This last Sunday I asked my four-year-old what he learned in his Sunday School class. As usual, his answer was both adorable and enlightening. He showed me a picture he had colored of Paul being arrested and told me, “Jesus made Paul nice and then he had to go to jail.”
I asked him some follow-up questions and we had a sweet talk about being bold for Jesus, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his perception that Jesus made Paul nice. I can see how in his preschool way of understanding, Paul going from persecuting Christians to loving and obeying Jesus would be a much nicer way of living, but I’ve yet to know of anybody who went to jail because they were just being so nice.
I have come to believe that it isn’t my job to raise nice kids, but to raise kind kids. Nice kids want peace at all costs. Nice kids don’t want to speak the truth if it’s going to ruffle feathers. Nice kids go along with the crowd and forsake their own healthy boundaries to make other people like them. That’s not what I want for my kids.
I believe Jesus wants my kids to be kind, and kindness doesn’t always seem that nice. Kindness speaks the truth in love. Kind kids are willing to be bold and risk offense if they are being bold for Jesus. Kind kids identify with the wounded, the downtrodden, the unpopular and are willing to stick up for them. Kind kids are gentle and compassionate, motivated by a strength that comes from the Holy Spirit.
As a mother, sometimes it would be easier to encourage my kids just to be nice, to get along, to blend in. And certainly it would make their lives easier at times. But I have to encourage them to be kind even when the cost is high. And I have to model that by being kind to them, to others and even to myself.
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