Day 17
Kindness
Kindness Killers
No matter who you are, if you judge anyone, you have no excuse. When you judge another person, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.
Romans 2:1 GW
There is nothing more lethal to the fruit of the Spirit called kindness than your sense of justice. I can hear you now saying, “Be kind? I should be kind while they are being mean? Shouldn’t I teach them a lesson?” That would be a good choice if you were, oh, I don’t know, say, God! But as someone who isn’t God, I can testify that it can’t be done. You can’t teach them a lesson by mimicking their sin. But that’s just what your messed-up sense of justice would have you do. This idea that when someone sins they need to be punished gets you into the kind of trouble you want for them, because you end up guilty of the same stuff that you are judging them for.
It is true that injustice deserves judgment, but if you declare yourself the judge, you’re taking God’s job into your own hands again. And we know how that plays out. But what happens when you refuse to give kindness to those who hurt you? When you harden your heart to the sinful condition of others by judging it, mocking it, or punishing it, you simultaneously harden your heart to God. See, their sin is no different than yours. We are all in the same swamp of sin, surrounded by it and stuck in it, unable to get ourselves out. So when you judge them for their swampy nature, you condemn yourself because you’re in the same exact swamp.
You can’t let your sense of justice, of wrong and right, seem like permission to sin and to withhold kindness from them; if you do, you are no better than those you judge. That means that you cannot hold a grudge against another human being. Holding a grudge is refusing to offer the grace you have been given. When you are unsympathetic to their sinful nature, you are acting on your flesh and encouraging it to rise above the Spirit and guide your life. This all starts at the moment you take offense at someone’s actions. When you judge their actions as harmful or hateful toward you, the wheels start turning and you give yourself permission to “fix” the situation. In this attempt to stand up for yourself and to argue against their offense, you close your ears to the voice of the Spirit in your life. With less of him there is more of you, and that more of you feeds more sin and more suffering in your life and the lives of those around you.
But kindness doesn’t need to be killed in an attempt to balance the scales or to teach a lesson. Your way of thinking must change from considering the scales unbalanced to seeing how balanced they are. That is to say, you must begin to be honest with yourself about your own sin and not consider others any worse than you, just different. Then realize that the lesson that needs to be learned here isn’t for them but for you. Each time someone offends you, it is an opportunity to respond to the Holy Spirit instead of your flesh, and so to teach your flesh to shut up and quit ruling your life.
Kindness does more than feed the person who deserves your wrath: it softens your heart to the promptings of the Spirit and gives you more of him in your life. Kindness is an attribute of God, so you can be sure of its goodness. If kindness doesn’t come easily to you, then allow today to be the day that God reveals his kindness to you as he shows you that life doesn’t have to be the battle you’ve made it out to be. Accept the fruit of kindness in your life and be set free from the chains of judgment and strife.
- Confront It
Do you have a fear of rejection?
Do you easily hold a grudge?
Are you easily offended?
Do you have a hard time being grateful?
If you said yes to any of these, then kindness doesn’t come easily for you. Spend some time today thinking about how your answers to these questions might change in light of God’s kindness to you. How can you embrace kindness and get over your sense of justice?
Sarcasm is an opportunity for unkindness in disguise. Think about your life and your tongue. Are you prone to sarcasm? If so, confess it to God and ask him to give you more of his kindness.
Dear God, I’m prone to judge others and to give kindness based on merit. But I don’t want to be like that anymore; I want to be like you. Teach me how to give up my sense of justice, to trust you with judgment, and to give myself fully to kindness instead. Amen.
- Surrender It
Your own wounds sometimes keep you from being kind to others. Do you have any wounds that you haven’t let God heal? If so, turn those over to him and tell him that the wounds of Christ on the cross are more important than yours. Keeping them does you no good. They are only useful once they are healed by his blood. When this happens, the scars from your wounds can serve others as an example of his kindness to you. Give up your wounds today and thank Jesus for his healing wounds.