The False Gospel of Niceness

Why didn't John the Baptist know better?

Why did John the Baptist have to say something about Herod’s marriage (Matthew 14:3-4)?

A thriving ministry with a gigantic following got cut short just because he had to go and say something about the king’s personal life.

Maybe if he had been more “loving” he wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe if he had been more “loving” he could have found a way to explain why the Law didn’t actually mean what it said.

Maybe he hadn’t read enough Andy Stanley and Tim Keller books on cultural engagement. Maybe John didn’t realize that Herod wouldn’t care how much John knew until he knew how much John cared.

Maybe he would have kept his life and his freedom. If only he had just not been so confrontational, so unwinsome.

Yeah, maybe. But would it have been the right thing to do?

This is the difference between being nice and being loving.

Sometimes the only loving option is to step on toes and say the thing people don’t want to hear.

This does not mean we have license to hammer people over the head with truth, of course. The “in love” part of “the truth in love” can’t be forgotten (1 Corinthians 13:1, Ephesians 4:15). But in our day, saying the truth unlovingly is a far less common problem than “lovingly” refusing to say the truth (shout out once again to CS Lewis’ fire department).

In our culture of niceness, the preservation of the ego at all costs is what really matters. We dare not offend the god of self, and so it’s far more important to be nice than it is to be loving.

So, when somebody does violate the law of niceness, it’s typically condemned for two reasons:

Meanness

Some are so appalled that the sacred altar of niceness has been desecrated that they won’t even entertain tough discussions. Just shutting up and maintaining the status quo would be the nice thing to do. By implication, raising a counterpoint is being mean.

Think about it, though… have you ever had someone withhold valuable information because they were afraid of how you’d react? Between the person who will tell you a truth you might not like and the person who will tell you a comforting lie, which one really loves you and which one is actually being mean?

Divisiveness

Not only are confrontation and dissent seen as mean—they’re seen as sinfully divisive. We’d all have unity if you’d just be quiet, the thinking goes. But unity can only be built on truth, not the avoidance of it.

To quote Francis Schaeffer,

“Some Christians have supposed that the choice is between a revolutionary stance and some kind of reconciliation. The Christian, it is assumed, is to choose reconciliation. But we cannot have reconciliation in a world like ours unless something happens first. We are headed for the disaster I have described above, and no nice soft talk of reconciliation and the contentless word love is going to have any meaning in such a setting. We must have something stronger.

We must have a Christian revolution. Love, yes. But let us understand that if we are to have it, we need to know what it is… that God is not only a God of love, but a God of holiness. He is a God with character. Everything is not equally right before God, and because of this we have our absolutes and categories.”[1]

For example…

Consider, for example, some hot-button issues of our day, such as the importance of pursuing marriage and children. These discussions are seen as mean and unloving because they are controversial.

But as droves of Christian young people are now confronted with the possibility of wanting to get married and have children, but not being able to since putting them off until your 30s for travel and “finding yourself” don’t work, who’s being unloving? The person who holds up God’s design and warns that not following it will make the majority of people unhappy? Or the person who tries to shout down such discussions, resulting in so many unfulfilled people who wish someone had warned them?

Another “unloving” discussion has been about the responsibilities of parents to raise faithful children. Many demand we never review past mistakes to see what may have led children astray, implying that youth faithfulness is merely the luck of the draw. But as we continue to lose the majority in generation after generation, I don’t care how mean it is to bring it up—something has to change.

And again, who’s unloving? The person trying to break a horrific cycle, or the person who opposes any such efforts to protect their own feelings or the feelings of some offended group they claim to represent?

The fact is, the most controversial truths at a given moment are also the ones people most need to hear.

Niceness at the expense of truth only achieves short-term unity rather than true reconciliation. It does not save anybody. It does not help anybody. It is selfishness masquerading as love, and it’s time we stopped giving it legitimacy.

[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the 20th Century, Westchester: Crossway Books, 1985. Page 37.

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