This is part of our series called Cultivate. We are always saying that it’s so much better to elevate/cultivate what you ARE looking for in your children (the virtues!) rather than squashing what you DON’T want (the vices!). With that in mind, we thought we’d take some time to talk about a few of the virtues you can cultivate in your kids through the years.
This week, we’re talking about kindness.
If you want a kind 16-yr old, you have to start by working on kindness when he’s four. And six. And eight…. You get the idea. Cultivating character traits in our kids is an ongoing process like you’d cultivate a field/garden. There’s a lot of ongoing weeding, feeding, encouraging, etc. You don’t just wake up one day and have *poof* kind kids because of their genetics.
The Mayo Clinic’s website notes that kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, empathy and compassion, and improve mood. It can decrease blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone, which directly impacts stress levels. People who give of themselves in a balanced way also tend to be healthier and live longer. Kindness can increase your sense of connectivity with others, which can directly impact loneliness, improve low mood and enhance relationships in general. It also can be contagious. Looking for ways to show kindness can give you a focus activity, especially if you tend to be anxious or stressed in some social situations.
It’s also good for the mind. Physiologically, kindness can positively change your brain. Being kind boosts serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction and well-being, and cause the pleasure/reward centers in your brain to light up. Endorphins, which are your body’s natural pain killer, also can be released.
For all the talk about kindness these days, our world is growing increasingly unkind, divided, and contemptuous. If kindness is so popular, why is our culture so harsh? Cultural kindness offers niceness and acceptance of others while putting on the facade of love. At best it’s bland tolerance, and at worst it’s hatred with a smile. (Bless her heart!) It asks us only to be pleasant to those who are different from us—it doesn’t call us to love them. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cultural-kindness/
As we try to teach our kids to be kind, we need to think beyond the “random acts of kindness” perspective that is common. We can look to Scripture to teach us what kindness truly is and practice it intentionally.
Ann Kerhoulas has an article at The Gospel Coalition where she points out that kindness is rooted in love, is not always agreeable, and grows as we follow Jesus.
So, let’s unpack these three ideas as we think about cultivating kindness in our kiddos.
Kindness is rooted in love.
Anne Kerhoulas writes, “Biblical kindness—true kindness—is always rooted in the steadfast and self-sacrificing love of God. He is “righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works” (Ps. 145:17). He is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness” (Neh. 9:17, NASB95).
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word chesed, which means loving-kindness, is used to describe how God relates to his people. It’s also this loving-kindness that he desires from his people in response to his own. As he says in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Mere niceness—burnt offerings and sacrifices that go through the motions of devotion without love—doesn’t delight God.
Chesed is a Hebrew word for love and kindness. It has been translated as loving-kindness, mercy, steadfast love, compassion, loyalty, goodness, great kindness, favor and loyal- or leal-love. It’s a love that cannot be sentimentalized; it has the attributes of strength, steadfastness, loyalty, and devotion that stem from a covenant between God and us or between humans. https://free.messianicbible.com/feature/extravagant-chesed-love-god/
Unlike cultural kindness, chesed captures the steadfast and sacrificial love of God who refuses to abandon a people who are radically different from him, who anger him, who fail him again and again. Biblical kindness, therefore, must be rooted in this kind of covenantal love that endures at all costs. Our kind God doesn’t merely tolerate us or endure us with distaste. He loves us with a fierce kindness that’s more committed to our own well-being than we are.
With our kids:
- Memorize some verses about God’s kindness. “The LORD is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in loving-kindness [chesed].” (Psalm 145:8) or “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love [chesed] for you will not be shaken.” (Isaiah 54:10)
- Model kindness to one another.
- Point out when your kids speak with kindness. (I like how you said that!) If you can’t say something nice….(love is not rude)
- Point out when they make a hard choice (i.e. not taking the bait from a sibling); talk about bullying & cyberbullying -esp with older kids- and walk them through empathy: how would you feel if someone said that about you?
- Point out when they help without being reminded. (Thank you for putting your dishes away without me asking.)
- Point out ways to help. (Let’s put the shopping cart away so a car doesn’t bump it, how can you comfort a friend who’s sad? How can we show kindness to that older gentleman?)
- Tell stories that model God’s kindness.
- Ruth and Naomi:
Ruth 1:8–20 gives us an example of chesed. When Naomi decided to return to Israel after her husband and sons died, her daughters-in-law were faced with a decision: go back to Moab or go to Israel.
“Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness [chesed] to your dead husbands and to me.’” (Ruth 1:8)
Orpah went back to Moab, but Ruth went with Naomi and gleaned in the fields of Israel to look after her. This was more than just kindness. She demonstrated chesed, a loyal love that goes beyond the requirement of familial duty.
While in Israel, Ruth did not go after young men but married Boaz as a way to help her mother-in-law.
We see here that kindness that is like God’s kindness goes beyond the call of duty, beyond compliance with contracts. It is extravagant.
It is not dependent upon feelings or mood; it is something that we do to provide for what another person needs. It is motivated by compassion and ahava (love).
“‘The LORD bless you, my daughter,’ he replied. ‘ This kindness [chesed] is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor.’” (Ruth 3:10)
- Knuffle Bunny Free (part of the Knuffle Bunny series by Mo Willems)
This is the third and final of the Caldecott Award–winning Knuffle Bunny books, which chronicle various adventures of Willem’s daughter Trixie and her toy Knuffle Bunny. The book begins when Trixie loses her beloved bunny on an international flight to Holland and ends with an act of courage and kindness. It takes readers through a surprisingly wide range of emotions. It shows that learning to think about other people is an important part of growing up.
- Aesop’s fable: The lion and the mouse. (Reading, in general, is very helpful for kids to learn empathy and to relate to others’ feelings. )
It’s about a lion who spares the life of a mouse and later finds his act of kindness repaid.
- A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams (1982)
In this Caldecott Honor book from the Reading Rainbow era, a family works together with their community’s help to rebuild their lives after their house burns down. Each member of the family—Grandma, Mama, and the little girl narrating the story—finds ways to contribute coins to a jar to save up for a big, comfortable chair where Mama can take a load off her feet in the evenings after waiting tables in the Blue Tile Diner.
Kindness is not always agreeable.
Kerhoulas again at TGC, “real human flourishing comes when humanity lives in submission and obedience to our Creator. Because God’s covenantal love always has the aim of changing a sinful people into a holy nation, godly kindness isn’t always agreeable.
To be kind in our culture means that we rarely disagree. We live in a nation in which outrage trumps listening and understanding, and disagreement means dismissal. Any number of current events might instigate Facebook posts that say something like, “If you don’t condemn ___, we’re no longer friends.” While condemnation of injustice is valid, these posts reveal how cultural kindness rigidly responds to disagreement: it cancels.
Cancel culture is cultural kindness’s attempt at justice. Though the desire to make right what has gone wrong is good, kindness without love will lead to justice without love. We will be content to settle for dismissal because our kindness was never more than niceness. It’s not motivated by wanting to know another, not fierce enough to engage in hard conversations, not deep enough to work toward restoring a broken person.
Not so for biblical kindness—God’s kindness is “meant to lead [us] to repentance” (Rom. 2:4). Godly kindness confronts us in love so we might be conformed to his image. Because he loves us and wants us to flourish, God’s steadfast loving-kindness will challenge us, tell us when we’re wrong, and change us. This is why the psalmist says, “Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness” (Ps. 141:5). It is kindness when God corrects, rebukes, and convicts us because he loves us enough to see that we might become mature and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:4), and receiving our inheritance as his children.
Though cultural kindness leads to cancel-culture “justice,” godly kindness leads to restorative justice through truth-telling, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This is why Paul declares, “Behold then the kindness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22, NASB95). God isn’t interested in niceness; he’s interested in bringing many sons to glory. And in his kindness, he will surely do it.
With our kids:
- Model how to disagree.
- Model how to turn the other cheek.
- Model how to reconcile.
- Model how to talk to ourselves when we fail. We can be very unkind to ourselves!
- The Mayo Clinic notes, “It is not just how you treat other people — it is how you extend those same behaviors and intentions to yourself as well. I believe you can be kinder in your own self-talk and practice gratitude. People are good at verbally beating themselves up, and rarely does that work as a pep talk. Rather, negativity often causes you to unravel and may even create a vicious cycle of regularly getting down on yourself. You wouldn’t talk to your neighbor the way you sometimes talk to yourself. This is what I call the “good neighbor policy,” which can be helpful. If you would not say it to your good neighbor, do not say it about yourself.”
Kindness grows from following Jesus.
Christian kindness is a type of grace that we give out of the abundance of grace given to us. Paul mentions it as part of our “worthy walk” in Ephesians. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” He also says kindness will be a result (or “fruit”) of walking by Holy Spirit in Galatians. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
In the same way, when we are kind to someone else in a way that was not earned or expected, we share God’s immense kindness to us. In Luke 6, Jesus tells us:
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
With our kids:
- Have a small kindness jar. Write it down when you do an act of kindness secretly and celebrate when it’s full.
- Try to follow up with kindness to your children after they “mess up” and point out that this is how God deals with us.
- Model kindness to those who are unkind to you (getting cut off in traffic, when your spouse snaps at you, when your kids are mean to you)
- Memorize helpful verses like Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
I’ll end with a quote from president Franklin D. Roosevelt:
“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”
I’d say that’s true for families as well. You can cultivate stamina and toughness in your kids through a culture of kindness in your home.