Are we too nice?

I was reading the other day in a Christian magazine article a critique of Christians being perceived as “nice” – in particular, that we have far too often replaced the work “love” with “nice”. I think there is some truth in this.

So many churches seem to insist on being nice, being acceptable, being lovely people, that they forget the challenge that is a significant part of Christianity. Jesus was always challenging people – telling them to give up their wealth, or to pay back extortion charges. Jesus didn’t seem to take the “being nice” gospel to heart, so why should we?

Of course, there is a problem that we have Jesus' – and Paul's – words through 2000 years, different cultures, different languages. This means that we so often miss how rude they were to others. Calling someone a “whitewashed tomb” may not seem particularly bad, but it would have been extremely offensive. More like a polished turd in today’s language – this was not the sort of thing to call respected members of the temple.

I know there are some who would argue the opposite to this – that churches are not “nice” to them, because they have suffered so much at the hands of church members and leaders. Actually, this is, I think, another aspect of this “niceness” culture. If you don’t “fit in”, then you are “not nice”, and so must be driven away, because church is all about being “nice”. And you end up with the Stepford Wives church, where fitting in, behaving, conforming is what you do.

Christianity is radical. Christianity says that people of all sorts of divergent positions and views are all part of the same family. Christianity says that challenging the world, the systems, the structures, the wrong in the world is important. Christianity says that being offensive – calling people polished turds or foetid piles of excrement – is appropriate if that is how people are behaving.

It means that discussing the truth about priests who abuse young children should not be kept behind closed doors, for fear of having to discuss things that were not nice. Christianity is about facing up to the truth, declaring Gods truth and challenging the wrong, and doing this in strong terms. At the same time, it does not mean taking our own pathetic foibles, claiming divine approval for them, and abusing people who do not fit in. Lets be honest, nobody “fits in”. We need to accept that, not try to squeeze people into a mould.

So stop being “nice”. Or rather, stop claiming your “niceness” is Christian. Christianity isn’t nice.