The Song of Kindness

I'm listening to a song right now by The Head and The Heart, and I absolutely adore it.  I can't stop tapping my feet, nodding my head, and adding in harmonies.  Naturally, I'm waiting for my roommate to get out of class so that we can pull out some instruments and try to cover this song together.

That's all well and good, but what does this have to do with kindness?  Well, anyone who plays an instrument will understand.  What do you do when you hear a song that really fits your style?  You look up the chords, or you let your ear study the sounds, and you try to imitate what you hear.  Sometimes you even try to improve the song by adding your own sound to it.  You want to create something similar to what the artists you admire have created. And so it is this way with Christianity.

Jesus was kind.  Jesus loved.  Maybe he wasn't a songwriter, but he wrote the song of kindness, and all I want to do is pick up an instrument and cover those sweet, sweet sounds.


This weekend I was at a retreat for the Junior High at the church where I intern, and one of the Senior High speakers told a story of a man named Tony. From what I remember, Tony was a preacher who had traveled to Honolulu to speak at a conference.  Tony woke up around 3 AM the first morning in Honolulu due to jet lag, and he decided to go ahead and find a place to eat breakfast.  He ended up at a diner in the shadier part of Honolulu and was chatting with the owner/waiter/somekindofemployee at the diner when a group of prostitutes came in for breakfast.  The owner/waiter/employee told Tony that these girls came in every morning after they finished "work" to eat breakfast and unwind.  Tony overheard one of the girls tell the others that it was her birthday the next day, and the others made a sarcastic comment about "did you want us to make you a cake or something" or something like that.  The girl shrugged it off and said she didn't expect it to be like any other birthday, and Tony realized that this girl had never had a birthday party.  Tony turned to the owner/waiter/employee and said "what do you think about throwing this girl a party." And they agreed upon it.

The next day, Tony spent the whole day inviting people to the diner for the party, picking up decorations and cake, and when 4 AM rolled around there were tons of people just waiting to wish this stranger a happy birthday.  The prostitutes walked in to this surprise, and the girl was taken aback.  No one had ever thrown her such a party.  No one had made her a cake.  She even asked if they could not eat the cake just so she could look at it longer.  It appeared to be the best birthday ever.
When the party was over and the crowd had cleared, Tony said he had better get to the conference he was scheduled to speak at.  Remembering that Tony was a preacher, the owner/waiter/employee asked in an awe-struck manner what church he was with.  Tony responded calmly, "I'm from the church of throwing prostitutes birthday parties at 4 AM."


Tony understood that the Church is all about love and kindness.  Jesus befriended the prostitutes, lepers, and tax collectors.  He loved the hated.  He loved everyone.  And that is what this is all about.

He wrote the song of love and kindness, and we are all here to pick up our instruments and cover His song.

hate

I’ve never understood this word.  I’ve never understood exactly what it means or how it works, so naturally I looked it up in the dictionary: 

“To dislike extremely or passionately; to feel extreme aversion for or hostility toward; to detest.”

Okay, so what does that mean? I mean, milk feels pretty hostile toward my stomach, but does that mean that milk hates me? I guess that’s a bad example because milk can’t feel.  But in high contact sports like hockey or football, does every player on one team hate everyone on every other team? They have to be hostile toward each other in order to win the game, but do they hate each other? I highly doubt they’ve reached that level of hostility.

So I continued my search for the meaning of “hate” on the trusty urbandictionary.com  and this is what I found:

“A special kind of love given to people who suck.”  Maybe that’s kind of funny, and it’s true in the sense that occasionally I might tell my friend that I hate them because they made a joke about my religion, but generally I’m laughing in that kind of situation.  There’s no hostility or aversion about this.  So this couldn’t be what I’m looking for.

“When you dislike someone so much that if you and the other person were in an empty room with a knife in the middle, one or both of you would be dead.”  That’s extreme hostility. That’s extreme aversion.  This is what I’m looking for.  Hate is a feeling so strong that it could lead someone to make rash decisions forever altering their lives, such as murder, or maybe just a really underhanded comment causing permanent emotional scars, but I like murder better for this example.

Last one: “(noun). Calculated and/or intentional intense dislike; an intensified and elevated level of anger; an unnatural emotion (i.e. hate is something that is derived from natural emotions such as anger or fear); learned dislike or loathing of another person, group, or thing.

Ex. Hate is the root of much of the world's suffering.”           

Now that we have the definition covered, I still have questions.  How can someone feel so strongly about another person that they would hate them.  Yeah, I’ve used the word hate a fair share of times in my brief existence, but I don’t think that I can honestly say that I’ve ever truly hated someone.  I think that, as our last definition states, hate is the root of much of the world’s suffering.  I think that hate should be illegal.  Anyone caught hating another person should be locked up, preferably in a religious establishment that teaches love, until they could never even imagine anything less than loving their neighbor.

Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single person I could truly claim to hate.  Sure, I disliked my soccer coach in high school, but only because I so desperately sought her approval.  Yes, I couldn’t look at Sister Helen in middle school without thinking awful thoughts, but that’s because she insulted my family and my ability to dress myself in less that five seconds of meeting her.  But generally, I’ve never disliked someone until they’ve proven to me that they were incapable of loving me, and even then I reacted poorly by not showering these people with the love that they need.

I understand that people don’t get along.  I understand that if he stole your baseball glove in the sixth grade, you probably won’t be so fond of him.  Or if she called you ugly in high school, you may not jump at the opportunity to love her. But truly, that’s what these people need.  Hateful people need love. Hate requires love. Because if I were in charge of writing the dictionary, I would describe hate as a complete lack of love, and the only cure for this is drowning in love.  And how do you drown someone with love? You rain down on them with kindness and you don’t quit.

James Taylor has a song that says “Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel” but really, Shower the people you hate with love, because a world without hate would be boring, but it would be better for everyone.