Did Jesus Realy tell Us To Be Nice?

 I have been mentally playing around with our Christian conditioning.   That is, how we all grew up being conditioned to think in certain ways.

And I am thinking that such conditioning, was unintentionally, based on an innocent misinterpretation of what “the Bible” says.  

The term, in my personal conditioning, was: ‘nice.'  

Be nice and Jesus will love you.  

Be nice and people will like you. 

Be nice and……

Now, as a seasoned theologian,  I am realizing that term created a false idealism, within me, that lead to a big hole in my ministry and my life. 

I grew up thinking that the whole world should be nice.  I believed it was possible.

It is a lovely image.  One I still hold dear.

However, it is neither realistic nor possible.  And that truly upsets my long held paradigm on life and living together, in peace and harmony, in Jesus' name.

It actually gets in the way of how Jesus asks us to love.

Did you know that the term ‘nice’ is no where found in scripture — except in paraphrased versions of the Bible.

If you doubt that, I invite you to check it out.

Lately I have been doing a bit of research on the word ‘nice:’

To be nice, according Webster, is very interesting.  Look it up and you will find: “foolish,” “ignorant,” "Not-to-know.”     “Showing a fastidious or finicky tastes: particular, exacting in requirements of standards, possessing, marked by, or demanding great or excessive precision and delicacy.”   

Way down on the list is: “pleasing, agreeable, fitting, socially acceptable, well-bread, virtuous, respectable.”

Notice that the most insignificant definitions are at the lend of the list.

So I am thinking, ‘being nice’ carries with it a misconception of what Jesus is asking of you and me.

Lets look;

What Jesus taught consists of two major ingredients/rules:

Love God with your entire being.

Care for everyone like Jesus did.  

To me it means: don’t allow harm to come to anyone.

Do you get the tissue-paper-thin difference in loving — caring — for others ‘like’ Jesus did?  Over against bad, evil destructive behavior that stunts growth in others.

What Jesus taught entails more than being socially acceptable, well-bred, virtuous and respectable.”

There is something — something much more — that describes  Jesus' call to “love.”

And I'm thinking this something is describe, with much  more clarity, in the term: kind — kindness.

The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 1320- 1321) gives us this vision of what it means to be kind: 

The basic sense is: “excellent, useful, good, orderly, healthy, propitious, benefit, worthy, decent, honest, gentle, good-hearted, of good character.  

The Hebrew concept: God is all of the above and more.

The Greek concept combines all the above adjective into: “Divine kindness that allow space for repentance.”

My take on what — kindness means — is: genuine kindness does not seek reward — a halo to ware.

All of which, in my mind, means genuine, real, not fake.

More on this subject next time.