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Good, But Not Nice.

Good, But Not Nice

By Steve Johnson
 

 
December 2009
 
Recently, I was in our local Canadian Tire. I picked up some items and was proceeding through the checkout. The clerk, a young lady, was polite, pleasant, smiled and laughed easily, and was generally quite chatty. As I left I thought, “She was nice.”

When it comes to “niceness” as it relates to people, I think of specific people like that clerk because “niceness” is rather vague. What does it mean to be “nice?” Look in a dictionary and you'll find definitions like “pleasing,” “agreeable,” and “delightful.” For most, it seems to mean never saying anything that might offend someone. Avoiding confrontation. Don't say bad things about others. Could it be that being “nice” is about being so bland that people can have no strong feelings toward you whatsoever?

Some would suggest being nice means being kind. But while there is certainly an element of kindness to being nice, I think it is possible to meet someone, and conclude they are nice without knowing whether they are actually kind. Like the clerk who was nice — in actual fact, she may not be kind. I don’t know because I really don’t know her. Ted Bundy was a very nice person and with his niceness he attracted and then killed many people.

As we approach Christmas, our thoughts are drawn to the Christmas story. It is a good story — in fact, it's a great story. There's adventure, mystery, intrigue, and romance. It has it all. But like many stories in the Bible it isn't a nice story. There's not much nice about an unwed pregnant teenager giving birth to her firstborn in a smelly stable and then later having to flee the country because an egomaniacal king is killing the baby boys in her town. We prefer to sanitize the story so as to make it more pleasant and appealing to our sensibilities and sentimentalities. We prefer to make it nice.

It is similar to what some of us do with the God who is behind the Christmas story. We sanitize Him to make Him nice. It seems that when it comes to thoughts about God we would rather have our own thoughts than what God has revealed about Himself in the Bible.

Many Christians have turned the God of the Bible into a “nice god.” One who is all about doing things for us — healing us, making us happy, fulfilled, and prosperous. In essence, we have moulded the God of the Bible into a nice god, who is acceptable in our materialistic, self-absorbed culture of entitlement. After all, it is hard to “sell” a God who isn’t nice to a self-absorbed, materialistic culture.

What is the danger in thinking of God this way? For one thing, it affects how we live. If our image of God is primarily that He is nice and only does nice things, then when He doesn't meet all our needs or wants, or we lose a job, or get sick, or have marriage challenges, we begin to wonder about His existence and reality. “Where is He? Why doesn't He care? If He cared, this wouldn't be happening to me.”

Also, by setting aside the truth of what God is actually like for an imaginary, nice god we set ourselves up for following a false Christ and practicing a false discipleship. Love, truth, and holiness will get sacrificed for the sake of niceness. Jesus wasn’t nice when, standing for truth, He drove the money-changers from the temple.

Being a Christian is about more than just being nice. God didn’t say, “Be nice, because I am nice.” He said, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15). With a god whose primary characteristic is niceness, rather than holiness, our Christian life becomes the pursuit of being nice, instead of the pursuit of holiness.

Finally, coming to Scripture with the assumption that God’s primary characteristic is niceness will colour our handling and perceptions of His Word. Which brings us back to the Christmas story. We will fail to see that it is not a nice story. And we will look at the rest of Bible through the same jaundiced eye and only see what we want.

There's something deeply right about C.S Lewis' description of Aslan: “'Course he isn't safe. But he is good.”1 I concur and would add, our God is a good God, but He is not nice.

As we revisit the Christmas story this year, let’s see it for what it is. It isn’t supposed to be nice. Sin isn’t nice. Neither is death. But like the God who orchestrated it, the Christmas story is about redemption and that is good.


1 C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe, (New York: Collier Books), 1970, p.76.
 

About the Author:  Steve Johnson


 
Steve Johnson