cult of agreeableness<\/a>. <\/p>\nPlaying nice or showing love?<\/h2>\n
Look at the etymology of the word. \u201cNice\u201d basically means to be ignorant, to not know. It means to be polite by looking away, by playing dumb, by pretending things are not amiss. It\u2019s the virtue of those who never \u201cjudge.\u201d It\u2019s also a lousy substitute for love. <\/p>\n
A man blows his top and yells at his wife. The nice thing to do is to feign not seeing. The loving thing involves letting him know he\u2019s out of line. A woman says she\u2019s finally made peace with a besetting sin; she\u2019s finally being true to herself. The nice thing to do is validate and affirm. The loving thing to do encourage her to resume the battle and help her shoulder her difficult cross. Niceness enables the addict. Love stages the intervention. Niceness holds its tongue. Love sometimes raises its voice \u2014 not always, but definitely sometimes. It has too.<\/p>\n
The obvious fact is that these virtues bear only shallow similarities, which is how a loving Christ can be both gentle on the one hand and fierce on the other. And if you\u2019ve read the Gospels you know he can be fierce. Being fierce isn\u2019t nice. But sometimes it is loving. <\/p>\n
Heaping bogus burdens<\/h2>\n
When Jesus commands us not to judge, remember the context. The Pharisees are legalists who parse every action in relation to their precious accretions to, and self-beneficial interpretations of, the law of Moses. They pile up burdens on men\u2019s backs, says Jesus, and drag them down by the weight without lifting a finger to help. <\/p>\n
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus laying down a new law, one that contradicts the false law of the Pharisees. Jesus is not saying it\u2019s wrong to have an opinion and voice it. After all, what dominates Jesus\u2019 exchanges with the Pharisees except pointing out their errors? He\u2019s saying that we cannot condemn our brothers as the Pharisees do, which is to say unjustly, unfairly, and unrighteously. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s entirely possible to love someone while criticizing and even accusing them. Jesus did it. Paul did, too. Paul loved his churches like a father. On occasion he spoke to them like badly behaving children. It wasn\u2019t exactly nice, but neither was it judgmental and unloving. Nonetheless, based on our popular conceptions of what\u2019s judgmental and what\u2019s loving, about a third of the New Testament should be returned to the editor.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s really at stake here?<\/h2>\n
Christians face a culture that is fundamentally against them \u2014 a materialistic, mendacious, and murderous culture that rewards selfish aggrandizement, affirms self-serving delusions, and defends the marginalization and destruction of human life when it threatens our self-interest. To defend its corrupt prerogatives, it insists on tolerance and agreeableness. But call it out for what it is and see just how tolerant and agreeable it really is. <\/p>\n
It is regrettably easy for Christians to be co-opted by this culture and simultaneously think they\u2019re acting as paragons of Christian virtue. They do so unknowingly, uncritically, but they do so nonetheless. The result? Delusion spreads. Error goes unchallenged. And truth takes a drubbing. All the while, we think we\u2019re doing the right thing.<\/p>\n
This aspect of our culture is as insidious as its elevation of constant agreeableness is insipid. We can play nice and let it ride. Or we can be loving and oppose it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you follow the conversations and events of our day, it\u2019s clear that our contemporary culture values agreeableness over truth. Christians have fallen for this as well because the greatest Christian virtue is love, and love is patient, kind, etc. In other words, love comes off as pretty agreeable. It\u2019s not going to interrupt. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1270,"featured_media":2809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32,417,470,486,542,673],"class_list":["post-2474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-agreeableness","tag-love","tag-mormonism","tag-niceness","tag-politics","tag-the-cult-of-agreeableness"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>