the good sense of kindness

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:29-31)

I was talking to a new waitress friend the other day. She told me how she hates Sundays. "Lousy tips and rude people" she told me. I tried to explain to her the difference between the religious types and the true Christ followers. It's a conversation I've had a lot through the years.

Rick Warren says most people are not Christians because 1. They don't know Christians or 2. They do know Christians.

John Ortberg tells about the time he went to a church and was impressed with the sweet little old lady who sat behind him and greeted him during the welcome. After the service, he accidentally cut someone off in the parking lot.

He was shocked when that person "shot him the bird".

He looked closer and was further shocked to see that it was the same little old lady who had treated him so kindly inside the building.

"How did Mother Teresa inside the building become Leona Helmsly outside the building?" Ortberg rhetorically asked.

I am not just arguing here for bigger tips or better parking lot manners - what is needed is a primer in the spiritual quality of Christian kindness.

It is interesting that in the passage above kindness is so closely tied to forgiveness. “Be kind and compassionate, forgiving…” the Bible says. To be kind is to be forgiving. To be kind is to emulate Christ in that in His kindness He forgave us and gave His life for us by His grace. It is important to understand that the opposite of kindness is not meanness, but rather it’s contrast is selfishness.

To be kind is to lay aside your own selfish desire and to offer yourself and to want the best and to meet the needs and forgive others. That puts kindness it in a totally different perspective, does it not?

Most people don’t realize how closely kindness is tied to forgiveness in scripture. If you were to ask, most people would tell you that they consider themselves to be kind. But on the other hand, studies have shown that people will also say that they don’t consider themselves to be particularly forgiving. But how ironic that in scripture these two qualities are inseparable.

More specifically, kindness is “befriending grace”. By this I mean that kindness is the regular expression of the basic attributes of Christian friendship. Basic Christian friendship is characterized by two things-accessibility and consistency. A true friend, in other words, allows you in and never lets you go. A true friend is someone who will accept you for who you are (forgiveness) and will never let you down (faithfulness).

Someone has aptly said that a true friend is one who is moving in when everyone else is moving out.

So these two are the absolute qualities of genuine Christian friendship. Kindness then is the continual offering of these two qualities of friendship. Although we cannot possibly befriend everyone we meet, we can at the very least offer these qualities in all of our casual relationships. Someone who is kind in this way is someone who is “safe” to be around and is seen as consistent and dependable. We all know people who are one or the other, but an exceptional friend is one who is both.

What we must understand is that this kind of befriending grace really is the result of the Spirit of Christ working in us. We are not by our nature the kind of people who offer this sort of kindness. C.S. Lewis once observed that “all natural affections are idolatrous”. By this I believe he meant that because of our sin nature, none of us are purely and naturally “loving” or “affectionate’. Because of our selfishness, which is at the core of our sinful nature, we are only kind to others because of what our kindness will provide for us in return. We are kind, in other words, because to be kind affords us certain returns that we find beneficial in our idolatry of self.

It is also important to see here that this kind of befriending grace plays out in a very practical way in that even in our conversations and relating with each other we are asking, “what is it that this person needs and how can I meet that need?” “How can I speak wholesomely to this person so that I build him or her up?” It is not a question of whether or not I always tell people what I think they want to hear (which is just another way of pleasing self by hoping to make others pleased with me), but rather true kindness is looking for ways to meet needs in others regardless of what it might mean for me.

To be kind to others is to see the incredible opportunities that God has instilled in that person’s heart. To be kind is to lift up my eyes to the future potential of each person I meet. Think of it this way- when you hold an acorn in your hand, you are holding within your grasp all the potential for a huge oak tree. That tiny seed in your hand holds all the chemistry necessary for a huge oak that can live for many years and grow to enormous size.

In a similar way, we should understand the incredible potential in every person we encounter.

C.S. Lewis put it this way in “Weight of Glory”:

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

Consider for a moment how just this one truth could change things on Sundays. Not just in sanctuaries and Sunday School classes- but perhaps more importantly in parking lots and at restaurants.