Musings on Grace and Kindness
Two words that stuck with me from my pastor’s sermon this past Sunday were grace and kindness. He ended the sermon by encouraging the members of the congregation to show grace and kindness to those in their lives, to those around them.
Most of us would like to experience more grace and kindness in our lives.
If we look up grace in a dictionary, we will discover that it has multiple meanings. It can describe a way of behaving which is polite and pleasant and merits respect. It can also describe how we act when we cut someone some slack or give them a break, when we treat them in a less harsh or critical way. It can describe when we allow someone more time to pay us what they may owe us or to complete something. It can describe the goodwill and love that God shows humanity. It can also describe God’s influence working in the lives of human beings, individually and collectively
A word that is associated with grace albeit they are not interchangeable is mercy. Grace can be differentiated from mercy as follows. When God shows us grace, he shows us his unmerited favor. When God shows us mercy, he withholds our deserved punishment. Grace and mercy are the flipsides of the same coin—love. When God shows us his grace, he is generously showing his love to the unworthy. When he shows us mercy, he is compassionately showing love to the weak. God showed grace to us when he reconciled himself to us through Jesus. He shows us mercy when he forgives our sins when we repent.
When we show someone grace, we are showing to someone else what God shows toward us—favor that they do not merit. When we enjoy someone’s unmerited favor, they give us an advantage. They help us, and they approve or support us. They do what they are doing because they want to do it. We do not deserve it and have not earned it. It is an expression of goodwill, friendly or helpful feelings toward us.
However, if they do not feel any goodwill toward us, they are not going to show us their favor. If they feel ill-will, bad and unkind feelings toward us, they will withhold their favor.
This is one of the main reasons that forgiveness and reconciliation are so important in the life of a disciple of Jesus. If we harbor ill-will toward someone, a fellow human being or a fellow Christian, we cannot show grace or kindness toward them, We cannot show them the love that Christians are expected to show toward other people. Refusing to show love toward one person diminishes our ability to show love toward others.
On the other hand, having forgiven someone and being reconciled to them, once more showing friendliness toward them, we are free to show them grace and kindness. We are copying our heavenly Father and showing ourselves to be his children.
If we, however, insist that they must act in a certain way before they can enjoy our favor or decide that we want nothing to do with them, we are not showing them grace and we are not acting like God. We are arguably putting ourselves in God’s place.
One of the points of the Gospel reading (Luke 15: 11-32) for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, this coming Sunday, is that the father’s forgiveness of the wayward younger son is a generous forgiveness. The father does not have to be generous toward the son. The son did not expect his father to be so generous. The older brother resented his father’s generosity.
It is the kind of forgiveness that God expects us to show others. A generous forgiveness enables us to be gracious and kind. We are free of anger and bitterness.
According to the Collins Dictionary, someone who is kind behaves in a gentle, caring, and helpful way toward other people. Other qualities that characterize the behavior of a kind person is that they are friendly, generous, and thoughtful of others. They show compassion—feelings of distress, pity, sympathy, and understanding for the suffering or misfortune of another.
The presence of unforgiveness, the unwillingness to forgive, and unfriendly or hostile feelings can prevent us from showing kindness. So can indifference, a complete lack of interest in someone or concern for them. It can be accompanied by little or no attention to them or their well-being.
Children whose parents reacted to them in this way may internalize their parents’ attitudes and behavior and show the same reaction to others when they themselves become adults. As a consequence, behaving like a disciple of Jesus and showing grace and kindness to others may prove very challenging for such individuals. Unless they are encouraged to show grace and kindness to others and taught how to go about it, they will be impeded in their spiritual development.
In Luke’s Gospel Jesus tell his disciples—
“You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” Luke 5: 36 NLT
The thrust of Jesus’ words is that his disciples must show the same kind of love that God does. Jesus has just told them if they loved their enemies and did good to them, they would be acting like children of God who loves everyone, even the unthankful and the wicked.
In his letter to the Ephesians the apostle Paul writes—
“Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.” Ephesians 5:1-12 NLT
The God whom Paul is telling the Ephesians and us to copy is love. As the apostle John tells us—
“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:8 NLT
In copying God, we emulate his love.
How then do we emulate God’s love? By showing grace and kindness to others as God shows grace and kindness to us.
The implications are that we cannot be unfriendly or indifferent to those in our lives, to those around us. If we are going to order our lives after Jesus’ teaching and example, we must show the same kind of generous forgiveness to those who offend us as the father did to his wayward younger son.
Being indifferent to others is worse than being unfriendly or hostile toward them. When we are indifferent, we simply do not care. We do not have enough feelings to muster to feel anything about someone or something. We have no feelings at all.
Indifference is much more harmful than dislike or hatred because we do not give those toward whom we are indifferent an opportunity to express themselves or to process their response to our indifference. Those toward whom we show indifference feel abandoned and forgotten.
Indifference can cause us to do nothing when we should be taking action. For an example, an indifferent parent may ignore a crying baby. Failure to thrive is a condition seen in young babies who receive little or no parental attention because a parent is indifferent to the baby’s needs. Failure-to-thrive babies do not grow like normal babies. They are listless and unresponsive.
Babies who are not held and cuddled by a parent or other caregiver will die even though they may be fed regularly, or they will exhibit violent behavior if they survive infancy. They suffer from stroke deprivation.
Strokes are “the recognition, attention, or responsiveness that one person gives another.” They are necessary for a human being’s emotional, psychological, and physical wellbeing and in the case of babies, their very survival.
Indifference dehumanizes the person toward whom we show indifference. We deny them the qualities of being human and therefore having enough value or worth to have feelings toward them. We reduce them to an object or a thing.
Indifference may be caused by a neurological or psychological disorder. Indifference in the form of apathy and loss of interest is a major symptom of depression.
An attitude of indifference to others and accompanying behavior can also be learned from a parent or other caregiver.
Indifference can be feigned, but feigned indifference is as harmful as real indifference. We are refusing to give someone else recognition, attention, or responsiveness, which may be vital to their health and happiness. We are adding to the stresses in their lives.
Unfriendliness and indifference are not options for Jesus followers if they are sincere about living their lives according to Jesus’ teachings and example. We show unfriendliness or indifference to others, we are not imitating God. We are not treating them as someone whom God dearly loves and treasures.
We are also reinforcing a common stereotype of Christians: we are hypocrites. We are pretending or lying about what we believe.
If we are going to genuinely represent Jesus to an unbelieving world, we need to show grace and kindness to not just our family and friends, but everyone in our lives, everyone around us. We cannot hope to fulfill the Great Commandment to love God and to love others and the Great Commission to make disciples of all peoples and teach them what Jesus commanded if we are unfriendly or indifferent to them.
Unfriendliness and indifference are the exact opposite of grace and kindness.
When we show grace and kindness to others, we show that God is indeed the loving God that Jesus and the apostles tell us God is, a loving God who transforms the lives of those who are disciples of Jesus so that they are loving like himself. When they see the difference in our lives and experience the grace and kindness we show them, they may be led to conclude, “There must be something to what they believe. See how they love people. See how they love each other.”