Kindness: Our Core Value
Our efforts as Christians with the positive consciousness that we live and operate as humans within social contexts, having relational existence with other people, should always be geared towards having loving and kind interactions with others. Our sense of kindness and positively treating others nicely with sense of goodness will always be the defining mark of our worth as Christians who are fully humane and wonderfully groomed to be Christlike in orientation and disposition. In the words of James Micheal Curley: It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.
The true nature of a good-hearted person is evident in the way he or she treats others nicely or with sense of goodness or consideration. By their fruits, you shall know them. Our Lord, Master and Model, Jesus Christ, clearly manifests this sense of kindness as the core expression of His incarnation, salvific identity and mission. Jesus gives us the picture of looking and treating others with the principal focus on their pristine God-given dignity and not on the basis of their social status or strengths or weaknesses. The portrayal of Jesus by the Gospels will help us discover this core truth of human relationships as perfectly expressed by Jesus Christ. Thus, a true Christian follows the footsteps of Christ in the consciousness and reality of being kind to others.
This is not negotiable and irreplaceable in appreciating the worth and value of our Christian identity and the responsibilities flowing from it. Our lives must be remarkably loving, caring and people oriented. Let us reflect on this powerful expression culled from Roy. B. Zuck: The Speaker’s Quote Book: There are ten things for which no one has ever been sorry.
For doing good to all.
For speaking evil of none.
For hearing before judging.
For thinking before speaking.
For holding an angry tongue.
For being kind to the distressed.
For asking pardon for all wrongs.
For being patient toward everyone.
For stopping the ears to a talebearer.
For disbelieving most of the ill reports.
In essence, one cannot be sorry or feel a disturbance of the conscience, feeling so guilty for being a good-hearted person, respecting all and sundry, treating others with true sense of kindness. We can only feel bad for being unkind to others in our thoughts, words and actions. The ideal of the Christian faith has a deep connection in building a heart that loves all and living out that fruitfully in the contexts of our social interactions and relationship. Pauline theology expresses the concrete qualities of love thus: Love is patient. Love is kind and not jealous: love does not brag and is not arrogant, love does not act unbecomingly: it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7.
The flavor of one’s Christian identity is visible in the context of social interactions at all levels. One needs to keep asking these vital questions to evaluate one’s growth in the Christian pattern: How do I treat others especially subordinates, those outside our pre-conceived social status or those who do not share our perception about life? How do I relate with others? What kind of conversation do I have about others? What are my core values in social interactions and relationships?
In the words of Mother Theresa of Calcutta—Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without going away better and happier.
At the end of our sojourn, we shall all be evaluated on how kind we have been to others in need of our gestures of our kindness. Cf. Matthew 25: 31-46.
According to Plato-Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.