![]() He is this games version of The Strange Man. Perhaps we could be both more robust and more forgiving when people get it wrong? There’s a radical Christlike idea!ĭavid Robertson is Director of the evangelistic project in Sydney and blogs at Red Dead Redemption 2, there's a blind beggar that Arthur calls a prophet in his journal. It appears that the church doesn’t do it all that well either. It is ironic that it has taken a non-Christian such as Douglas Murray to point out in his The Madness of Crowds that modern society does not do forgiveness. I have come across people who, although often robust in their own words, find it easy to be offended and difficult to forgive. It is possible to respect people, to be gentle and to be robust.Īnother danger is that we as Christians sometimes adopt the approach that if you are not nice to me then you have committed the unforgiveable sin. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander (1 Peter 3:15-16). We need to stand up to the verbal bullies, speak up for Christ and His honour and be prepared to always give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Christians far too often come across as stupid and coy even though we think we are coming across as pleasant and agreeable. This is using nice in the sense of the original Latin nescius – ‘ignorant’. ![]() But we have to beware of allowing ourselves to be intimidated by the postmodern touchy-feely mantra of you can say whatever you want, just don’t hurt my feelings, or appear to be not nice. This is not to argue that rudeness, abusiveness and abrasiveness are ‘qualities’ to be condoned, far less cultivated. I suspect that in today’s world, various Christian advisors would advise him to tone down the rhetoric and encourage him to be more Christlike! When Jesus pointed this out, His audience forgot His gracious words and were so angry they tried to throw Him off a cliff! Elijah was not sent to an Israelite widow but to the widow of Zarephath, and the only person cleansed of leprosy was not any of the many Israelite lepers, but Naaman the Syrian. In fact He told them that they would never accept what He had said, and stated that they were like the Israelites in the time of Elijah and Elisha. In response to their statement, ‘isn’t this Joseph’s son’, Jesus wasn’t exactly nice. The people all spoke well of Him and were amazed at His gracious words – what a model for today’s preachers!īut then it got complicated. Who would not, whether in first-century Nazareth, or 21st-century Newcastle, nod in approval at such words?! Jesus told His hearers that this Scripture was fulfilled that day in their hearing. The bit about being sent to proclaim good news to the poor, the prisoners, the oppressed and the blind. ![]() Going into the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read from Isaiah 61. My wife and I were recently struck reading through the Gospel of Luke by the impact of what was probably Jesus’s first sermon (Luke 4:14-30). Surely Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal, Paul telling the Galatian circumcisers to go the whole way and emasculate themselves, and Jesus telling the Pharisees they were of their father the devil, were not exactly ‘nice’? The irony for me is that those who complain that being robust in this way is not Christlike, end up condemning Christ for not being like Himself! There are Christians who, every time you ‘robustly’ challenge a position, immediately state: ‘That’s not nice and you won’t win people for Jesus like that.’ When you are accused of being ‘not nice’ there really is no response – except perhaps to point out that it’s not nice to make it! The problem here is that so many Christians get confused between the fruit of the Spirit and niceness. However, it is when niceness means you can never say anything which would ‘hurt’ someone’s feelings that it becomes not just bland, but also anti-Christian. Surely that is what we want to be as we seek to adorn the gospel? I’ve come across some ‘nasty’ preachers in my time and it certainly doesn’t incline me to listen to them. There is a strong case for being nice – not least because its opposite is perceived as nasty.Īccording to the OED, ‘nice’ = ‘pleasant, agreeable or attractive’. The latter certainly has a Biblical precedent, but I wonder if it should be confused with ‘niceness’? Sometimes other words are used which express the same idea – ‘winsome’ or ‘gracious’. ‘If you can’t say something nice, say nothing’. Or, expressed in its negative form, ‘That’s not nice’.
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