Last week I talked about who the church is, and one of the defining characteristics I discussed was a love for the church. Today I want to dive deeper into what that means, and more specifically, what it doesn’t mean.
C. S. Lewis differentiated between love and kindness in The Problem of Pain:
By Love, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy. And not happy in this way, or in that; just happy. What most of us mean by God is not so much a Father in Heaven, as a grandfather in heaven—a senile old benevolence who, as they say, liked to see the young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be said at the end of each day, that a good time was had by all.
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The mere kindness which tolerates anything except pain and suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. In other words, there is kindness in Love, but Love and kindness are not coterminous. When kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, only that it escapes suffering. Personally, I do not think that I should value much the “love” of a friend who cared only for comfort and happiness and did not object to my becoming dishonest.
I think this is related to my concept that love requires context. Kindness, at least in the way Lewis describes it, is removed from context. It seeks happiness for the moment. It hopes to erase the ugliness of pain and suffering and replace it with something we consider to be more beneficial.
As I considered this differentiation between love and kindness, my thoughts turned again to the fruit of the Spirit, which lists both. If one is good and the other is better, how can both be included in this list?
First, we have to remember that this list is translated for us, and kindness may not be the best word to use.
The Greek word Paul uses here is chréstotés, which is derived from another word that literally means “useful.” The concept here is to meet real needs, to come into a situation and seek the betterment of the other. To seek out and find tangible means of helping another.
I think perhaps sometimes we don’t truly mean this when we say “kind.”
Our English word is derived from Germanic origins, and was related to the term “kin” which is more directly seen in the other meaning of “kind,” which is “a group of people or things having similar characteristics.” I can see how the word might have taken on the connotations of how one treats family, and began to be used to describe that behavior.
By the time Lewis wrote the quote above, I think society had begun to segregate the concept from its familial roots, and dilute it to its current meaning – “having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature.”
In many ways, I think kindness as we’ve chosen to define it is extremely selfish.
I see something in another that I find distasteful or unpleasant, and I take action to eliminate it.
Without context, without understanding the situation that the object of our kindness finds themselves in, I cannot determine whether my wish to extract them from their circumstances, or at least lessen the brunt of its impact, will in fact be helpful.
God, in His great love for us, upon seeing us in our despair, and having the ability to end it, does…nothing.
God could always end our suffering. He doesn’t. And this is why the world doesn’t understand Him.
For us, suffering is useless. Pain is to be avoided. Misery and anguish are sicknesses to be cured.
But love knows differently. Love sees beyond the current struggle to the benefits only available on the other side of that dark and stormy night.
Love doesn’t always find another way. Sometimes Love walks side by side through the storm.
To the world, this might seem unkind. But in the truest sense of the original meaning of the term, we can only be kind when we treat others like family. When our actions prove useful and beneficial, not just in the here and now, but beyond the momentary pain we might selfishly or foolishly wish to eliminate.
True love seeks first to know. True kindness seeks first to understand.
Love without knowledge is infatuation. We love our idea of the other, not who they really are.
Kindness without understanding is selfish philanthropy. We seek to eliminate in others that which we don’t wish for ourselves without considering what is best for them.
Adam desmond 