One man's mission to stop Christians from committing random acts of kindness

If you are Christian, I want you to stop doing random acts of kindness.

Chew on that a minute.  Stop doing random acts of kindness.

I recall that statement entering my cultural world when I was in high school, probably around 1998-1999.  There were stickers and signs in many of my favorite teachers rooms that proudly displayed the trendy saying.  It was kinda cool.  It was simple.  It was concrete.  It was actionable.  It seemed like the perfect way to help society move toward a more loving and compassionate culture.

Then I began to read the Bible more closely than I had read it before and began to see that as a follower of Christ, I do not believe Christians should commit random acts of kindness because Jesus never did.

Jesus lived his life with great purpose and direction.  Jesus' actions may look random to those who are unclear with his vision and purpose (see the disciple's response to his questions and statements), but when we embody the vision and purpose of Jesus, it is clear that Jesus was not a 'random act of kindness' sort of guy.

Every healing, feeding, teaching and question was rooted in helping to usher in the Kingdom of God - to make it known and seen.  He did things to glorify God or to reveal himself to others.  He did things so we could see or understand.  He lived his life with a clear intention and purpose - even to his death.

As disciples of the one we call Jesus Christ, Christians are taking on the vision and purpose of Christ.  With that purpose and vision already laid out for us we can focus more on how to live our lives with great intention.

When we participate in random acts of kindness, others look at our actions and may think, "oh, that was a nice person."  And that is all well and good, but anyone can be nice.  Christians are called to be something other than nice, we are called to be holy.  Holiness is rooted in intention and purpose.

Let me be clear, please continue to do acts of kindness, but do not do them 'randomly'.  Do them in such a way that revels and articulates God's purpose, mission and vision.  Tell people why you are acting the way you act (evangelism).  As Christians, it is clear that we are kind and love because God first loved us.  We are grace filled because God is Grace filled.  We do what we do to move toward holiness and help usher in the Kingdom of God.

We are not random.  We are intentional.

Thoughts on this video...

This video is about 10 minuets long but is worth the watch.  It was shared with me by a friend and commenter on this blog (Jo).  While I could riff on this for a bit for instance, I see a lot of overlap of this video and the book "The Evolution of God" (for instance, our collective movement toward empathy/compassion).  There are a number of Girardian themes in this as well (mimesis, desire, cycles of repression, scapegoating, etc.) and I see a great connection to the message and mission Jesus Christ. 

But what connections do you see between this video and Christianity?

Prayer from Sunday

I was asked by a few people for a copy of this prayer I shared on Sunday. It was inspired by the opening chapters of Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean (which by the way is a great book, but seems a bit redundant through the opening sections).

As we breathe in the breath of life we become aware that we are dependent upon you Spirit of life. We cannot make it on our own; we cannot do this thing called life on our own. If it were not for you we could not even breathe. We are completely dependant upon your grace in our lives but the fact of the matter is, most of the time we think we can do just fine without you.

We are caught up in a great deception and lie. We live our lives saying all the “Christian” things and being “nice” to people all the while believing we have submitted ourselves to your Will of sacrifice and de-centered ourselves. It is embarrassing to even admit it in these quite moments that we live with the expectation that you a butler waiting on us to snap our fingers so as to meet an immediate desire we have. It is amazing that even in our arrogance and refusal to change our life to reflect Your desire and mission, you still love us. You still traverse time and space, life and death in order to enter into our lives, defrost our hearts and call us to sacrificial love. Why do you do it? Why do you have compassion for a people who constantly push you away and treat you like a parlor trick? In this very moment, in our collective embarrassment and awareness of our shame, please forgive us. Transform our minds to the point where our desires are your desires, transform our heart so that what you have compassion for we too would have compassion for.

You are a God of great compassion not only in dealing with us individually but with the entire world. While we are blaming other people for the problems of the world, you have compassion for them. While we are busy looking for a way to make ourselves look good, through Jesus Christ you died for the very people we demonize. Your demands of compassion are high and your grace calls us to a greater love than we embody at this time, but we seek to move toward being made perfect in love. For being perfect in love we are transformed to embody your Love and Grace; for it is the embodiment of Grace that we follow as we join our voices with the Great Cloud of Witnesses, the Saints of the Church past and present in the unending prayer which Jesus taught all his disciples to pray saying: Our Father...