes. You would think this deference would be easier than the kind with strangers. But alas, never do we want to have our own way more than with the ones we know best and love most. Often that is because we are in a power struggle or fear losing our identity or authenticity.

When parenting young children, I believe that the parent should hold the power. But deference taken to either extreme leads to unhealthy parenting. As parents, if we over-defer, we’ll produce spoiled brats. If we under-defer, we remove their experience of making independent choices with increasing responsibility.

In a marriage or any close friendship, deference works best with reciprocity. If one partner does most of the deferring, the relationship loses balance and strength.  I was a feminist bride of the seventies, wanting to prove I was an equal, unlike the women in the generations before me. So I didn’t serve my husband a cup of coffee for about the first ten years of our marriage. Once I realized he was going to treat me as an equal partner no matter what, I began to enjoy giving the small acts of deference. Then at the 25 year mark, I learned how to take deference to the next level. I’ve shared that in an earlier blog post Marriage Advice from a Luau. We still do things my way much of the time, so I have to work at having balance in our deference. The key to healthy deference in a marriage is to remember that deference is done out of honor and respect, not as a strategy to pick battles. Deference makes a difference in the health of our relationships.

In our spiritual lives, the importance of deference continues to play out with God Himself. My picture of God is the one painted in Matthew 7:11 and Luke 11:13 of a loving father who enjoys giving good gifts to his children. He defers to me by giving me a will and allowing me to choose what I do. At the same time, He invites me to trust Him enough to submit to His will. When Jesus taught us to pray, He chose the words “Your kingdom come, your will be done” in Matthew 6:10. In Matthew 7:21, He promises heaven to those who do His will. When He prayed in the garden before His crucifixion in Matthew 26:42, He role modelled deference to the Father with “your will be done.” I recently had a friend facing an unwanted medical treatment, who said she prayed for what she needed rather than what she wanted.  She deferred to Him because He had more information than she had. He knew what was best for her. I aspire to pray with complete trust and total deference. When we pray for His will in our most desperate situations, we trust that He knows what is best for us. That is deference that makes all the difference.