Friday, July 26, 2013

Pseudo Kindness (Thoughts Spawned by Today's Chesterton Line)

He was a kind man, and had also that bad imitation of kindness, the dislike of any difficulty or scene.

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2011-03-30). The Innocence of Father Brown (p. 35).  Kindle Edition. 

Was Jesus kind? All the gospel accounts lead one to answer that He was. But His wasn't pseudo kindness, the sort that Chesteron intimates here, the sort in which people affect a placid or smiling air beneath quenched teeth, or shush a child crying in pain, or ignore wrongs.

Jesus' kindness wasn't about smiling and hoping everybody had a good time. That is pseudo kindness, a contemptible sort of imbecility that will never stand the scrutiny of heaven. It was precisely because Jesus' kindness was authentic that, even as He loved, He made Himself "unpleasant," confronting sin, condemning injustice, protecting sinners, and scorning the self-righteous. He still does these things today.

A pseudo kind Jesus would have avoided making a scene and so, left us hopelessly and eternally imprisoned to our sin. Thank God, He made scenes--including the scene of greatest self-sacrifice and love ever enacted, on the cross--and so rendered the greatest kindness of all: Salvation by grace for all sinners who turn from sin and believe in Christ.

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