Kind, Not Nice: How to Contend With a Firm Core & Soft Edges

Being Receivable

Being receivable, for God’s sake, was front-burner for Hugh Corey. In Love Kindness, Corey recounts just how close this kindess was to his dad’s heart.

“Barry,” he said, “if the lives God intersects with mine don’t have the opportunity to receive me, how will they ever know the love God has for them? I’ve got to live my life so strangers, friends, aching, lonely, family-they receive me,” he said. “And through me they see God’s inexhaustible love.” 

Clearly, Corey’s father was a very kind man. But he was quick to remind that living to be receivable is not the same as living to be received. Being received is out of our control.

But we can make ourselves receivable.

This is kind living. This is aiming to remove, or at least reduce, the obstacles those around us have to faith. 

Apostle Paul lived to be receivable. “We endure all things so we cause no obstacle to the gospel of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:12). 

The way of kindness, explains Corey is often self-effacing, Koosh-strand flexibility, receivable kindness, does not get hung up on looking perfect. “People are far more receivable,” Corey notes, when they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Even so, living a humble, receivable life is no guarantee we will be received.  In fact, Jesus promises that his own will be rejected and hated. “Whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). There’s union with Christ even there, even when.

Conversing With Kindness 

When kindness walks into a room it isn’t thinking, Here I am. Instead it’s thinking, There you are. That is the way of kindness. Kindness listens to understand rather than waits to interject self. 

Kindness, writes Corey, calls us to enter conversations with those whose perspectives differ from ours. He details a candid conversation he shared with a lesbian friend, and adds,

Sometimes in our zeal for a firm center, we default to lectures from the sidelines rather than initiating gracious conversation with those whose standards are different from our own. When we respond this way, our edges calcify, and grace is lost in a fight for truth (p. 54).

This builds walls not bridges. Bony-hard edges don’t make for a good hug.

But soft centers with soft edges aren’t biblically kind either. In Jesus’ way of kindness, we can be confident in our beliefs and be comfortable listening to those with differing views.

The point isn’t to be respected or even to become friends. It’s also not to avoid awkwardness or to avoid making someone feel uncomfortable. Sometimes discomfort is just what the doctor ordered to set things right.

“The point of kindness,” Corey notes, “is to represent Jesus.” When we are genuine and winsome, we are able to point them to their greatest good, which is found only in the gospel (p. 54). Love is patient and kind. And true love, John Piper asserts, “is doing whatever you have to do to help people see and treasure the glory of God as their supreme joy.” 

Which means that conversations borne of kindness are not simply for shooting the breeze. Instead, with patience and humility, truly kind conversations may aim to convince. 

But that after listening and learning what we didn’t understand.

Why Kindness?

As President of Biola University, Barry Corey walks this talk. In 2012 some Biola alumni formed the Biola Queer Underground (BQU). Its goals were to raise awareness about same-sex attracted Biola grads and to pressure the university to change its sexual behavior policy. 

This was prime-time for Corey’s receivable kindness to shine.

And shine it did. Barry Corey called some of the more vocal gay alumni a few weeks after the BQU rocked the Biola world, even placing it, and him, in the national news. Over lunch one day, thousands of miles from his home, they talked. And Barry Corey listened. 

Corey was so moved by the conversation that he invited a same-sex group of alumni to share their stories with Biola’s faculty a few months later. They did. And there were tears and pleas, he writes, but no fists or raised voices. Biola did not change its stance on sexuality. It was kind.

Corey explains, 

Kindness does not mean we assent to cultural norms or that we give people a pass to feed their own moral appetites under the guise of individual choice or because, “God loves us anyway.” God’s kind of kindness is far different from niceness or tolerance because it leads us to see his holiness and purity and from there, to see our own depravity (p. 66). 

In short, God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. As imitators of God, ours should too.

Humility, Not Dichotomy

Kindness is not “anything goes,” it’s not “talk ‘atcha then fly,” and it’s not nice. Kindness is harder than those. In fact, it’s supernatural. It is our job to keep a firm core, which accentuates soft edges. External flexibility, writes Corey, does not have to equate to internal weakness. 

But kindness that bends to accept everyone else’s viewpoint as healthy and true is not kindness. We can be kind and assured of truth. We can be humble and certain. 

Kindness actually pairs well with humility. Paul puts the two together in Colossians 2,

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility.

But, like kindness, humility is often confused.

Jon Bloom explains,

[H]umble people aren’t always what we think they ought to be. They are disagreeable when truth must be valued over relational harmony. They are un-submissive when conformity mars God’s glory. And their company can be unpleasant, even undesired, when their wounding words are kinder than selfish flattery or silence.

Which brings me back to Kathy. Kathy who was kind enough to me to hold out the truth in love to help me grow up in Christ (Ephesians 4:15-16).

Hard Core Kindness

Kathy is a gentlewoman through and through. In the decade I’ve known her, her words have never wounded. They only ever nurture. Kathy is ever calm, never loud, always and forever gracious. I only ever enjoyed brushing against her Kooshy soft edges when we walk and talk.

Kathy listened. She was, as she always is, soft on the edges and truly present when we walked and I talked last week.

Oh, was I angry! He knew that Friday is Gabe’s party. We wrote it on our calendars a month ago. Then last night he told me he’s got a golf outing all day which means he’ll miss most of the party. Everyone’s coming at four and he won’t get home until seven. It just burns me. 

When came up for air and sweet Kathy caught me by surprise.

Abigail, may I give you a challenge?  

Of course. How could I refuse?

When you get home tonight, why don’t you tell Jim to go golfing as planned and have fun with the guys? Tell him you’ll be just fine without him. And the days he goes to golf, give him a big kiss as he heads out and a warm hug when he gets home. 

These words were not nice. Implicit in Kathy’s challenge was the truth that I was wrong, and not acting in love. Her willingness to challenge me is the firm core of kindness. 

Niceness doesn’t speak truth so boldly. It doesn’t call out sinful, selfish attitudes. Nice doesn’t pour humbling, healing oil on my head. “Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head; let my head not refuse it” (Psalm 141:5).

Centuries ago Matthew Henry described the divine unction of kindness,

This oil shall be as an excellent oil to a wound, to mollify it and close it up; it shall not break my head, as some reckon it to do, who could as well bear to have their heads broken as to be told of their faults…The reproof is an excellent oil to cure the bruises sin has given me. It shall not break my head, if it may but help to break my heart.

Now you know why. My friend Kathy is not nice. She is not just a great listener and a sweet friend, but she broke my heart in the best way. Kathy is something way more courageous and influential, way more strong and loving.