Farewell to niceness

I was intrigued to see that the Church of England has downgraded St Jerome’s Feast Day, so that it is now simply ‘a commemoration.’ The 4th century Christian was a brilliant scholar, but apparently was difficult to live with. One churchman, Dr Andrew Lenox-Conyngham has criticised the Church for making this change simply because Jerome was not ‘a very nice person.’ 

The decision implies that to be a Christian is to be nice whereas, says Dr Lenox-Conyngham ‘the object of religion is holiness not niceness.’

This week, January 18th- 25th is the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which I think is more about recognising and expressing what already unites us than about creating unity. For the very fact which makes each of us Christian is a living connection with the Spirit of Jesus. Moment by moment we are loved by God, and in our better moments we respond in love to God.

Unity is not about everyone believing exactly the same stuff, or agreeing on every moral issue: it’s certainly not about uniting denominations.  Rather it’s about listening to others, understanding why they believe as they do, respecting that while being free to disagree. It’s about discovering that Jesus has friends everywhere, about learning to love and trust, to be loved and trusted.

But this is not love simply as a warm feeling, but love as committed action, helping others and standing with them. We are called to be much more than simply ‘nice’.

I wonder if we Christians sometimes appear to be saying ‘If only we all loved one another, everything would be OK.’  It seems to me that mere talk of ‘love’ seems irrelevant in a world where Nigerians are being massacred by Boko Haram, children enlisted as soldiers and suicide bombers by Islamic State, women assaulted and raped, human beings trafficked and enslaved, teenagers destroyed by cyberbullying, men addicted to pornography and a thousand other darknesses.

Against this background, being ‘nice’ simply doesn’t hack it. But then Jesus was not always ‘nice’.  Those sharp, insightful remarks which showed you where you were going wrong. Those strong-worded criticisms of hypocrisy – today Jesus confronts those of us who turn our backs on the Spirit of Christ while proclaiming the purity of our beliefs. That moment of chaos in the Temple when Jesus raged against those who were profiting from religion.

Human terms are all we have to describe God. God is not like us, but describing God in human terms is the closest we can get to the Mystery.  God loves us boundlessly. But that very love makes God angry, implacably opposed to the darkness in history and in our time, as a parent turns on the man who threatens their child. God is angry when peoples’ lives are broken by cruelty, arrogance, greed, by hopelessness and by the cycle of despair which circles from one generation to the next. God the Lion roars.

So as Christians, truly loving one another and loving the world involves being less than ‘nice’. We will cast off our tepid niceness and roar with God. We will reach out to rescue those who are broken, and to confront darkness wherever we find it, wherever we have an influence, standing against it.

I used to think that as you grew older, and saw many things and learned many things and thought many things, so you grew wise. There is some truth in that. But I believe the best wisdom about what to say and how to act is given to us by God, moment by moment as we humbly seek it. It’s the same source of wisdom Jesus perpetually relied on.

Actually, I think Dr Lenox-Conyngham may be wrong about St Jerome. Aspects of his behaviour seem to have been unappealing. Not every lack of ‘niceness’ can be celebrated, but instead needs burned away and redeemed. But for me personally, ‘niceness’ is default mode, and I need to bid it farewell.  I need to be both more than ‘nice’ in the quality of my love for others, and less than ‘nice’  in unashamedly confronting darkness.

There are tears in the eyes of the angry God, and they are not tears of frustration, but tears of love. For God loves the very darkest of us and in Christ has made it possible for our brainwashed thinking to be unscrambled, our conflicted hearts refocused so that we are brought into joy and light.

And to all of us who haven’t completely excluded God comes the faintest whisper calling us to a better way, calling us to the embrace, manly and brotherly, of the Spirit of Jesus. And these whispers will be communicated through our lives as Christians if only we can learn to stop being so blandly nice.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 22nd January 2015)