THE 'NICE' LIST

Along with all the hustle and bustle of the season, we hear about Santa’s ‘Naughty and Nice’ list in traditional Christmas songs that are played. So, it's got me thinking...

I’m a Canadian: Canadians are known to be nice!

I am a Christian: Christians are often taught to be nice!

I have a Mennonite pacifist cultural background: This often translates to being nice.

With that triple-decker niceness I’m sure to be on the nice list, right?

Oh, to top it off, I’m a girl (well, technically a woman) and females are reputedly made of sugar and spice and all things nice!

Yikes! A quadruple-decker becomes a wee bit hard to balance!

All of this syrupy, saccharine niceness is too much for me. Besides, (shhhhhhhh, don't tell the children) I don’t believe in Santa. I don’t want to be on any nice list. For the past few years, I've been learning to get off of that list. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be on the naughty side either. I’ve out grown that stage of my life. But the opposite of nice is not naughty. It’s kind, it’s good, it’s honest, it’s real.

I'm not crazy about the writing style of the authors, but I recently picked up a book called, No More Christian Nice Girl: When Just Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts You, Your Family, and Your Friends. Just so you don't feel left out, they've also written one for guys called, of course, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women and Children In an interview with CBN co-author Dr Degler is quoted as saying:

Women often times just need to look at, “OK, do my insides match up with my outsides or am I really just pretending a lot of the time? Am I lying?” Really, that’s what it is. When you aren’t speaking the truth in love, you’re lying. And that means they’ve got this Christian nice girl problem and many times what they’re going to find is that they’re not getting the abundant life that Jesus promised; their relationships are not satisfying.

That's the goal. To speak the truth in love. To have the insides match the outsides. Since 'nice' people are essentially liars! OUCH!

Your niceness 'training' may not be quadruple decker like mine. But if you want to begin to let go of your niceness you'll have lots of help because I'm not the only one who has been thinking about this. Besides the ones mentioned,there are other books such as Getting Off the Niceness Treadmill or one's written by psychotherapist Dr Evelyn Sommers


True Godliness is not PC. True Godliness is not always "nice". There are many things that Christians should not be nice about. Jesus, our perfect example and teacher, was not always nice. But He is kind. And it is His kindness that brings us to repentance.

How do you get to be more like Him? Dr. Degler sums it up well in her previously mentioned interview when she says:

You begin to speak the truth in love. Over time, if you will do that, it’s amazing how your relationships will transform. They will be more intimate. You will have the abundant life that Jesus promised. But you’ll never have that if you don’t really follow the real Jesus. He spoke the truth in love even when it cost Him.

Speaking the truth...in love. That's kindness.

Perhaps you are already on this journey with me, but if you are not, I hope that you will join me in getting rid of the many 'decks' of niceness.

No more lying then.
Everyone must tell the truth to his fellow believers
because we are all members together in the body of Christ.
Ephesians 4:25

I wish you an un-nice real honest to goodness Christmas Season.

The Ambivalence of Becoming Real

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day...

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."


I use this quote from the Velveteen Rabbit time and again with the people whom I minister to. I also refer them to John Eldredge's Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive.


And I believe in this process, this pursuit, with all my heart. Heart. The Heart fully alive. Becoming and being real. It hurts. It hurts so bad sometimes because it's hard to acknowledge the harsh reality of life, to admit unmet needs, or to embrace unfulfilled longings in this fallen imperfect world. The alternative is to deny and ignore the heart through fervent activity and busy-ness, to kill it with various addictions, to pretend all is right with the world. There is a pain in both of those paths.

Ambivalence...

As author and speaker Bunny Wilson says, "In this world we will have suffering. We choose whether we suffer for Satan and reap his reward, or suffer for Christ and reap His reward." I know that most of us want the latter but the former often seems so much easier because it's a 'quick' fix and it doesn't seem to require quite as much pain...in the moment.



"A righteous person may fall seven times, but he gets up again." Proverbs 24:17

"When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand." Psalms 37:24

I'm so glad that the LORD holds our hands. I'm so thankful that because of Him we get up again. We can hardly believe that He doesn't see us as ugly when we fall. Instead He's loved us 'shabby' and is not about to let us go!!! Because of Him and IN Him we are Real.