Kindness (Photo credit: -RejiK)
Have you ever done something nice for someone (brought them a surprise gift, completed an unpleasant task on behalf of somebody who had been dreading it, or the like?) Did you sort of expect at least some sort of response or recognition for it? When it was never acknowledged, did you feel a bit “let down” by the way the whole thing turned out?
Matthew 6:2-4 (NKJV) speaks of this:
Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
It is like we irrationally expect a trumpet to sound upon every nice gesture we supply to those around us. At least a bell or some sort of harp sound might be nice (you know, just like the sound when an angel gets his wings?) We have all learned that life doesn’t always work that way, and furthermore we are a bit immature if we really expect to be recognized for every act of kindness we perform, and ideally we should be willing to do such things in secret, with no expectation of acknowledgement nor reward.
We’ve all heard of that most golden of rules: Paraphrased, this is about treating others the way you would wish to be treated. Okay, sounds simple enough. And yet it is hardly but simple in our daily walk, at least it is difficult to always get it right. Personally, I believe this is because of a number of factors, but there is one factor that I’d like to discuss: Being a nice person versus being a kind person.
As one example, “treating others like we’d like to be treated ourselves” sometimes gets turned into “put other’s needs ahead of our own”. We believe we’re following the golden rule when we do “nice things” out of a sense of obligation. We might say to ourselves, “well a good Christian would act this way” and so we do it because, well, it is just expected of us. We are supposed to be that way. We may even conclude that we don’t have any other choice when it comes right down to it. So we do “nice” things.
All well and good, right? Or is it? Contrast that with someone who is being “kind”. A person doing “kind” things acts because they truly want to do them. Kind people do things because they are fair and just, independent of their own gain or loss as a result. It always helps when you get confirmation from God that such an action is good and appropriate, even though it may hurt you and/or displease (at least initially) the beneficiary of your action.
I believe we should always “measure twice and cut once” when it comes to our dealings with others — seeking confirmation from the Word (Bible) and seeking direction through earnest prayer — but too often we seem to do that last, or sometimes not at all. I am not saying I have this down pat by any means, and in fact, if anything I am writing about this topic because I have had (and continue to have) trouble with it myself.
Being nice seems to me to have an air of passivity about it. We’re facing inward as we consider the act, its consequences, its potential outcomes. Being kind, however, has an air of activity about it. When we act kindly, we are actively choosing how we are going to proceed, then we follow through with our decided approach.
At risk of muddying the water here, I think there is an orthogonal meaning to be had here with regard to belief and faith. Belief can be watered down enough to become passive in nature. But faith, to be truly faith, requires us to act. Belief can be an outward-facing sentiment, yet true faith comes from within.
The truth of it is that when we are being “nice” and we never receive the desired response, we can’t help but be underwhelmed due to cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a “100 dollar phrase” meaning a sense we get of our actions not matching up with our beliefs. Wikipedia (after all, it is the source of all wisdom don’t you know) describes it like this:
Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state that people feel when they “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.” A key assumption is that people want their expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of equilibrium. Likewise, another assumption is that a person will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance.
What do I mean by this? Sometimes we are only “pretending” to be charitable and benevolent. We understand that though we might appear to be such (as clearly evidenced by our recent act), we are only kidding ourselves because our motives may have been coming out of less than 100% pure benevolence. If we are really honest with ourselves, we find that we might have stood to gain something from our act.
That “something” may be looking good in someone’s eyes (a.k.a. “people pleasing”), popularity, reputation, or potentially even financial gain. All these are skeletons to be found hidden deep in the back of the closet of the nice person. The closet may hold many other sometimes-nebulous artifacts like good intention, well-meaning, do-gooder, or rationalization. But the real skeletons are kept deep in the back.
By continually being seen to do nice things, we can rationalize that we are “taking the high road” and thus foster a better-than-thou attitude even though we may not realize it is happening. Or, we can get so caught up in weighing “both sides of the issue” because we don’t want to be seen as being partial, or biased, or [fill in the politically correct rationalization here] that, with all this side-weighing we are doing we have lost track of the fundamental truths at play.
Those truths hopefully come back to things that are backed up by biblical doctrine. Hopefully our belief turns into faith as we exercise our “faith muscles” (e.g. by seeking guidance from God, acting within His will for us, then looking back on the outcome and recognizing that God’s will really was the best path after all, which in turn strengthens the muscle due to it’s use.)
Regeneration comes from inside out. A heartfelt righteous desire that is proven to have become intrinsic in us is evidence of spiritual regeneration. The “looking in” (from external-facing considerations) can lead to behavior that is not in line with the will of God. Sometimes I try to be “nice” when what I should have done was to be “kind”. It would have turned out better for everyone involved but we believe we are doing them a favor.
I’m sure we can all come up with examples in the Bible where Jesus did the “kind” thing versus what would have been perceived as the “nice” thing. Jesus was not being “nice” when he fashioned a bullwhip and went through the temple grounds, herding everyone out, turning over tables, scattering the businessmen and money changers (John 2:14-15). I believe that He was being “kind” in a way that may seem unintuitive to us.
How so? Doing so demonstrated his level of disapproval in a way that could not have been communicated through words. The truth was that businessmen forcing people pay for the doves, lambs, and other items used for sacrifice in the temple was an abomination in His sight. He could have spoken against it but would it have had the same effect? Did anyone die or was anyone maimed because of the actions of Jesus? No. Was this a radical indictment of what temple life had become? Yes.
Consider the woman taken in adultery (John 8:3-11). Jesus could have pointed to each person in the crowd (each likely had several stones in hand at the time) and verbally dressed each of them down, citing incidents where they were falling short (possibly there may have been some adulterers in the crowd, heaven forbid.) By simply asking a penetrating question, he let the palpable guilt in each person do its work, until everyone had thought better of it and had walked away.
Rather than rationalizing away the fact that genuine sin had in fact occurred or watering it down, He embraced the sinner and not the sin with “neither do I condemn you” by pairing it with a simple, yet penetrating suffix: “go and sin no more.” I believe too often we’re tempted to water down our real feelings when someone we know does something damaging to themselves, yet are we truly acting in their best interest, as a true friend would?
The challenging thing for us is: Jesus calls us to stand up for things that are offensive to the world. He boldly proclaimed on more than one occasion that He was the only path to God (remember John 14:6 where Jesus states: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me”?) This literally enraged the Pharisees and Sadducees at the time, who were shocked and angered that someone could even pretend to be the Messiah.
By taking the path of lesser resistance, Jesus could have been “nice” about it and declared this fact privately within earshot of only His disciples. Instead, Jesus chose to do the “kind” thing by declaring the gravity of His divine calling and mission to literally save the world. It is interesting to me that no other religious figure ever claimed to be the literal Son of God, so it turns out (in hindsight) to be a critical distinction for us Christians.
Jesus publicly rebuked the Pharisees to their faces (see Matthew 15:6-8, Matthew 22:18, Matthew 23:13-15, 23). He chastised them for valuing whited sepulchers, yet He knew (and they knew) there were only dead bones within (Matthew 23:27). He discussed the “cup that was cleansed on the outside for all to see” (i.e. our nice acts), but their insides were full of extortion (Matthew 23:25-26). These were hardly passive acts intended to be nice and keep the peace, rather they were deliberate acts of kindness directed toward a group of people who had lost their way.
By taking a second look at our actions before undertaking them (and more importantly, by praying for God’s guidance in it), we give ourselves a chance to do the kind thing rather than simply doing something nice for someone.
