More Than Kindness

There’s a quote I’ve seen a lot on the internet lately.  It’s attributed to the Dalai Lama.  I have no idea whether he actually said it.  He may have, but there are a lot of quotes that get mis-attributed or just plain made up on the internet.  The point, though, is that a lot of people are posting this and seem to agree with it.  Maybe you agree with it, too.  The quote is this:  “My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.”

When we first read that, it sounds nice.  Who’s opposed to kindness?  I’m in favor of kindness myself.  Kindness, according to the dictionary, means “the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate”.  And certainly, we should all be friendly, generous, and considerate.  In other words, we should be kind.

But is that really all there is to religion?  I don’t think so.  Jesus did not talk a lot about being kind.  Jesus talked about love.  Loving God and loving your neighbor.  There are important differences between kindness and love.  Love may include kindness--after all, the Apostle Paul told us that love is kind--but love is so much more than that.

When you think about it, kindness really does not demand all that much from us.  Kindness is something that can be done on an impulse.  Kindness is happening upon someone who needs help and helping them.  Kindness is seeing an ad on TV about children in India and sending some money.  Kindness is going to the hospital or the nursing home to visit a friend.

All of those things are good things to do.  Again, I’m not here to criticize kindness.  I’m all in favor of it.  But all of those things are one-time things.  We do them, and they’re helpful.  They may make somebody feel better.  They may make us feel better, too.  But after we’ve done them, we can go on about our business. 

Love is different.  Love requires a commitment.  Loving our neighbor means seeking out ways we can help them.  Loving our neighbor means helping them even when it’s not convenient for us.  Loving our neighbor means not just being there for them today, but being there for them tomorrow and the next day and the next week and the next month.  Love does not allow us to do a one-time thing and go on about our business.  Love requires a commitment.

Loving God requires a commitment, too.  Loving God means looking for ways to serve God.  Loving God means loving our enemies and praying for people who persecute us.  Loving God means going and making disciples of Jesus Christ.  And it means not just doing these things once in a while, when it’s convenient for us.  It means making these things part of our everyday life.  It means treating people with kindness, too, but it means so much more than that. 

Love means something else, too.  Love, sometimes, means telling people things they don’t want to hear.  Love, sometimes, means bringing people up against some hard truths.  Love, sometimes, means telling people that it’s not a good idea for them to continue to do the things they are doing.  Love, sometimes, means telling people that they need to repent of their sins, ask for forgiveness, and turn their lives over to Jesus Christ.

Those things may not be perceived as “kind”.  But they are loving.  I am very fortunate that I’ve had people in my life who loved me enough to tell me things I did not want to hear.  I am very fortunate that I’ve had people in my life who loved me enough to bring me up against some hard truths, to tell me I should not continue to do some things I was doing.  Sometimes I still need that.  And of course, I still need to repent of my sins, to ask forgiveness, and do more to turn my life over to Jesus Christ.

Again, I’m all for being kind.  But if we want to call ourselves Christians, we need to be more than kind.  We need to love God and love our neighbor.  And we need to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ.