"I just wish the Christians knew they could be kind"
And I instantly knew what she meant.
I had a conversation with a teenager, and it shook me.
Not that anything new was said, I just had really expected my generation to be better than the last.
She talked about the standard drama stuff with school, the petty, self-indulgent kind of things you expect from others who haven’t yet learned how to be a friend.
And she talked of teachers, other adults, and the like. They all had something in common.
They all went to church. They all vote (or would vote) the same way. They all had some kitchy phrase sewn, etched, or bedazzled (ok, prob not) on a product from an eager Etsy seller. You know, something that takes a cliché and makes it feel like this piece of fabric, sticker, whatever—this thing displays an original thought.
You know, something like, “Live, Laugh, Love.”
Everyone knows it isn’t original (or even very real), but they pawn and smile when they see it because it’s permission to play in their world. It’s nice enough.
And then she said it. “I just wish these people knew that they could choose kindness. Like, it’s a real option. You don’t even have to be a Christian to be kind. But they all say they’re Christians. I just wish the Christians knew they could be kind.”
At this point, dear reader, you’re probably asking— what in the world did they do? What mean-spirited thing was said? And that’s the damning thing of it all— it wasn’t words so much as action.
It was a roll of the eyes and a snicker when a certain person walked into the room.
It was an arrogant certainty about border control.
It was an overzealous reliance on their parents’ (or whichever echo chamber) opinions that seemed to foster a critical mass against anyone who thinks differently, regardless of unsupported data.
It was a closing of the friend circle when someone broke the unwritten rules.
It was an absence of grace. Grace had been choked out long ago by the fun of shame.
And I lamented again—this isn’t a teenage-drama problem. This isn’t a generational thing as I had hoped. This is who we’ve become, whether we believe in it or not. We’ve collectively given in to the fear. And we’ve built our own walls among our groups.
But there is hope. There is a way to break it down. We can embody the Christ in these moments of conditioned response. We can rebel. We can disrupt it all.
We can choose to be kind.