Kindness and Truth

“Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.” Proverbs 3:3 (NASB).

Kindness without truth lacks definition; truth without kindness is devoid of life. Truth without grace is a body without a soul; kindness without knowledge and discernment is uninformed and uninforming.

Paul writes to the Philippians that their gentleness should be known to all men (Phil. 4:5), and he writes to Timothy that “The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient with wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition…” (2 Timothy 2:24 - 25). James writes that the wisdom from above is peaceful and gentle (James 3:17 - 18). In Psalm 18 David says to Yahweh, “Your gentleness has made me great.”

We live in anything but a gentle society, and sadly the professing church is often no different. We think that having the “truth” permits us to bludgeon others, but then our truth is no better than the truth of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day - it is a “truth” that crucifies.

Those who live in the truth of Jesus Christ are not interested in crucifying others, but they do seek to crucify themselves by the grace of God as they put to death, again by God’s grace, those elements within themselves that are antithetical to the nature of the Lamb of God.

In Proverbs 3:3 the father tells the son to not allow kindness and truth to leave him and to hold them closely to himself. Kindness helps to protect us against our propensity to be judgmental and condemning. This does not mean that we do not recognize sin as sin and evil as evil and good as good and truth as truth - but it does mean that our knowledge and discernment are exercised in charity and humility, without envy and with a desire for redemption. When a physician identifies an illness he does so to heal and not to kill.

When our society is engulfed in vitriol, from the highest levels of government to the lowest of the masses, we are a people most to be pitied. When professing Christians swim in these toxic waters what can we think but that the eagles now think themselves chickens pecking at the ground and living in dung, oblivious to their surroundings.

We are called to be kind, and if we cannot be kind then let us not speak, for to speak the truth without kindness is to pollute the truth and bring disgrace on Jesus Christ. We ought to fear the vitriol of society the way we should fear drinking water contaminated with dung - and if we would not give a neighbor contaminated water to drink, why would we give our neighbor contaminated truth? Why would we give our congregations contaminated truth?

The water that Christ gives us from His throne is pure water, undefiled; it is holy and sacred. The rivers of living water that He places within us are of the Holy Spirit - ought we not to fear introducing pollution into such Water?

While the idea that we should do “random acts of kindness” is admirable; the follower of Jesus Christ is called to live a life of kindness and truth, to be deliberate in his actions and thoughts, to be careful in his words and deeds - and to freely give his life for Christ and those around him. The life of a Christian is not to be random, but to be one of deliberate discipleship, denying himself, following Jesus, and blessing both the thankful and the unthankful, those who can see and those who can’t (Matthew 5:43ff).

When others drink from our lives...what does the water look like? What does it taste like? What are its effects? When we speak the truth is it flavored with kindness?

Are we a kind people?