Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland discusses the difference between kindness and niceness. He emphasizes that while niceness is about being polite and agreeable, kindness is about mercy in action. Derek shares personal stories and examples from the life of Jesus to illustrate the distinction between the two. He also highlights how Jesus confronted religious hypocrisy and advocated for the protection of children, showing that kindness sometimes requires confronting evil and injustice. Derek concludes by reminding listeners that while we may not always appear nice, we should always strive to be kind.
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
Luke 17:1-2
Matthew 23:23-28
Mark 7:5-8
Mark 11:15-18
Ephesians 4:15
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland. And thank you for joining me for this episode here at Peaceable and Kind. We are creating Christian content that lends itself to peaceableness and kindness I don’t know if you have noticed, but it seems like to me, whenever we find ourselves in that presidential election season it just brings out the ugliness in people. And so it feels like, for me at least, that what we need in our world is a lot more peaceableness and kindness. And so here we are creating Christian content that leads us to that kind of life. That’s the kind of world I want to live in. I want to live in a world of peaceableness and kindness. And so if you are interested in Christian content like this, Let me encourage you to perhaps share this podcast episode with someone that you know. And if you haven’t left us a rating or review, we love those. And if you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. We appreciate that very much Today on Peaceable and Kind, I want to talk about the difference between kindness and niceness. Because when we talk about a peaceable and kind life, some people assume that means that, well, we just have to be nice and polite all the time. And I advocate for civility, politeness, you know, I taught my children growing up. uh to say thank you and uh to to express uh politeness, think about other people and to be polite in the way that you talk, but Peacemaking in the way of Jesus is not always just being nice. Now, for me personally, I think I am a nice guy, I hope at least the people I interact with would say, yeah, Derek, he’s he’s pretty nice. I think I’ve I’ve always been nice. um always been a gracious kind of person. I mean, I’m nice as long as I’m not tired, hungry, or stressed I think that’s my default is to stay nice as long as I’m not tired, hungry, or stressed. If I’m stressed, I get really mean and I don’t like that. I recognize that. If I have to put together IKEA furniture, for example, I do not turn into a nice person at all. I go from hungry to hangry pretty fast. So if I find myself in a morning meeting that was supposed to be two hours, And it lingers to three and a half hours into the noon hour, watch out. I’m no longer Mr. Nice Guy So I I I think that that that’s who I am by nature, but I’ve learned in following Jesus that Walking in his ways of peace and peacemaking doesn’t mean we’re always nice That sometimes kindness, which I’ve defined as mercy in motion, requires us to confront evil, injustice, bullies, things that are trying to destroy a peaceable and kind world Now, I have only been in one fight in my entire life growing up. I mean, I’ve only found myself in one fist fight. Now, I’m not advocating for this. I, in raising kids, would always say when my kids were little, your hands are not for hitting, your hands are for hugs. So I’m not advocating for physically fighting, but I did find myself in one fight when I was a kid. Let me tell you the story. I grew up here in northwest Missouri, but the two years before living in St. Joseph, Missouri. I lived in Ypsilani, Michigan, just outside of Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is. And I had two friends that got brand new BMX racing bikes. And I would bike the neighborhood with them, but I had a Western Flyer bicycle. Do you remember the Western Flyer Bicycles? Now this is. This is dating myself. You have to go back to the 70s and 80s to remember the Western Flyer bicycles. They had the banana seat. And they had the the big kind of schwumping handlebars that sometimes would have streamers coming out of them. And my Western Flyer with that banana seat had gotten so rusted that my dad had sanded it down and spray painted it. And he asked me, what color do you want me to paint your bike? and I said spray paint it blue. So I had this old, rusted out blue Western Flyer, and my two buddies had these nice chrome shiny BMX racing bikes. And my dad noticed that, and my dad took pity on me. And out of the blue, after school one day, I was probably in the third or fourth grade. My dad took me to a department store and bought me a brand new BMX bike. And so I was biking with my buddies and I was so proud of this chrome shiny bike. And near our neighborhood, there was a small wooded area that someone had built a mountain bike track with hills and jumps, and it was a it was a dirt track that made a loop. And me and my two buddies, we were out biking on that loop. And we had gone around the loop two, maybe three times, and we were coming around, I think the third or fourth time to the the start, which was kind of a big cleared out area. And out of the woods jumped these three guys. And you know, in my mind, I’m I was you know third, fourth grade, you know, I’m whatever, 10, 11, 12 years old. These kids look like giants And they jumped out and each of them grabbed the back of our bicycle seats, slowing us down. And I remember looking at this guy, and he was bigger than me, and he said, let me ride your bike. And as I Still do as an adult, I get hyper rational. And I’m like, oh, I can’t let you ride my bike. My dad just gave me this bike and he won’t let me share it with anybody else. I’m sorry I can’t do that. And he said, you know, let me ride that bike or I’m gonna beat the bleep out of you. Well, then my heart kind of drops into my stomach and I stood there frozen. I was straddling my bike with my hand on the handlebars, not knowing what to do. And the guy begins to wail on me. He’s just beaten me in my head, just like blow after blow. And as you will understand, stories like this always get a little fuzzy. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, except that he walked over to his other two buddies who were messing with my other two friends. And then I turned and looked and he was walking back towards me. And it was just a moment where that fight or flight instinct kicked in and it wasn’t to fly. It was to fight. And I throw the bike down to the ground and I said, if you want my bike, come get it. Now I had been taking jujitsu. And so I knew how to throw a front punch, but we were always taught that punching and fighting was always a last resort. And so as he’s walking towards me, I felt my body going into a punching stance. I slightly bent my knees. and my knees rip over my toes. And as he came towards me, I just gave a front punch as hard as I could. And because he was bigger than me, my front punch landed uh landed right in his stomach, and I knocked the wind out of me. and he doubles over and honestly I was just shocked that I landed a punch and I didn’t know what to do at that point. But then it kicked in, okay, I’ve neutralized the threat Let’s get on this bike and and ride off. So I jump on my bike and I start riding away and I look at my other two friends and they had always kind of been tough guys. They went to a different school. They were kind of known as school bullies. And they uh looked at me and they were crying, please don’t leave us, don’t leave us. And I just yelled at them, hop on your bike, let’s go. And they followed me and we rode off, safe and sound Now, as I told that story, people are like, if you punched a guy in the gut and he doubled over, why didn’t you kick him in the face? And I always say, because that’s not who I am. I I’m I’m really a lover. I’m not a fighter uh but that moment I landed one punch and it let me get away uh scot free. Now again I’m not advocating for fist fighting. I’m just telling you in that moment That’s what happened to me. The nice guy, the nice kid was able to land a punch and escape. But what about Jesus? Now Jesus does not teach us to fight. Jesus teaches us the ways of peace. And kindness was seen in the life of Jesus, and as we have seen, kindness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It’s what the Holy Spirit is doing within us. And there is a difference between kindness and niceness. Again, from my point of view, my definition, kindness is mercy in motion Nice or niceness, at least according to Webster’s dictionary, means to be polite or pleasant or agreeable. So niceness is just trying to get everyone to get along. Now, kindness and niceness, they do have a bit of an overlap, but there’s also distinctions. Kindness expresses mercy even if it upsets some folks, where niceness wants to just keep everybody happy Kindness is an action. Kindness is something that we do. Niceness can often be a facade. Niceness can be a bit of a front that’s covering up our true feelings. See, kindness at least from a Jesus perspective, sees injustice and does something about it. Niceness sees injustice and shrugs, smiles, and pretends it’s not there. Kindness seeks to alleviate suffering where niceness ignores suffering. Kindness will ask, how can I help? Where niceness says, I’m okay, you’re okay. And Jesus, who I would say was kind, wasn’t always nice in that sense of just saying everyone’s okay, let’s just play nice. I’m okay. You’re okay. Jesus saved his sharpest critique and his sharpest language for two groups of people For people practicing religious hypocrisy and for those who harm children. I mean, if you think Jesus is just a nice guy, you start bringing up kids getting hurt or hardened, and you’ll see that Jesus is not a nice guy. In Luke chapter 17, this is verses 1 and 2, uh Jesus is telling his disciples Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come. Jesus said, It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble Jesus loved children, received children, blessed children, and advocated for the protection of children This is the kindness of Jesus, was to watch out for those that are vulnerable in society, the poor, children, widows. And if you start messing with kids, you’re going to see, well, what the kindness of Jesus really looks like. You start messing with kids and you’re going to hear really strong language from Jesus. So Jesus would confront those that would cause children harm, and Jesus also confronted the religious hypocrisy of his day. Jesus would not play nice with religious hypocrites. Now, one of the amazing things about Jesus is that he showed mercy and kindness to sinners I mean, if you’re going to sin, go ahead and be honest about it. Now, Jesus did not want people to go on sinning, but if a person was honest about their sin, not trying to hide it, Jesus would extend mercy. Because it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance. Cruelty and harshness towards sinners is not going to cause them to change. It’s the love of God. It’s the kindness of God. It was the mercy of Jesus that attracted sinners to him. Isn’t that interesting? That it would be sinful people that were attracted to Jesus. It was highly religious people who would often question Jesus. And it was the Pharisees in particular that Jesus wouldn’t play nice with. Now, Jesus spoke pretty harshly. when it came to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But in its first century Jewish context, the Pharisees would have been Jesus’ own people. There were different Jewish sects in the first century. There were different groups of Jewish people that had different values. There were the zealots, there were the Essenes, there were the Sadducees. You hear in the Gospels a lot about the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were a purity movement. They wanted God’s people to obey God’s laws. And in order to obey God’s laws, they would add extra rules, extra laws, extra traditions. To make sure everyone was doing what was right. They were a purity movement. But it was all focused on external behaviors And they avoided dealing with the heart issues. And these were Jesus’ people. This was his group. Jesus and his family would have belonged to this Pharisee movement. So when you see Jesus calling out the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, know that he is not calling out enemies. He’s calling out his own people. And he would not at all play nice with their hypocrisy. So in Matthew 23 Jesus very famously gives these woes, these words of warning to the Pharisees. And let me just read some of them to you. I want to start Matthew 23 with verse 23 and read through verse 28. This is Jesus not playing so nice with the Pharisees. Jesus says, Matthew 23, 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you tithe Mint, Dil, and Cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others, you blind guides. You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel Wow, that is strong language from Jesus. The word that he uses, hypocrites, literally means actors on a stage. For Pharisees, they were playing the role of the good, Jewish, pure law-abiding Jewish citizen. They were playing a role. It was all for show. It was all external. And so they would tithe. That is, they would give 10% of everything, including their spice cabinet. They would not just give 10% of their money, they could look at their spice cabinet and get 10% of all their spices and even give that, which Jesus says is great. But in doing things like tithing out of your spice rack, they were neglecting the weightier matters, the more important matters, the matters of the law that start in the heart, things like justice, a desire to see people treated justly. Things like mercy, things like faith, these were more internal virtues, and they neglected those Well, Jesus goes on, verse 25. Jesus says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup. and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean. The Pharisees wanted an external shiny surface. They wanted to look clean on the inside. And so Jesus uses this imagery of a cup, which is beautifully clean on the outside, but on the inside is full of mold and dead cockroaches. Full of greed and indulgence. And so Jesus does want to emphasize the external appearance In other words, Jesus does care about how we actually live in the world and what we do and what we don’t do, but Jesus says the priority is to clean the inside of the cup first. Last one, this is Matthew 23, verses 27 and 28. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness Again, Jesus wasn’t always nice. This is not Jesus playing nice at all. Jesus here describes the Pharisees as whitewashed tunes. Bright and shiny on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones. Again, Jesus is concerned about the exterior But more than that, Jesus wants to see our hearts being renewed. That’s his point in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes the law and shows how we have to deal with the heart issues. In other words, our heart has to be right so that we can live out. uh things like righteousness and justice. But it starts with the heart. At another point in dealing with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, this is in Mark chapter seven, Jesus is responding to a question where the Pharisees say, Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? So apparently the disciples of Jesus weren’t following the ritualistic hand washing that Jewish Pharisees would do. And so Jesus responds, this is Mark 7, verse 6. He said to them, Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written. This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. And then Jesus says, you abandon the commandment of God to hold to human tradition. In all of this, Jesus doesn’t cease to be kind. Jesus, in confronting the Pharisees, does it with really strong language But the motivation is mercy. He wants to challenge them so that they can see their own hypocrisy and begin to walk in the ways of God. So Jesus remains kind, but isn’t always nice. And people, when we start talking about this, will often ask about Jesus in the temple. overturning the tables of the money changers. See, people who get a little weary of Jesus and his mercy giving and his peacemaking will say, finally. We get to see the real Jesus who goes into that table or goes into that temple, flipping over their tables and really showing them what God is about. Well, I think we have to imagine that scene of Jesus in the temple in the right way. Because was Jesus going into the temple and overturning the tables of the money changers? Was he doing that in a mafia-style act of intimidation? Or was it something different? I think Jesus in doing that, well, first we can say Jesus wasn’t playing nice If Jesus just wanted to be a nice guy, he would let them stay in the temple selling their stuff, and he would let their business go on undeterred. But Jesus goes in, drives out all the animals that were being sold, and completely shuts down their operation, at least for a day. So Jesus wasn’t playing nice in the temple, but I don’t think he was necessarily trying to be intimidating. I think something else was happening. I think what Jesus was doing was he was acting out a prophecy This is something that the Old Testament prophets would do all the time. Think about Jeremiah, the Old Testament Jeremiah. At one point, he was told to bury his loincloth. Let it sit in the ground for thirty days and dig it back up. Yes, this would be a reference to his underwear. Jeremiah was told Bury your underwear in the ground and dig it back up. He digs it back up and it is soiled and it’s beginning to disintegrate. And God says to Jeremiah, and so Israel and Judah. Will be disintegrated. This was a prophecy that was acted out referring to the pending exile of God’s people. What about Ezekiel? You can read about Ezekiel, the prophet in the Old Testament. He had to lay on his side for a certain number of days. He had to build a fire out of petrified fecal matter. It’s in there. Go to Ezekiel. You can read all about it. So these Hebrew prophets would often have to do things to act out a prophecy. And so I think this is what Jesus was doing in the temple. He was acting out a prophecy. The temple was about to come to an end. The temple as the Jewish people knew it. Because Jesus was going to embody Israel’s story and mission And through his death and burial and resurrection, Jesus was going to recreate Israel. The people of God would be renewed, and it would be made up of Jewish people and non-Jewish people. And these people would become the church. These people would become the temple in which God’s Spirit would dwell And so Jesus in the temple is not necessarily an example for us to follow. We’re not called to overturn tables any more than we’re called to lay on our side, build a fire out of poop, or bury our underwear. Rather, Jesus in the temple is a one-off demonstration and prophecy about how the temple was about to change. We follow Jesus in the ways of peacemaking, which does mean at time we have to call out our own people. When we fall into immorality, idolatry, injustice, and certainly hypocrisy Niceness is not an excuse to ignore the truth We do speak the truth, but we have to do so in love. Ephesians 4:15 says, speaking the truth in love We must grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ. So when we speak the truth We do so as an act of kindness, not in a way that tears people down or condemns people. Even if our words challenge people, it’s always to encourage people to turn to Jesus and to walk in his ways. So we won’t always be nice. We won’t always appear nice, but we always want to be kind. We always want to walk in the ways of Jesus. We always want to walk in those ways of mercy in motion. Well, that’s it. That’s all we have for today.
Guest: Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.