Shortly after I posted my last post, I received some advice from an artificial intelligence source telling me that if I want more attention to the blog, I should post everyday. HAHAHAHAHAH! I have been working on today’s post for a couple of months!
I have been thinking about a critique I have heard of Christians who think it is important to be nice. One specific example, I recently read the book Faultlines by the late Voddie Baucham. In his seventh chapter, entitled “The Ground Is Moving”, he laments the demise of the debate and discussion of ideas: “Gone are the days of Luther and Erasmus slugging it out over the question of original sin. Today both men would be accused of being petty (for daring to split hairs over such theological minutia), mean-spirited (for daring to speak so forcefully in favor of their own position and against the other’s) and downright un-Christlike (for throwing around the word “heresy”). I have often said, “The Eleventh Commandment is, “Thou shalt be nice”… and we don’t believe the other ten.” One of the negative results of this is no longer being able to deal with ideas without attacking the people who hold them. Disagreements quickly deteriorate into arguments and worse. Consequently, taking a position on an issue carries the automatic assumption that one is utterly opposed not only to the opposing view, but to all who hold it. Therefore, we don’t debate ideas at all, but go straight for personal attacks and character assassination.” (Faultlines, 132)
I think Baucham is right about the nastiness of public disagreements today and the effect of discouraging even private discussions between Christians who know at the outset that they hold different viewpoints, particularly about racial issues. But what he implies about holding oneself to a standard of niceness in the above quote and elsewhere in the book demeans and caricatures niceness. To be clear, if niceness means not speaking the truth, then niceness must hold a lower priority. We will die for lack of truth!
A second place where this criticism arose was in Allie Beth Stuckey’s interview with David French on Relatable. French had assessed James Talarico to be more Christian than other Christian candidates because of the nice way he interacted with those who opposed his viewpoints. Stuckey expressed shock that French would declare someone more Christian merely for his niceness, when his actual moral/political views were unbiblical in her opinion. (I am not talking here about his views, but this question of demeanor.) Stuckey seemed to be saying that when one identifies oneself as Christian, the content of one’s views is a more important measure of Christian orthodoxy than one’s niceness in public demeanor.
More recently, I also saw a title to an article in Christianity Today by Thomas Anderson, “Niceness Is Not a Biblical Command.” I don’t subscribe to CT, so I asked Google to summarize it for me. Anderson points out that Jesus called the Pharisees “a brood of vipers,” when he confronted them, evidently not policing his tone. However, Anderson still seems to advocate kindness, which he distinguishes from niceness. Niceness, according to an earlier article he wrote in September of 2019, prioritizes keeping things pleasant, and so, avoids truth telling. Kindness prioritizes “telling the truth without enjoying another’s destruction, saying the hard thing without glee for the wound it makes.” (I have now read the whole article!) I wonder if the general public or more specifically, evangelical Christians, always make that distinction between “niceness” and “kindness”. For the rest of this post, I will use Anderson’s definition of the word “kindness.”
The Bible prioritizes both truth and kindness to our fellow humans. Kindness and truth-speaking are not opposed to each other. Otherwise, how could the Bible tell us to “speak the truth in love?” (Ephesians 4:15) Anderson asserts that this combination of kindness and honesty is “almost extinct in public life” presently. Since I have been writing this post, I have been noticing that Jesus sounds pretty harsh to me, but I firmly believe that Jesus hoped fervently that the Pharisees and others he criticized would repent of their evil thinking and actions and receive the mercy he came to offer us all. The truth is essential for human thriving, and thus there is no kindness at all in withholding the truth from people. But there is a difference between truth telling for a person’s good – confronting sin, deception and idolatry so that people will change – versus condemning them as irredeemable. I think a lot of us today think many people are so wrong in their thinking, that it doesn’t even occur to us that they could be redeemed. Maybe that is one prerequisite to “speaking the truth in love,” that we actually hope and pray that the person to whom we are speaking will respond because it is the path for them to thrive.
I think the First Century audience to which Jesus and the apostles preached were able to recognize that an opportunity for redemption remained open to them, as long as they were willing to accept the convicting truth about themselves. At least, they thought they were allowed to ask if there was any path to redemption. When Peter preached in Acts 2, blaming his audience for crucifying Jesus, it reports that ‘when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”’ Peter immediately tells them to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus for forgiveness of their sins and assures them of the gift of the Holy Spirit. I know for such a change to take place in the human heart the Spirit must be moving but I also wonder if First Century culture was more direct than American culture today. The last time I participated in open air evangelism with the suggestion of bad consequences for those who didn’t listen, even though I was also offering the opportunity to be blessed by God, I remember thinking “this isn’t effective!” That was back in the 1980’s.
Perhaps we are all prioritizing “niceness” too much these days. How would we know if that were the case? Are you a Christian but not offering the Gospel to anyone out of fear of being perceived negatively? And interpersonally, do you find yourself lying when someone asks you if they have upset you or if you think they are wrong about something? Are you inwardly aggrieved over something and bottling it up inside in a way that is hurting a relationship or a community? You might think that the Christian way to deal with real offenses is to “cover sin.” 1 Peter 4:8 is frequently cited to urge Christians that the path of a mature believer toward an offender is to not bring it up and to forgive internally. Personally, I think when God says he will cover our sins that is AFTER he has named them truthfully and urged us to repent. See for example Isaiah 1:18-19 where God says to his people, “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow…”
Of course, such confrontation necessitates certainty that we are actually speaking truth, that we actually know right and wrong. God knows right and wrong, but we are prone to error. We need to be people constantly listening to him, accepting his correction of what seems right to us. We need to be people shaped by both his love for humanity and his righteousness. That is the only way we will have truth to speak. If we are largely shaped by our political tribe, I believe we will be speaking a mix of truth and error. If we are led by our own desires, our sense of right and wrong will be distorted by self-interest.
On the other hand, for those who are earnestly seeking God’s truth and trying to speak it, are you finding that people are severing their relationship with you in the wake of you confronting them? Maybe you are speaking with inadequate sensitivity and compassion. There seems to be a belief that only pungently worded correction will have an impact today. I am not convinced that the solution is for Christians to demean people in public or private discourse. We have to adjust our tone and our wording, to get a hearing for the truth which saves. I remember a Christian brother advocating for studying our audience before addressing them, a practice which he saw happening even within the pages of the book of Acts. He said it was discernible in the sermons preached by the apostles that they were using approaches they thought their audience would understand and which made much difference in whether the preacher got a hearing or not. The results of our public behavior are still dependent on the Holy Spirit for fruitfulness, but the Lord commands us to take care in how we deliver the truth to those around us. Kindness in truth-telling matters! It is our job to behave as a Christian should to show both the love and righteousness of our God, and it is God’s job to work on the heart of our hearers.