Fruitful Contemplations: Kindness

The fruit of the spirit is ... kindness.  Gal. 5:22

One of the best comfort foods I know of is banana bread. Toasted. Eaten warm with butter melted onto it. Smelling like you're nibbling on the warmest, fuzziest comfort in the world. A fresh banana eaten with a dab of peanut butter on each bite provides another proven comfort food, sans the drawbacks of all the sugar that goes into banana bread.

Comfort and kindness. I think they go together. The dictionary defines "kindness" as being "sympathetic," "helpful," "forbearing," and "giving pleasure or relief." Inherent in the idea and definition of kindness is the idea that the kind person is being understanding toward the person to whom they are showing kindness, or overlooking faults, unimportance, or unattractiveness.  They see an opportunity to do or say something that provides, at very least, comfort.

A parenthetical question crosses my mind right at the start of this reflection: Do you have to be a believer in God to show kindness?  (Or for that matter, do you have to be a believer to demonstrate any of the fruit of living in the Spirit?) This may be controversial, but I don't think the Spirit asks, "Do you believe?" before working in a person's life. Plenty of people don't believe in God, or at least don't know whether God exists or not, but they understand the sadnesses of the human condition and show great kindness. Referring back to my post on Joy, I picture of the Spirit of God coming and going as the breeze, cooling the sweaty foreheads and livening the air around anyone along the way who cares to be aware. I suspect we humans can't define the work of the Spirit very well, except to say that God's Spirit helps us to know Him in some way that we don't know Him otherwise. I think that's why we see real acts of kindness in all kinds of unexpected places, coming from all kinds of unexpected people.

In "noodling about" online as I considered the concept of kindness, I wondered whether the word "kindness" was used anywhere in the gospel writers' stories about Jesus. I was surprised to find that in the record of his life, Jesus never used the word, "kindness."  Neither did those who wrote about his life. It appears not even once. That's a curious thing. I wonder why?

As I considered kindness as a fruit of living in the Spirit, I asked myself, "When have I seen or known of kindness in action?" I have seen it in a friend who baked bread every week for a family with three teenage girls whose 42-year old mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. I have seen kindness in my Thai brother as he stopped on the street to give a few baht and gentle words to a beggar. I have seen it in an employee who dropped by the presidential office to give his boss an encouraging word during a tough time. I have seen kindness in the children in my classroom who pooled items in their sack lunches to share with a classmate who had forgotten to pick up her lunch on the way out of the house that morning.  I have seen kindness in a young woman who stayed after my home Bible study group to listen, share with and put her arm around another young woman who had shared about a painful situation in her life.

Kindness is often misunderstood, or at least I think the word is somewhat misapplied.  It has been popular in recent years to urge people to do "random acts of kindness."  Our local Christian music radio station ran a Random Acts of Kindness Week during which they urged listeners to carry out these random acts, and then call in their anecdotes telling what happened. One popular choice for listeners, as I listened to the stories, was to pay for the order of the person coming behind them at a drive-through eatery or coffee vendor. Is paying for someone else's order "kindness"? I believe not. It's generosity, which is a lovely action, but generosity is not exactly the same as kindness. Think about it.

Kindness is a response to someone who is in a one-down situation.  Kindness may be combined with generosity, but it also means helping someone who is in need (whether they know it or not) of sympathy, in need of help, in need of understanding, in need of someone who will forbear with their socially unacceptable behavior.

So let's not buy someone in the car behind us a Starbucks latte and call it an act of kindness. Let's call it generosity, and then go on to drop off a fresh-baked loaf of banana bread with a half hour spent listening and chatting with a recently widowed neighbor down the street who is feeling deep loss and loneliness.

See the difference? Now go download that delicious banana bread recipe from recipezaar, get baking and deliver it hot to someone who needs to receive kindness today!