Dispatch Faith: Kindness Is Not Optional, by Karen Swallow Prior:

The New Testament invokes an apt metaphor when it commands Christians to “clothe” ourselves with kindness. To be clothed in something suggests a quality that is both felt by the wearer and seen by others. Kindness is like this: It resides inside a person but is outwardly visible. … [A] growing body of research shows that people who are kind gain physical and mental health benefits. Kindness doesn’t just help the recipient of kindness but, it seems, it helps the person who is kind. …

Yet kindness is more than just a self-improvement plan. It is central to Christian teaching and the Christian life.

First, God himself is kind, as the scriptures state over and over. He who is himself love says that love is kind. God is characterized as exhibiting lovingkindness, having compassion for all he has made, and demonstrating his love for us by sending Christ to die for us when we were not deserving of such a sacrifice on our behalf.

Christians are likewise instructed to be kind: Christians are commanded in the Bible to be clothed, as already mentioned, in the qualities of mercy, humility, patience, and kindness. Additionally, the Apostle Paul says that Christians “must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.” Kindness often goes against our own nature, but because it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, Christians have help in developing it. Being kind demonstrates to others the very nature of God and marks our identity in God, showing we are of the same kind as him. Kindness is an outward expression of inward compassion. Kindness is, for the Christian, obedience to God and the display of his character through our bodies—our hands, feet, faces, eyes, wrinkles, and words—to all the world.

But what is kindness? It’s crucial to know what kindness is—and what it is not.

Kindness isn’t the same as being nice, which simply means being pleasant or agreeable. … Because kindness is a virtue, it must be tied to other virtues such as justice, courage, and prudence. Moreover, like all virtues, kindness moderates between an extreme of excess and an extreme of deficiency. Kindness is the balance between the vices of contrariness (or quarrelsomeness) and obsequiousness (or flattery). And, like all virtues, kindness has an opposing vice. Some assume the opposite of kindness is cruelty, but there is a longer tradition that, perhaps surprisingly, points to another vice as the one that directly opposes kindness: envy. 

While kindness is essentially good will toward another, envy is ill will. Thomas Aquinas defines envy, simply, as “sorrow for another’s good.” While good will leads naturally to acts of kindness, ill will leads easily to cruelty—actions that increase the suffering, rather than the joys, of the object of envy. Envy arises from vainglory, Aquinas observes, and produces “daughters” of its own. Envy leads to gossip and defamation, joy at another’s pain, and pain in another’s joy.

Kindness is rooted in the desire to love one’s neighbor. Envy is rooted in the desire to best one’s neighbor. Envy culminates in hatred. Before Cain murdered his brother Abel, he envied him. …

The failure to pursue kindness is not only a failure to live up to the doctrines and demands of the Christian faith, but unkindness—as both scientific research and the Bible show—ultimately harms the person who is unkind as well. …

The good news is that while kindness isn’t natural for most of us, it can, like all virtues, be cultivated through practice. Such practice requires exercise and intention. But, like a muscle, with practice kindness becomes easier, more natural and habitual. Even better news is research that shows that kindness is contagious. Kindness has ripple effects that go far beyond the initial act or gesture. But the same is true of cruelty too, unfortunately.

Kindness isn’t likely to stop wars, prevent violence, or satisfy the lusts of the envious heart. But like a leaven, kindness can make our lives and our world a bit lighter, a little more expansive, and lift all whom it touches—including the ones who wear it.

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