How often do we wake up in the morning and tell ourselves we are going to spend the day loving the way Jesus loved us and calls us to love others? How often do we walk down the hall in our schools and in our work places and say hello to people we don't know, or force ourselves to talk to the person in the office that we don't particularly like and convince ourselves that what we are doing is equivalent to loving the way we as Christians are called to love. It’s important to note that Kindness and Love are not the same thing. If the Good Samaritan chose to respond to the man in the ditch with kindness instead of love we would have a much different story. Had he acted in kindness and not love, instead of pulling the man out of the ditch, taking him to an inn and paying for everything he needs to get better, he would at the most have pulled him out of the ditch, dusted him off and gone on his marry way. Kindness is not the same as Love, It doesn't have the same intentions and it is incapable of yielding the same results.
Obviously I'm not saying that kindness is Anti-Christian or that it shouldn't be practiced, what I'm saying is being kind is easier than loving one another in a Christ-like way, and on the surface it’s difficult to see the difference between the two. When people have trouble telling the difference between love and kindness, it leads them to choose the easier of the two. While most of us are unwilling to admit this, we as human beings crave acknowledgment. We want our peers and the people in our lives to tell us we are doing a good job. So if acting in Christian Love gets you the same acknowledgement as acting in kindness, but acting in kindness is so much easier, which one do you think most people will choose? The answer is clearly that they will chose kindness.It allows them to receive the same amount of acknowledgement from the important people in their lives without putting in the same amount of effort. This becomes Lazy Christianity.
According to Nicholas Wolterstorff in his book Justice In Love, Christian love is defined by whether or not your actions promote the flourishing of another person. When we act solely out of kindness we run the risk of acting out of a sense of acknowledgment instead of out of a desire to promote one's flourishing. Walking alongside Jesus Christ means going the extra mile just as Christ did. There is no casual or easy way to live a Christ centered life. If you are confusing kindness with love and choosing one over the other because one is easier, that’s when you know you have a problem. Live first for the LOVE of others and the desire to better their lives. Not just to be nice. That is how we live like Christ.
