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Kindness II


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 4:31-32)
          Yesterday, our conversation about kindness began with the complication of not being a people person. There are other areas of complication. One is motivation. There are some folks who think it doesn’t matter what your motive are, as long as the other person benefits. Scripture makes it clear that such is not the case. That was one of the reasons Jesus rebuked the Pharisees – their deeds might be good, but their hearts were corrupt.
          For some kindness is a means to an end. Back when the Gay Rights movement was beginning, homosexuals launched a “see how kind we are?” campaign. In his book, White Guilt, Shelby Steele relates an incident in which a white man was irritated at how little gratitude the Blacks showed him, after all he’d done for them. President Johnson, in signing the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 into law, said that it would have Blacks voting for Democrats for 200 years. There are people today who go out of their way to try to convince others of how virtuously inclusive they are.
Being “kind” in order to show how kind you are isn’t being kind. It’s using people. It’s exploitation.
There’s another problem. Is it kind to let people believe the lies they want to believe and make them feel good in that belief? Or is it kind to at least try to communicate the truth to them? Is it kind to cover for someone else’s irresponsibility, repeatedly, or is that codependence? Is it kind to let someone do something wrong because you feel sorry for them? Is it kind to let someone abuse you? And what about when we attempt to help someone do what they can and should do for themselves – repeatedly? What happens when kindness smothers? The answers to some of those questions are easy in theory. It’s harder when no big red stop sign appears as a warning.
We’ve been advised to set boundaries to protect ourselves. I suspect we should set boundaries to protect others from us – even from our “kindness.”

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