PsalterMark

Introduction

Is kindness a high priority in our lives? It is not difficult to know what kindness is, but for many of us it is something we hope to experience, rather than something we prioritise doing. Kindness does not come naturally. It is a virtue. It needs to be taught. It needs to be nurtured. It needs to be given time.

I can remember being encouraged by my mother to be kind. My mother was always keen for me to befriend children who she thought needed my friendship. At Infant School there was Robert (not his real name like the others mentioned in this post), the only black boy in my class, and David who by today’s standards had a number of educational needs. At Junior School there was Graham whose parents were very religious. My kindness in the playground extended to being Robin as he wanted to be Batman. I’m not convinced we were a ‘dynamic duo’—we were both rather skinny—but we had fun.

For my all my efforts to be kind by befriending those my mother pointed out to me. The only times I ever got in trouble at Infant School was because of my association with them. But the lasting point is that I was taught, and hopefully learned, something about kindness. As I discovered there’s little reward in being kind and of course that’s not the point. Or perhaps this is exactly the point?

As Karen Swallow Prior, in her amazing book On Reading Well, points out no one envies the kind. She also notes that it is all too easy to muddle kindness with niceness. Confusing the two is a bad move because the agreeableness that comes with niceness shows no discernment. Niceness is a disposition not a virtue. Kindness, unlike niceness, is underpinned by a concern with the truth. Kindness knows nothing of the ‘white lie’ told so as to not hurt someone’s feelings, or the minor untruth to keep the peace.

Kindness has the same origin as the word kin. To be kind is to treat someone as though they are family. The kindness that treats people as family is more robust than niceness. Sometimes it can mean departing from being nice. According to Karen Swallow Prior:

To see and celebrate the good for others is to treat them as family. This is what it means to be kind.

But what does the Bible have to say about kindness? Both the First Testament and the Second Testament are at one as we shall see. Although we’ll also see that Jesus, as is so often the case, has the last and disturbingly challenging word.

On the Ropes with Job

 Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.

Care is needed with any one verse so let’s put it in context. The Book of Job starts with the famous wager between God and Satan over Job’s fear of God. Terrible things happen to Job as a consequence. In Chapter 1 we read:

¹³ One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the eldest brother’s house, ¹⁴ a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, ¹⁵ and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’

¹⁶ While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’

¹⁷ While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’

¹⁸ While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the eldest brother’s house, ¹⁹ when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’

²⁰ At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship ²¹ and said:

‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I shall depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.’

²² In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

A little later, of course, Job is additionally afflicted with a horrible disease.

As Job attempts to come to terms with what has happened and why, he debates with three friends. These debates take up around forty chapters of the Bible, with a fourth mysterious dialogue partner joining later in the book. Whatever the historical origin of Job’s story the debate he has with his friends appear to be highly crafted poems.

Our verse today (Job 6:14) mentions Fear of the Lord as does the second verse of the Book of Job where we find out that Job fears God. The Book of Job is a theological argument over what it means to fear God. It reveals that even those that fear God will know trial and hardship in the life of faith.

In Job 6:14, Job is warning his friends—he argues that there is a link between right behaviour and our relationship with God. Putting it more positively for us, as those that fear the Almighty and are in relationship with him through Christ, we should actively demonstrate kindness to our friends. We should treat our friends as well as we treat those who are related to us by blood.

In context Job is going further with a clear rebuke. More than, that there is a degree of menace. Could it be that withholding kindness when a friend is in acute need might really jeopardise our relationship with God? I think we know the truth of this in its broadest sense—continual actions that conflict with a relationship with God mean that someone walks step by step, mile by mile, away from the living God.

For us as faithful disciples of Jesus, walking with him will mean acting appropriately—yes, we make mistakes—but these are stumbles on the path not wholesale choices of a new direction.

Yet there is more to this verse than it first appears. The word translated as kindness in virtually all English translations has a more profound depth. In Hebrew the word has connotations of kindness in the context of a covenant relationship. Job and his friends are bound to each other by a promise or commitment, just as we are bound to each other through our fellowship in Christ Jesus.

This verse is also something of a foretaste of some of Jesus’ most remarkable teaching.

On the Rock Named Jesus

Jesus famously distils the Law of Moses to come to a fresh expression of Job 6:14. Let’s hear Mark’s account of this:

²⁸ One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’

²⁹ ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” ³¹ The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’

Mark 12:28–31, NIVUK

Here in Mark’s Gospel Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:4–5 and Leviticus 19:18. This twofold summary mirrors Job 6:14, as a generalisation of Job’s specific point about the risk his friends are taking. Jesus, of course, goes further than Job and further than popular interpretations of the Law in his time. Famously in Luke’s gospel when Jesus summarises the law in the same way, on a different occasion, someone asks, “Who is my neighbour?”—surely there must be a legal limit to what can be expected? For Job showing kindness to friends in covenant with him was the necessary way of honouring commitment to God. The Law extended this to the community of faith as a whole nation. Then Jesus extends the call to the people of faith showing kindness to all of humanity through the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus goes to the extreme of treating as family even those that world would count as enemies.

On the Road with Bananarama

Being kind can be a struggle as it rarely seems a priority. Being kind can be challenging because we muddle it with niceness. Sometimes we struggle with knowing how to be kind. We can probably all remember a time when we tried to be kind, but this was not received well. We have that feeling that if only we knew how.

As Bananarama put it so well: Tain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it. Trying to be kind only works when we do it in the right way. Sometimes we have to be careful to avoid offending. Sometimes we have to avoid being patronising. Sometimes we have to avoid creating dependency. Sometimes in the cause of being really kind we might have to risk offence or even run with it. Because at its best kindness is genuinely life changing and transformative.

Martin Scorsese most famous for some rather gritty films, directed a film that beautifully illustrates the transformative potential of kindness. In this film Hugo, the 12 year old Hugo Cabret, lives in a Paris train station—he has no choice after the death of his loving father. He has an abusive alcoholic uncle who teaches him how to keep the station’s clocks working. After his Uncle disappears Hugo continues to wind the various clocks and survives by stealing food. He is good at fixing things. He also has a hope of fixing people, as he explains:

“Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken”

Hugo observes numerous broken people around the railway station. There is the Station Inspector who is socially awkward thanks to a leg injured in the war. Hugo is afraid of him since he has seen him take other stray boys and send them away to an orphanage.

But the most formidable and broken person in the station is the mysterious Georges Melies who runs an old toy shop. When he catches Hugo and accuses him of stealing mechanical parts from him, the boy is terrified.

Hugo becomes friends with Isabelle, the goddaughter of Melies and his wife, Mama Jeanne. They eventually discover George Melies’ amazing past as a pioneering film maker. Through various means he forces George Melies to face all the pain of what went wrong in his past. He shows kindness at great personal risk and cost. Melies was a bitter and cynical man when Hugo first knew him, but he becomes reconciled with his past as a pioneering filmmaker.

That’s a fable of course. A beautiful one but a fable, nevertheless.

The two most common ways of understanding the life of faith are as pilgrimage and discipleship. Pilgrimage is the journey of life towards the heavenly city where God dwells. It’s not an individual journey. It’s a journey with others. Discipleship is the following of Jesus Christ day-by-day. It’s also not an individual thing. You can’t be a good disciple on your own. It’s a journey, a walk, with others.

Both our pilgrimage and our discipleship benefit from being seen in this corporate sense. Prioritising kindness on our journey challenges the worst excesses of misconstruing pilgrimage and discipleship as self-actualisation. Cultivating kindness enables the gospel-driven transformation of those around us and the by-product is our own sanctification.