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The Church’s Call To Kindness

The Church’s Call To Kindness

Last updated on: July 7, 2026 at 2:41 pm by Henry Karlson

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The Church’s Call To Kindness 2026-07-07T14:41:22-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Kindness is a quality which is a part of who God is, making it is a virtue which Christians are called to embrace. God is love, and through that love, God acts out of kindness. The more we love God, the more we will love what God is, and what God is, is revealed to us by what God does. We will want to love like God loves, and follow God in the way God loves:

For in the essence of God, all that is worthy of love is to be found – nobility, sanctity, power, wisdom, kindness, beauty, providence, and so forth. Similarly, the love that God has for us is eternal and boundless, not passing and contingent. A true perception of the nature of God’s love for us leads the soul to love God with a similar type of love.[1]

Those who mock kindness, those who ridicule the church when she is being pastoral, that is, for being kind and gentle by calling it the “church of nice,” ignore that the church is doing as she should, reflecting God’s love towards others. The church is always meant to act with such kindness, and when she does not, she is rightfully rebuked (so long as the rebuking is done in a kind manner).

As we engage God, and the grace God gives us, we will find ourselves transformed to be like God; then, St. Albert the Great said, we will love God with a similar kind of love which God uses to love us. We will embrace kindness, not reject it. We will not ridicule those who are kind for being too nice. This is not to say we should embrace kindness by itself, rather, it is embraced with the full spectrum of virtues, including justice, bringing them together in a holistic unity. This is why, though kindness is a virtue, if it is detached from other virtues, it can become problematic. The problem is not with the virtue of kindness, but by our own unholistic engagement of it. And so, the more we follow God, the more we respond to God’s love with our love, the more we find ourselves transformed by that love, the more spiritual we become. We will become kind and others will see that kindness coming from us:

The spiritual person is kind. He never practices cruelty in any of its forms, but is always gentle in his relations with others. Kindness, according to the Apostle Paul, is also a “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5.22).[2]

Cruelty is far from just, even though it often tries to present itself as the proper response to criminal infractions. Justice, to be just, needs flexibility in its decisions, flexibility which must always include mercy when trying to determine what should be done. Justice must always look for and promote the common good, which means both the good of the one who is injured and also the one who committed some injury upon others. It does not seek an “eye for an eye”, but rather, it seeks reform for the one who has done wrong, having them change for the better. This includes having them make restitution for what they have done, restitution which should include helping those they have injured, if they can. When cruelty is the point of the response to any perceived injustices, however minor they are, the person who acts with such cruelty is not promoting justice as they are adding to and creating more injustices in the world. If they try to invoke God and use God to justify their actions, they risk blaspheming God. Cruelty tends to follow after anger, when that anger is not properly tempered and turned into hate, and hate, by its nature, undermines the way of love, the way of God. When we are injured, when we encounter injustices in the world, we must act to make things better, but as we do so, we must resist the temptation to act out of vengeance. Certainly, we will, from time to time, get angry, especially when we see grave injustices in the world, or when we experience them ourselves. When we do so, we must not let such anger turn into hatred, because then, even if we have a just cause, our actions will not be just, indeed, we will tend to become as unjust, or worse than, those who angered us. Thus, St. Albert tells us, to be kind, we must make sure we do not let such bitterness overtake our hearts:

True gentleness is in its essence the same as benignity, or kindness. It abounds when a person does not permit his mind to become inflamed by injuries or injustices which he has suffered. The truly gentle person does not let any bitterness of heart he may feel manifest itself in his judgment or external actions. [3]

Sadly, Christians, often give into temptation, which means, they give into hate. If they struggle against it, if they do not try to justify it, there is hope for that they can pick themselves up and find a way beyond the way of hate, and the cruelty it promotes. However, when they stop struggling against hate and instead, accept it, they end up justifying not only the cruelty, but the hate itself. Whenever we see that happening, we must warm them that their hate, and the cruelty they do, places them on the road which leads towards perdition, and their hate will slowly encourage them to attack and destroy all that is good:

In the Church, so much the worse, both good and bad people are found, two people struggling as in the womb of the spiritual Rebecca – the humble, indeed, and the proud, chaste and adulterous, meet and irascible , kind and envious, merciful and avaricious. For good souls want to win over the evil, but the wicked long to destroy the just.[4]

We must seek after, promote, and defend that which is good. God examined all that was created and saw it was good. There is good in everything and everyone, even if it is difficult for us to discern it, because it is hidden under the defilement of sin. Hope allows us to act on that goodness, even if we cannot perceive it. Our hope helps us to be kind, overcoming anger and the hatred which can flow from it, because it reminds us of the good which we seek. “Hope, therefore, concerning things that are not present, that they exist, and practice kindness according to virtue, with confidence.”[5] Those who live with such hope will find that it will be easier to give up and overcome their anger, overcome the hatred they feel brewing in their hearts, and resist the temptation to be cruel to others. They will reject the way of evil, promoting the good over such evil. They will desire to see the world like God, to discern the good which is found in all things. They will want to help free that good from the defilement of sin, and if it has been hurt by sin, to restore it to its original state (if not to make it even better). With that hope, with the love which allows them to have such hope, they will find that indeed, kindness is a virtue, and one which they must embrace, especially when it is difficult for them to do so.

[1] St. Albert the Great, The Paradise of the Soul. Trans. Robert Nixon OSB (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2023), 6.

[2] Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith. Volume 4: Spirituality (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981; rev. ed. 2016), 84.

[3] St. Albert the Great, The Paradise of the Soul, 121.

[4] St. Caesarius of Arles, Semons. Volume II (81-186). Trans. Sister Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963), 25 [Sermon 86].

[5] Didymus the Blind, Lectures on the Psalms. Trans. Jonathan Douglas Hicks (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024), 249.

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