The Religion of Niceness

Love doesn't always look the way we expect.

Today, there's a tendency to associate love with warm feelings, total solidarity, and no apparent conflict. In this view, love is never messy and confrontation is not allowed. To love is to be...nice.

But is this true? Is love really never difficult or challenging?

Below is an excerpt from Jesus Mean and Wild, a book I recommend for anyone who wants to understand the love of Jesus, in all its layers and dimensions. It goes beyond the easily digestible teachings and wonderful promises of Christ you might find cross stitched on a pillow, and examines the instances where Jesus was harsh, intimidating, and more than a little blunt. This was a man whose teachings were as attractive to some as they were repulsive to others. He was a man who was provocative enough to want to kill.

As bewildering as His behavior can be at first glance, ultimately it's shown to be rooted in love. Hebrews 1:3 tells us, “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.” If this is true, and God is love (1 John 4:8), then everything Jesus did and said is not only loving, but also shows us the exact character of God himself! To understand Jesus, especially the more abrasive and troubling aspects of His character, is to understand what biblical love looks like – which has far reaching consequences for how His church is to treat one another.

When God says...

“Love one another, as I have loved you.” ~John 13:34

...do we even know what that means?

-Daniel

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From Chapter 5, It's Not Nice to Be Nice:

Today we are adherents of the Religion of Niceness. In this religion, God is a benevolent grandfather who winks at human mistakes, and it goes without saying that he always understands – after all, it is human to err, divine to forgive.

Christians are often fascinated with the Religion of Niceness because it appears to champion biblical virtues such as humility, forgiveness, and mercy. This religion so permeates our consciousness that when we hear someone quote the second Great Commandment, the epitome of Christian ethics, we tend to hear: “Be nice to your neighbor, as you would have your neighbor be nice to you.”

I indoctrinated my children into this faith from their earliest days. My five-year-old son's friend visits our home. This friend grabs one of my son's toys, and my son comes running to me, complaining about his friend's selfishness. I tell him not to make a fuss, to share his toys, to be nice.

Days later, I arrange for my son to visit that friend's house while I spend time with the parents. This time, the friend refuses to let my son play with one of his toys; my son comes running to me and complains about his friend's selfishness. I tell him that since we are guests, he should be nice and not make a fuss.

Lesson: it's not about what's right; it's about avoiding conflict. The last thing the busy parent wants to do in this situation is mete out justice, confront selfishness (especially in someone else's child), or ask another parent to teach his or her kid some manners. Better to fall back on admonitions to be nice.

Thus we learn not to make a fuss in school, at work, in life. We quickly discover that people respond positively to us when we are nice to them and negatively when we aren't. Since it feels good to be liked we get addicted to being nice. And this addiction skews our reasoning. We imagine that if someone makes us feel good (by being nice to us), she is being loving, and if she makes us feel bad (by being stern), she doesn't like us. We have powerful social and psychological forces that keep reinforcing the ethic of niceness.

For a couple of years, we had a black teenager living with us. Having been deserted by his father at a young age, he was anxious to form bonds with older men, including coaches. Consequently, he was affable, eager to please, and respectful of authority. He never questioned a coach's decision, at least not to his face.

Once when he complained to me that his coach wasn't giving him enough playing time. I asked him, “Have you asked your coach why?”

“That would be disrespectful,” he said.

“It's not disrespectful to ask questions,” I replied.

“But it would be like I was challenging his authority, questioning his judgment.”

“Not if you did it with the right spirit.”

“It doesn't matter how you do it; it's disrespectful.”

And around we went. By being nice, he was avoiding all sorts of uncomfortable emotions. This young man had unique issues, of course, but not so unique that most of us can't identify with him. We all have people with whom we sacrifice truthfulness on the altar of niceness. The difference between my foster son and those reading (and the one writing) this book is this: he had no idea that his behavior was harming his ability to form deeper relationships – ones characterized by honesty and freedom. But I know this behavior tends to undermine my relationships, and yet I fall into it time and again. (…)

[As Christians, confrontation is] about deepening our relationships with one another. Thus Paul tells the church in Colossae, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish [warn] one another in all wisdom” (Col. 3:16), in the same passage in which he urges them, “Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). There is a deeper unity, an intimacy that Paul longs for in the church, and that intimacy is brought about by a variety of behaviors such as “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Col. 3:12) but also by the courage to “admonish one another.” (…)

[A natural hesitancy to confront] is praiseworthy, for the hair-trigger personality that lashes out at every sign of sinfulness is one easily seduced by hypocrisy. But while all this seems humble and loving, in the end it is neither. It is not humble because it is a direct refusal to live like Jesus or to do what Jesus tells us to do: “If another member of the church sins against you,” he says, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone” (Matt. 18:15).

Many early manuscripts of this passage read simply, “If another member of the church sins, go and...” This suggests that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was not talking only about interpersonal conflict but immorality in general. As Paul puts in his letter to the Christians in Galatia: “My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1).

Paul's words remind us that our confrontation with wrongdoing should usually be done in a “spirit of gentleness.” The New Testament is not encouraging us to become hotheads. But the example of Jesus and Paul and the saints suggests that sometimes brusque confrontation is necessary. To avoid it is essentially to say that Jesus got this wrong.

And to refuse confrontation is also to refuse to love.