Kindness a Sign of Weakness?

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Social scientists, I’ve noticed, often try to use scientific studies to explain human emotions, and sentiments like kindness – with limited success, in my opinion.

The National Public Radio (NPR) web site, for instance, recently had a report entitled “Kindness vs. Cruelty: Helping Kids Hear the Better Angels of Their Nature.” It was adapted from an episode in a Life Kit podcast, "Parenting: Raising Awesome Kids."

The report asks, “Are humans born kind?”

“…As parents of young children,” writes the author, “we (both) assumed that kindness is just something our kids would pick up by osmosis, because we love them. It's a common assumption.”

Capacity for Empathy
She cites various studies, including one that tried to answer the question by examining humans’ capacity for empathy.

“We have neurons in our brains, called mirror neurons,” says the article, “and they respond in the same way when we experience pain, say by being pricked with a needle, as they do when we see someone else experience the same thing.”

The article also cites Thomas Lickona, a psychologist and author of How to Raise Kind Kids. He says children also show early signs of a preference for helping.

So, what gets in the way of kindness?

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“For one (thing), young kids are naturally self-centered. The ability to take others' perspective is something they have to develop through experience. There's also temperament. Some kids really can't handle other kids' pain. Or maybe they're shy, or not sure what to do, and they wait for someone else to step up.

Among the studies’ conclusions: “No surprise, much of the hard work of cultivating a more consistent kindness in children — especially toward people who aren't like them — falls to parents, teachers, and the rest of us grown-ups.”

I’m skeptical about these studies. They simply observe children’s behavior and speculate about what it means. Kindness is much more complicated, seems to me.

A good question for people searching for God: Does faith make you kinder?

Not necessarily. I’ve noticed that even people who have attended religious services all their lives miss the most fundamental teachings of their church or synagogue and consistently fail to put them into practice. In fact, many people, including Christians, see kindness as a sign of weakness! That's odd because it's easy to be unkind.

If you actually follow your religious tenets, however, I believe you will be kinder than you otherwise would be. The question whether you will be kinder than others is irrelevant. Faith is not about comparisons.

Simply Not Equipped
For people searching for God, kindness is a sine qua non. An unkind person is simply not equipped. Being kind, on the other hand, enhances the chances of success. In the case of Judeo-Christianity, it’s fundamental. That’s because kindness is a critical ingredient in love, the virtue that trumps all.

“Love is patient and kind,” says the famous excerpt from the First Letter to the Corinthians; “love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

To the extent we can have this kind of love, we will be – in Jesus’ words – “not far from the kingdom of God.”