CHAPLAIN
A REFLECTION OF GOD ’ S LOVE
Putting your time , money , talents , and actions where your heart is
REV DAVID ASSENDER SCHOOL CHAPLAIN
What is kindness all about ? It is asking yourself , ‘ What can I do to really help ?’ and then acting on it . The Apostle John , in chapter three of his first epistle , says :
‘ This is how we know what love is : Jesus Christ laid down his life for us . And we ought to lay down our lives for others . If anyone has material possessions and sees someone in need but has no pity on them , then how can the love of God be in him ?’ ( 1 John 3:16-20 )
Kindness is doing something for someone out of love . Kindness is being practically generous . It means you put your time , money , talents , and actions where your heart is . Thus , the opposite of kindness is stinginess , because kindness is generous .
Writing on this topic , Tim Keller figures that if the Christian faith had a Hall of Fame for kindness , William Wilberforce would be in there . Wilberforce was behind the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1833 . His mentor was John Newton , who before he became a Christian was a slave trader of the worst kind . It took him a long time to be convinced that God would ever want to forgive him for the horrible things he ’ d done – that ’ s why he wrote the iconic hymn Amazing Grace .
Inspired by the faith of John Newton , William Wilberforce and a group of Christians worked their way into Parliament and other important places to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire , and it took years . Eventually , the way they did it was to say , ‘ We ’ re abolishing slavery as of midnight tonight in 1833 , but we will pay every slave owner for the value of the slaves so they are not materially and economically destroyed ’. The British government paid out something like 30 million pounds sterling to people . Some people say it was the most righteous act a government ever did .
Therefore as you can see , kindness is asking yourself , ‘ What can I do ?’ and then acting on it . Some people make inane statements such as ‘ I believe religion is a private thing and you should keep it to yourself ’. Try telling that to William Wilberforce or John Newton .
Kindness is in the DNA of the Christian faith . One of the early Roman emperors , Flavius Claudius Julianus , utterly despised Christians and tried to stamp them out . His battle to do so was not with weapons and armour , but by influencing the hearts and minds of his own people . In his words : ‘ Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of these Christians as much as their charity to strangers . These Galileans provide not only for their own poor , but for ours as well ’.
The same exhortation from the Apostle John applies as much to us today as it did to Christians in the first and second centuries : ‘… we ought to lay down our lives for others . If anyone has material possessions and sees someone in need but has no pity on them , then how can the love of God be in him ?’ As I see it , if you aren ’ t kind , you simply aren ’ t reflecting God ’ s love .
What shape will your kindness take today ?
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