Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness, Goodness
Opening illus.: Don Duncan, Lisa Buell.
Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. It involves actions that are motivated by compassion and empathy, often intended to benefit others without expecting anything in return.
Synonyms: Compassion, Benevolence, Generosity, Warmth, Gentleness, Sympathy, Charitableness
Antonyms: Cruelty, Harshness, Meanness, Hostility, Selfishness, Apathy, Indifference Goodness refers to the quality of being morally right or virtuous. It encompasses integrity, honesty, and the inclination to do what is ethically correct, often linked with moral excellence and righteousness.
Goodness refers to the quality of being morally right or virtuous. It encompasses integrity, honesty, and the inclination to do what is ethically correct, often linked with moral excellence and righteousness.
Synonyms: Virtue, Righteousness, Integrity, Honesty, Morality, Uprightness, Decency Antonyms: Wickedness, Evil, Immorality, Corruption, Vice, Dishonesty, Malevolence Sinfulness
OT equivalent of kindness and goodness in a nutshell – (“marked as ‘holiness’ everywhere in my Bible”): “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” (Ps. 103:8) Basic form also found in Exodus 34:6-7, Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2. Eight times!
Kindness (chrestotēs): Emphasizes a gentle, compassionate nature and disposition towards others realized not by feelings, but action.
John Gottman, one of the world’s leading researchers on marital relationships, looks for the presence of contempt or kindness within the marriage. Here’s what the research has found:
Contempt is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder-deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally-damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill their partner’s ability to fight off viruses and cancers.
Being mean is the death knell of relationships.
Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness is [one of] the most important predictors of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated —feel loved.
A line from Shakespeare captures the spirit of kindness: “The more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.
Source: Emily Esfahani Smith, “Masters of Love,” The Atlantic (6-12-14)
“To be kind you must swerve from your path.” True of marriages and true of every other relationship on earth. Kindness takes effort.
But…there are benefits!…
“When we act kindly, the systems in our brain associated with reward light up, the same ones active when we eat chocolate. They make us want to do that same awesome thing again.” -Jamil Zaki, associate professor of psychology at Stanford University
Goodness (agathösyne): Emphasizes moral integrity and the active outworking of the kind nature in the pursuit of doing good deeds.
Harriet Tubman (1822-1913). We were up in Ohio recently and learned that in the community we were in was a house used extensively as part of the Underground Railroad.
Slaves trying to escape through Ohio to a boat on Lake Erie that would take them to freedom in Canada. As you know, one of the escaped slaves of that era who became a leading abolitionist was a woman named Harriet Tubman showed both kindness and goodness by leading over 300 enslaved people to freedom through those houses and other places. Her courage and compassion were instrumental in the fight against slavery.
William Wilberforce (1759-1833) A British politician and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade, Wilberforce’s goodness was evident in his relentless pursuit of justice and human rights. His efforts led to the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which ended slavery in most of the British Empire.
Biblical:
- Jesus and the Adulterous Woman (John 8:1-11)
Jesus shows kindness by protecting the woman caught in adultery from being stoned and goodness by instructing her to leave her life of sin.
Jesse Owen’s German friend Luz Long:
“Luz” Long held the European long jump record in 1936. Jesse had fouled twice while attempting to qualify for the long jump event. He had only one attempt left. Luz shared a technique with Jesse that helped him to qualify on his last jump. In the finals of the long jump competition Jesse jumped 8.06 meters to win; Luz finished second with a jump of 7.87 meters. Luz was the first to congratulate him. After the award ceremony Jesse and Luz walked arm in arm through the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
Luz Long, as you might imagine, was sternly spoken to by Nazi Party officials after his time spent with Jesse. Hitler was trying to make an Aryan point at those Olympics and Jesse Owens was messing up the narrative. Nonetheless, Jesse and Luz became friends at the Olympics and corresponded for years after that. Jesse would say of his Olympic friendship with Luz,
“It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler… You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating for the twenty-four karat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment.”
Luz’s last letter to Jesse in 1942 or 1943, probably written from North Africa where Luz was in the German Wehrmacht, spoke to the friendship they had:
I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father,” Long wrote.
My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is a something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying-tell him how things can be between men on this earth.
If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true. That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer.
Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade.
And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship.
I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse.
I think I might believe in God.
And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words / write will still be read by you.
Your brother,
Luz
Carl “Luz” Long was wounded in Sicily on July 10, 1943, during the Allied invasion of Sicily in Operation Husky (July 9 – August 17, 1943). He died on July 14 in a British military hospital there.