Unnecessary Kindness
Add your light to the sum of light
Imagine you’re in the south of France. You are at a cheap restaurant, one where patrons sit at a long, communal table. The table is crowded, every seat taken. You know nobody else there. In front of you is a wine glass and a “modest bottle of wine.” You take the bottle and prepare to pour.
Instead of pouring into your own glass, however, you pour the wine into the glass of the person next to you. That person, with their own bottle of wine, pours into your glass. You and your neighbor did not need to do this. You have the same amount of wine you would have had otherwise. What has just happened?
The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss studied this “seemingly trivial ceremony,” and had this to say:
A conflict exists, … not very keen to be sure, but real enough and sufficient to create a state of tension between the norm of privacy and the fact of community. … This is the fleeting but difficult situation resolved by the exchange of wine. It is an assertion of good grace which does away with the mutual uncertainty” (quoted in Lewis Hyde, The Gift, 56–57).
Lewis Hyde uses this situation to illustrate that “a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people,” that “a gift makes a connection” (56). “In an economic sense,” he writes, “nothing has happened. No one has any more wine than he did to begin with. But society has appeared where there was none before” (56).
From a practical perspective, this exchange was unnecessary. But this unnecessary action fostered kindness and community.
The other day I was driving and noticed a pedestrian waiting to cross the street. I faced a choice in that moment: stop and let them cross or keep driving on?
I was the last in a line of cars going by. If I just kept driving, the pedestrian would get to cross once I had passed. They probably only had to wait five seconds. If I were to stop, it might take five seconds for the pedestrian to recognize my intentions and begin to walk across the street. Either way, the pedestrian would walk across at about the same time whether or not I stopped. The only person I would inconvenience by stopping was myself. Wouldn't it be better for me to keep driving? That way, both I and the pedestrian would continue on the most efficient trajectories. Scaled up, such efficiency is a good thing, surely.
What would I gain by stopping? Perhaps by inconveniencing myself, I can offer the pedestrian kindness. Which is better for the world: efficiency or kindness?
Maybe this initiates a chain reaction of kindness, a “pay-it-forward” kind of kindness. Maybe the pedestrian—after receiving such a small, unnecessary kindness— decides to show unnecessary kindness to others later. I inconvenienced myself, but maybe this softens my heart, opening me to further kindness as well.
Scaled up, this kind of inefficiency, this unnecessary kindness, is a good thing for the world, surely.
Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights contains over a hundred “essayettes” about various things that delighted him over the course of a year. One essayette details his delight at seeing two people—likely a mother and child—“sharing the burden of a shopping bag or sack of laundry by each gripping one of the handles” (72). The shared burden creates an awkwardness for both participants as they get used to each other’s rhythm of walking. Each partner has to accommodate the rhythm of the other.
Gay “adores” this moment of sharing a bag because, unlike lugging a couch up stairs or freeing a truck from a snowbank, a bag does not often require two people to carry it. “Yes, it’s the lack of necessity of this act that’s perhaps precisely why it delights me so” (73). It is an unnecessary act of solidarity, of burden-sharing. Yet, as he writes at the end, perhaps what seems unnecessary is necessary after all.
Everything that needs doing
—getting the groceries or laundry home—
would get done just fine without this meager collaboration.
But the only thing that needs doing,
without it,
would not.
- Ross Gay, “Sharing a Bag,” in The Book of Delights, 72–73
What is “the only thing that needs doing”? I think Gay leaves it up to us to answer that question. Here are some possibilities:
the “meager collaborations” that foster communion between people
solidarity and burden-sharing that leads to greater connection and love
unnecessary kindness, which adds to the sum of kindness in the world
Speaking of unnecessary and inefficient, you may be familiar with toddler “help.” What could be done in one minute by myself now takes five minutes, thanks to the “help” of an eager toddler. Carrying groceries from the car, vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, getting the mail.
Once a week, we roll our garbage, recycling, and compost bins out to the road to get picked up. My two-year-old loves helping with this job. He can roll the emptied bins up to the house by himself. But when they’re full, we work together. It’s a little tricky on our downhill-sloping driveway to match my gait to his, especially when he grips the handle in such a way that he walks directly in front of my feet. But neither of us have tripped (yet!). It’s a job that I could do much more efficiently alone, but the unnecessary inefficiency creates a bond between us.
In the 1982 film The Year of Living Dangerously, two characters have a discussion about whether performing a small act of good makes any difference in a world full of evil.
Billy Kwan: [as Billy and Guy enter a very poor area] "And the people asked Him, saying, 'What shall we do then?"'
Guy Hamilton: What's that?
Billy Kwan: It's from Luke. Chapter 3, verse 10. "What then must we do?" Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. He got so upset about the poverty in Moscow that he went one night into the poorest section and just gave away all his money. You could do that now. Five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people.
Guy Hamilton: Wouldn't do any good. Just be a drop in the ocean.
Billy Kwan: Ah. That's the same conclusion Tolstoy came to. I disagree.
Guy Hamilton: What's your solution?
Billy Kwan: Well, I support the view that you just don't think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light. You think that's naïve?
Guy Hamilton: Yup.
Billy Kwan: It's all right. Most journalists do.
It can be easy to undervalue kindness when there is so much suffering in the world. In our culture, we are taught to believe in solutions to problems. If we can’t solve the problem completely, then it’s not worth pursuing. In some cases, kindness to others is discouraged or even prohibited.
Once when I was in college, my housemates and I joined a street ministry to hand out socks and meals to the homeless in downtown Bellingham. As we were gathering beforehand, a city bus driver walked over to us and told us to not give the homeless anything. “It only enables them,” he said, “it’s just a handout. They need to get off the streets.” He gave us a mini-lecture. Then he walked away. We were surprised to hear such resistance to kindness, but we were undeterred. We passed out the socks and meals as planned. We didn’t solve homelessness. We didn’t help get anyone “off the streets.” But we added our light to the sum of light, as best we could on that night.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
for I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you gave me clothing,
I was sick and you took care of me,
I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
Matthew 25:31–40
The acts of kindness that Jesus lists here are not grand solutions to societal problems. This is not an all-or-nothing response to suffering. It does not address every facet, every nuance of the issues so that “the greatest good” can be done most efficiently or most programmatically. These are concrete actions so small, done for “the least of these who are members of my family,” that those who perform them do not even recognize their significance. They are acts of kindness so mundane, so seemingly trivial, they just might be the most powerful force in God’s work on earth.
God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
- 1 Corinthians 1:27–29
What do small, unnecessary acts of kindness do? They strengthen the bond between people. Even if you never encounter a particular stranger again, you have strengthened the “web of love” between you and them.
It’s possible that what we deem small, insignificant—dust on the scales of making a difference in the world—are actually the salt and light Jesus calls us to (Matt 5:13–16).
Light is a tiny particle / wave of energy. Yet when accumulated, it supports all life on earth. Add your light to the sum of light.
Jesus seems to delight in small things that make a big difference and even claims that this is the way of God’s kingdom.
He put before them another parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that someone took and sowed in his field;
it is the smallest of all the seeds,
but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs
and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable:
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour
until all of it was leavened.”
Matthew 13:31–33
Perhaps the way of faithfulness is less like a wave crashing over the shore, imposing its weight on the land. Less like a storm pounding the earth with rain. Perhaps the way of faithfulness is like a single drop of water working its way through a rock, taking a grain or two with it as it widens the crack that eventually leads to a split, forever changing the rock and the mountain it clings to.
“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
- Matthew 17:20
Perhaps if we think of our kindness as a mote of dust on the scales, we might remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We might remember that God shaped dust into the form of a human, that God breathed into that dust-person’s nostrils and created new life, a new species of creature.
You know what God calls “dust on the scales”? The powerful, the strong, the mighty nations of the earth.
Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales. … All the nations are as nothing before God; they are accounted by God as less than nothing and emptiness. … [God] brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when God blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
- Isaiah 40:15, 17, 23–24
Some dust is heavier than others. God has rigged the scales so that goodness, kindness, and love outweigh the great works of the powerful. But the powerful do not understand this. They still cling to the idea that only power can shape the world, that war and violence and threats and punishment and legislation and surveillance and economic control and forced unity and accumulation of wealth and censorship and repression and oppression are the tools most suited to bring about the “best” kind of world.
Jesus offers a different perspective.
Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
- Matthew 20:25–28
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes that through Christ we are free from sin and free from the stipulations of the Mosaic law. But, he says, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:13–14). Paul tells them to “live by the Spirit,” evidenced by certain “fruit.”
The fruit of the Spirit is
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
generosity,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control.
There is no law against such things.
Galatians 5:22–23
Paul is speaking of the Old Testament law when he says there is no law against such things. But there certainly have been, and still are, and will be in the future, laws of the land which prohibit the fruit of the Spirit—or at least, constrict such fruit to certain sanctioned norms.
Kindness is not a neutral act. It is not always safe or comfortable. It may seem inefficient, impractical, futile, unnecessary. But even the smallest act of kindness adds to the light, to the salt, to the dust of God’s new creation which is in-breaking even now.
No act of kindness is unnecessary. On the contrary, kindness is one of the necessary tasks of our lives. Kindness is, perhaps, part of what Ross Gay means when he says “the only thing worth doing.” Kindness is a drop of water cutting through the side of a mountain, more powerful than what seems immovable, unstoppable.
Kindness isn’t about being “nice.” Kindness is about strengthening the community, the “feeling-bond” between people. Kindness isn’t about “civility.” Kindness requires that we seek the flourishing of others, no matter how small our contribution may be to that end.
Consider how you might show kindness today. But more important, consider each moment—each situation you find yourself in—an opportunity for kindness. Open yourself to the possibilities of kindness each day—while you’re talking with someone, while you’re driving, while you’re shopping, while you’re alone. It may be that your kindness is a mustard seed freshly planted, a photon of light in a shadow, a drop of water (or wine!) that quenches your neighbor’s thirst.