Thinking Out Loud: Is Kindness Still Good?

Thinking Out Loud is a column exploring the intersection of Christianity and modern parenting. Here, I'll share candid, but sometimes unpopular, thoughts on the joys and challenges of raising children to love Christ. The series is recorded via voice memo and edited and condensed for clarity.

I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness lately. For modern parents, there’s been a huge emphasis on cultivating kindness among our children and the positive impact it can have in our communities. This could be tied to growing social media use among youth, bullying, or just part of the goal to raise emotionally intelligent children.

One day, I decided to pay attention to how often I’d ask my kids to “be kind,” or use “kind” words—it was a lot. But I wasn’t sure it had any real impact on how they behaved. To be fair, they are two and three, so I had to be realistic with my expectations, but I referenced it so much, I felt like I should see something. Even though, I had no idea what that something could be.

That’s what’s so tricky about kindness, we define it so broadly it's hard to qualify. It can be an act, an attitude, a posture—it’s probably easier to define what kindness isn’t at this point. I’m reminded of a C.S. Lewis quote from his book "The Problem of Pain" that addresses this a bit. How making kindness sort of a “pet” virtue has rendered it meaningless— a term we throw around to feel better about our vices:

“The real trouble is that ‘kindness’ is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds…Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that ‘his heart’s in the right place’ and ‘he wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble." -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

It’s an interesting opinion considering one of the more notable biblical references to kindness is in Paul’s letter to the Galatians introducing the fruits of the spirit. Here, we see kindness sandwiched between love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It dawned on me that I’d never expected my kids to model these traits nearly as often as I expected them to be kind. If I’m really being honest, I’d never mentioned most of them. I wanted to raise kind children, but it wasn’t my goal to only cultivate kindness. I could only imagine what that might look like.

I didn't have to wonder too long because I found a few examples in "Winnie the Pooh," of all places—I know, but hear me out. All the animals are incredibly kind, but lack much of anything else:  Pooh has no self-control, Piglet is faithless, Rabbit is notoriously impatient, and Tigger and Eeyore sit at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to peace and joy. It’s only when they work together that they achieve anything.

Thinking out loud for a moment, can kindness yield anything in a person without self-control, peace, or joy? Or do patience, love, and gentleness kind people? For my toddlers, only time will tell. But being more purposeful about what I’m asking them to model is probably a great place to start.