Beyond Nice: Why Silence Isn't Kindness

This week, Gregory and I had to buy a new vehicle. And let me tell you—the car dealership culture is riddled with lying being the norm, manipulation being the norm, and confusion as their primary weapon.

You know the drill. The price changes. The options shift. Suddenly there’s an “inventory tax”—wait, you have your own tax? And if you try to compare dealerships, you need a spreadsheet just to make sense of it all. They still try to manipulate. They still try to lie. They still try to coerce.

I walked out of there feeling like I needed a spiritual shower.

I did call the salesman out. I wasn’t rude, but I let him know the lying was unacceptable. Because I don’t partner with that. Though honestly? I wish I had been even more loving and actually drawn him toward the Lord. I cut my losses and went to another dealership instead.

Sorry, Lord. I’ll do better next time. I’m learning this message right along with you.

The Two Ditches

But this experience brings me to something the Lord has been burning in my heart: He wants to ignite an apostolic renaissance. And before I explain what that means, I need you to understand why it matters.

Look around. The evidence of brokenness is everywhere. Homes are fractured. Addiction is ravaging families. Anxiety and depression are skyrocketing, especially among the young. People are so lost in their pain that they’re grasping for anything—any identity, any escape, any numbing agent—just to survive another day.

The walking wounded are all around us, and most of them have stopped believing anyone actually cares.

And the church? Instead of running toward the broken the way Jesus did, we’ve largely retreated. We’ve built comfortable walls and created an atmosphere that says, “Get yourself together before you come in here.” We traded the radical love of Christ for a membership model.

When we look at the broken world around us—the ones we think are “just crazy” or “insane,” the ones we’re angry at for what they’ve done—we fall into a ditch. We get judgmental, critical, self-righteous: “I would never do that. I know better than that. Why don’t you?”

It’s a ditch.

Jesus didn’t do that to the sinners, to the broken. He didn’t look at the prostitute and go, “Oh my God, don’t you know better?” They’re only doing it because they’re broken, they’re lost, they need the healer.

Where does He live on the earth? In us. We’re the connection point for Him.

But there’s another ditch we fall into—and this is the one I have to repent from being in. It’s the ditch where we don’t know what to do, so we remain silent. We just look away. “I don’t know what to do. And I want to be nice. And I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.” So we let them die in the darkness.

Lord, forgive me.

Nice vs. Kind

Here’s something that wrecked me: The word “nice” actually comes from Latin, and it means “no knowledge.” The word nice means ignorant. It means foolish.

Most Bible translations will not use the word “nice,” but they will use the word “kind” over 200 times. And kindness means benevolence toward the other. It means I’m looking after their best interest. I’m looking out for them. I’m being kind.

I’m not necessarily sparing their feelings.

But here’s the thing: You can’t just tell people they’re wrong. That doesn’t work. We have to care more about connecting with them and loving them than fixing them—because they’re not going to listen if they don’t know you care.

If you just tell people they’re wrong, guess what happens? They’re already feeling lost. They already don’t feel like they’re enough. They’re already trying to change their identity, or they’re lying, stealing, manipulating because they don’t believe they can do it the right way. They’re already hiding in shame.

And when you lob at them and tell them how awful they are and how wrong they are, you are inadvertently piling on more shame. You’re partnering with the enemy that’s got them in the darkness to start with.

Jesus never did it that way.

The only people He ever hurled insults at were the religious—whose job it was supposed to be to help those in the darkness. “You brood of vipers,” right? (Matthew 23:33, NIV)

That is the only people He came after with the kind of words most of us use on those in the darkness.

These Are Real People

We cannot reduce the hurting to headlines or political talking points. These are human beings—people who are mutilating themselves, hurting each other, walking around with the enemy playing them like puppets. And they’re building a whole culture where no one feels safe anymore.

And we can’t just say, “You’re wrong.”

Because guess what we do as religious people? We have the knowledge of good and evil. Where did we get that from? The wrong tree.

The enemy plays us with a spirit of confusion so he can manipulate and control us. Having the correct answer is not the same as having Him, the truth. He knows exactly what they need in the moment, and it might not be “two plus two equals four.” It might not be “there are only two sexes.”

That might not be what they need.

What they might need to know is that when they were sexually assaulted as a child, Jesus was there rescuing them. He can come into that moment and bring healing. They may need to know that.

But us assuming we have the answers puts ourselves in the place of the divine. And it’s like we’re sitting in one ditch with all this fruit from the wrong tree, and we’re hurling it at them.

What They Really Need

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6, NIV). And that doesn’t mean by knowledge of Him. It’s by Him.

He lives in us.

When people have an encounter with us, they shouldn’t just get an encounter with what information I have. They should have an encounter with the living person of Holy Spirit, with Christ Himself. Feeling the Father’s heart.

But if I’m afraid—if I’m walking in shame because I don’t know what to do, so I’m just going to turn my eyes and avoid you on the street because I see your brokenness, because I see your darkness, and it makes me uncomfortable—they miss out on an encounter with a living God because my eyes are on the wrong thing.

God cares more about their heart than them being right.

It’s about connection.

When someone is in the dark, it’s because they’re broken. Information doesn’t save them. Only the person of Christ can.

The Father Never Forces

Most of us don’t understand that God’s Kingdom is very different than the kingdoms of this world. The enemy wants to manipulate and control to get you to do his will. The Father never does that. It is absolutely, in its fundamental nature, a different kingdom.

Love always offers a free choice.

From the beginning in the garden, there had to be two trees. He didn’t want us to eat from the knowledge of good and evil. He wanted us to eat only from the tree of life. And He is life, yes.

But if He didn’t put the second tree there, we’d have no free choice. And if we have no choice, we cannot love. Love, by definition, cannot be forced or coerced.

By definition.

And when we’re dealing with the broken, are we trying to manipulate them into doing it our way? Even if we’re correct.

If He didn’t believe that was a good way of doing it, then neither should we. That’s where it meets the road, because we can’t control the outcome. We feel like the outcome is a reflection of our ministry: “I loved this person and they didn’t change.”

As if my intent in loving them was to get them to do it my way.

People smell that. They know you’re manipulating. Loving people should never be manipulative. Jesus wasn’t, and neither should ours be.

What Do We Do?

We have to always give them the freedom to choose. We should look to connect with their heart, because we love them just as they are. Doesn’t mean we’re being nice and saying it’s good for them to stay there.

See the ditches? The enemy doesn’t care which one we fall into, as long as we get confused.

These people were made in the image of God, just like the original couple—made in His image and in His likeness. And when the Lord created us in the beginning, He said, “Let us make mankind in our image and in our likeness, and let them together rule” (Genesis 1:26, NIV). Let them have dominion.

If I’m looking at somebody who doesn’t agree with me, is the point of my conversation with them to tell them how wrong they are? Or to lean in and listen and find out what’s really going on?

How do I know why they got to that point? My lobbing fruit from the wrong tree—“this is evil, this is good”—doesn’t connect them to their heart, which is where it’s broken to start with.

The head’s not the problem. The heart is.

No Power Without Agreement

The enemy has no power over us or them without their agreement. No power.

He had no power to shove that fruit down their throat in the garden. He had to lie and manipulate and make them believe, “If you want to be like God, eat this.”

What’s the problem with that? They were already like Him.

So he got them to believe, “I must not be enough the way I am. I must be missing something. I must be deficient. I have to do something to become who I should be.”

It’s the story of our lives, isn’t it? This is the story that’s common among all humanity. The way the Bible could write in three chapters—five pages—what happens to all of us, you know it’s supernaturally written.

And the serpent is so crafty that not only did he get us to question our own identity, our value, but also: God’s holding out on us. “You know, if you eat like that, you’re going to be like Him knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, NIV). We can’t trust God.

And so they used their own wisdom. They saw it was good for food and could make them wise, pleasing to the eye. So they ate it.

And what happened? Something shifted. Before they were naked and unashamed. Now they’re naked and ashamed.

They hear the sound of the Lord coming to walk with them in the cool of the day—because He had an intimate relationship with them. And instead of turning to Him and saying, “Oh my gosh, I made a mistake,” what do they do?

They run and hide in shame. “I’m afraid of you.”

Fear. Shame. And then when He starts questioning them, there’s blame.

We Have to Own This

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: when the people around us are drowning and we do nothing, that silence is not neutral. It’s not “being nice.” It’s abandonment.

Every person trapped in darkness—every addict, every abuse survivor, every soul so lost they don’t even recognize themselves anymore—they are someone’s child. They are the Father’s child. And the ones who carry His Spirit were meant to be the bridge back to Him.

We’ve hidden behind closed doors, feeling powerless, while the enemy runs the field unopposed.

I have to repent for having been silent because I didn’t know what to do. I have to repent for having hidden and ignored the problem.

You know what to do, Lord. Start with me. Clean my house.

A Call to Courage

We can’t continue to fall into these ditches. We can’t hurl insults at the broken, and we can’t remain silent while they die.

We have to step onto the narrow road of truth—which is connection to the Healer Himself. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He knows exactly what they need in the moment when we’re facing a person and we don’t know what to do.

Lord, what are You saying in this moment? What do You want me to see? What do You want me to feel?

Connect with Him. He has the right answer for the right moment at the right time. We don’t have to have religious answers. We have to have the Healer Himself.

This road of truth—you have to be willing to say, “I care more about their heart than about being right.”

If you can’t do that, you’ll lose them. Because they know when you’re listening to them that you don’t really care. You just want to tell them they’re wrong.

Instead, lean in to hear their story. Lean in to get to know the person. Once you know anybody, you usually like them.

We have to stop making agreement be the basis of our relationship.

The Choice

Stop telling them they’re wrong and start telling them they’re loved. Tell them they’re loved just as they are.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NIV).

Did He love the Jews? Did He love the church? Or did He love the world?

In all of its brokenness. It was dark then too.

How are they going to believe in Him when the people who represent Him are hurling fruit at them?

Their true identity is not the brokenness. It’s not the pain. It’s not the lies. It’s not the dysfunction. It’s not the shame.

Their true identity is beloved. They are God’s children.

And when you have that intimate connection with their Creator, with their Father who loves them, everything in them that’s broken—in the right order, in the right time, in a loving, caring way—He begins to clean us up.

But He doesn’t require that for the connection.

We do.

And they can’t get the power to be cleaned and healed without the connection. The enemy has gotten us to do his job and help with the disconnection.

So let it start here. Let it start with me. Lord, search my heart. Show me where I’ve chosen silence over love, or judgment over compassion. I don’t want to lob fruit from the wrong tree anymore. I want to carry the fruit of Yours.

Being bold doesn’t mean being loud. It means being willing to show up—with His heart, His presence, His love—and to stop hiding behind “nice.”

What are your thoughts? Have you fallen into one of these ditches—either hurling insults or remaining silent? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

Blessings,
Susan 😊