A Moment with our Ministers

“In a world shouting to be heard, what if we chose kindness instead?”

✨ A reflection on why gentleness might be the most radical choice we can make.

When our girls were teenagers, they, like so many others, had a whole variety of friendship groups.
Sometimes they would come home and tell us someone had been rude to them. When this happened, we regularly said, ‘Be nice.’

We did not want our daughters to be rude in response to the rudeness they experienced.
(Who knows how they really responded, but that was our hope!)

Currently, it seems we have a contrast in our culture between blaming varieties of people for the problems we face–an acceptance of shouting the
loudest so our desires can be heard–and a culture promoting kindness. We suspect many of us would prefer to be in the corner of those expressing
kindness. Perhaps being kind is not exactly the same as being nice, but they are similar.

Is kindness a Jesus value? Was Jesus himself always kind?

There are times in the Gospels that Jesus was confronted. When that happened, he did not back down.

When he was in the Temple and overturned the tables, he was clearly angry with the injustice perpetrated there by those selling offerings to
pilgrims at inflated prices. He wasn’t kind in that moment.

He also told the foreign woman seeking healing for her daughter to go away; he didn’t seem kind then. She retorted that even dogs deserved the crumbs from the table —
and Jesus responded by healing her daughter. (She didn’t back down but wasn’t unkind either.)

We could argue that kindness is not the central value of the gospel;
however, acts of kindness do seem to flow from the values of love, compassion, and justice. These values are central to the way of Jesus.

In a society in which forces are working to divide people, kindness is needed. (This does not mean allowing someone to be abused –that is another conversation.)

An anthropologist talking about the oldest sign of ‘civilisation’ said it was ‘a healed broken leg.’ Why? Because a healed broken leg meant someone cared
for the one who had broken their leg and provided what they needed, while they could provide little/nothing and healed. This act of enabling healing could
be named ‘kindness’. Perhaps Jesus’ practice of healing and feeding could be considered a sign of kindness. In this case, kindness becomes a Jesus value. 

Why write about kindness as we enter the last two months of the year?
Perhaps to help us reflect on what has been a tough year. Perhaps to reflect on what we hope for the year to come.

Perhaps to ask us to think about how we respond in this culture which is calling people to division.

In the face of this social conflict, it is tempting to stay silent. Instead we could instead choose the side of kindness.
Of course, there are other things we can do –protest and with like-minded people of all faiths, share meals with those who come from different countries, educate ourselves.

All of this still involves having kindness at the heart of what we do.

The route of kindness can be our path with each other in our church contexts,
with family members who do not share our political or religious views, with strangers. 

We notice our daughter talks about ‘gentle words’ and ‘gentle hands’ with her two-year-old. Some may need us to use ‘gentle hands’ in order to provide for them physically:

however, many more would benefit from the use of ‘gentle words’– an essential aspect of the practice of kindness.

We leave with our words to our girls — ‘be nice/be kind’– in the name of Christ.
Amen.
Yours,
Martha and David