The Trouble with Being Nice

DAILY BYTE

If we’re talking about God’s season on earth, the idea of ‘division’ is a scary place to begin. We often speak about being 'united in and through Christ.' We say Jesus has come to bring peace to the world, not conflict! But in Chapter 12 of the Book of Luke, Jesus says that he’s bringing division instead of peace and that he’s bring fire to the earth… This doesn’t necessarily sound like the Jesus we see in pictures, cuddling fuzzy lambs… So, what does Jesus mean?

Well, this week we’ll talk about three different kinds of division and where God’s season might be in that. The first kind of division goes back to our conversations about the weather. We spend a lot of time being simply civil and nice to each other! South Africans have the perfect word for being civil, welcoming, nice, and sufficiently avoiding - "Howzit?" Howzit is a very handy word, but it's also a difficult one to respond to - is it a question? Is it a statement? It seems it's both... End of conversation.

Now, as we've said, there is nothing wrong with being kind and welcoming. And many of us - especially the introverts among us - struggle with conversation. It's hard to be real, particularly when you're stressed or tired.

But niceness can be divisive when it takes over even our closest relationships so that our fear of hurting others' feelings and our desire to avoid conflict actually mean that we cover over the confusion within us and cut off the communication between us so that we don't actually know one another.

And if we don't know one another, we cannot speak truth into one another's lives, and if there is no truth in a relationship, then inevitably, it drifts apart. Or, people walk away from one another. It's easier, isn't it? Just to be lukewarm people that wander in and out of relationships instead of committed people who speak truth to one another? Stanley Hauerwas was named by Time Magazine in 2001 as America's Best Theologian. He's an ethics professor at Duke Divinity School, and in a lecture to the students on how to be a Christ-filled community, he emphasized that being nice is far too often used as a mechanism for covering over the truth.

Do you use being nice as a way of avoiding issues in relationships? Has this caused division in your life? How might this be keeping you from God’s desires for your life and relationships?

FOCUS READING

Luke 12:49; 51

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!...Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!