My reaction was, sadly, pretty cynical. "You don't believe that," I thought about the driver.
Here's why I had that unkind reaction. The advice to "be kind" is everywhere now. And I wholly agree with the admonition. But where I differ from most folks is that I think kindness is, well, extraordinarily difficult. This is a major theme in Stranger God. Asking people to be kind is akin to asking people to play a song on the piano, paint a landscape, or drive a ball down the middle of the fairway. These things are possible, for anyone, but they take a lot of practice. And so does kindness.
I don't know if you've noticed, but kindness as it exists in the world today is pretty darn tribal. As I point out in Stranger God, that's the dark side of kindness that no one talks about, its insularity. And that insularity is right there in the word itself, staring you in the face: the root of the word kindness is "kin" and "kind." Kindness is what I extent to my "kin," what I share with the same "kind" of people as myself. But when kindness is tribal it's not really kindness, not as Christians understand it. We are kind right up until the point where we reveal our politics, or share a view about, say, vaccines or masks. At that point, all bets are off and kindness goes out the window. Kindness stops when I reach the edge of my tribe. Kindness stops when I realize you're not one of my kind.
I want the world to be more kind. But it takes a lot of work to be kind to those outside your tribe.
