By Kerwin Holmes, Jr.

The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but victory is from the LORD. -Proverbs 21:31

Lately, several articles, blog posts, and vlogs have been dedicated to tackling a trend in modern Christianity that is particularly ravaging the Western realms. I myself haven’t yet addressed this issue directly, but now I am inclined to do so, at least briefly. The principal reason for my not addressing this issue is due to its sensitivity.

The issue is in the title, but I will spend the next little bit describing what the issue is. We are overtaken, rather forcefully, and also rather disarmingly, by the disarming grip of the idolatry of niceness (or the idolatry of “nice,” if we wish to be a bit grammatically incorrect in order to capture the accusatory device used to create such a fetter). And I will first begin to (attempt to) describe this is by an illustration:

It is almost Passover in Roman Jerusalem. Suddenly we are in a corner market facing the Temple Mount, the steps going up from the streets to the elevated structure hidden mostly by the immense wall that surrounds the plot of land. We behold the massive Roman edifice with its interlocking courts arranged in a pattern that would be described as concentric had the courts not been rectangular in nature– for they centered around the rather high-rising and shining edifice of the Herodian Temple. Houses and shops line the streets just outside the first court, the court of the nations (or Gentiles, as we call them now). But within the courts we see many figures buying and selling animals, trinkets, souvenirs, and exchanging currency for commerce in imperial custom convenient to the Temple authorities now squarely under the heels of Roman hegemony.
The constant sounds of high-volume bartering and the occasional tune of some melodic instrument with the frequency just right to slip through the vaunted voices of a great product, or a great sale, or a great bargain, or an even greater offer, bring us back outside of the hustle and bustle of the commercial industry into the mundane setting of life within an ancient city. Work and play mingle and flow as one never-ceasing river.

We see the multifaceted life of humanity in antiquity– and this through the context of ancient Jerusalem. We see bearded fellows, and some not so much, the whole range of them being scattered among the young and old, the poor and the wealthy. We see maidens and women with veiled heads walking about, with children of both sexes fluttering between their figures running to and fro, laughing and prancing around. We see the occasional family unit stopping to meet and greet the hardworking male (a father or brother or nephew or friend) who was working at the local market within one of the Temple courts, earning what to the naked eye would be an honest living. On another occasion we see a Judean priest, having come a bit outside to the courts and far from the Temple building or having returned inside the courts from some errand, moving among the masses, the city having swelled several times due to the coming Paschal occasion.

The sun shines in the spring per usual for the festival season. A great occasion, and a subtly good omen, if such things be reckoned. Here and there a young person enters into a conversation with a peer concerning another of the opposite gender, someone within eye shot, that gains a stolen glance or a brief smile from across the way. The occasional marketplace argument disrupts the otherwise disrupting cascade of heightened bartering, but a glance from a Temple guard troop, or a passing Roman squad, quells the matter.

And yet, we come to see that some are apparently together. Yes, a group of young men, maybe in their mid to early 20’s, maybe one or two in their late teenage years, interact with one another among the throng– not unlike the other roving gangs of colleagues and sisterhoods. But it is unique in that every now and again, one motions to the other and goes over to pause at the same spot hidden from view. It is a spot where one of the court gates opens up and yet the corner goes round and cuts off our field of vision due to the magnificent stone and ornamental columns. We turn around it and see a slightly older man than they, seated, legs in front but one drawn up at a bend, tying cords together tautly.

His muscles strain as he winds them around one another length-wise. We pause and make out the flush in his cheeks, his beard revealing their tone while nonetheless being fully grown. The calluses on his hands, when they flash upward amid the abrupt pauses from his grabbing the cords and winding them around again, show that he is a hard-working man and long accustomed to manual labor. The muscles show likewise. But the furrow of his brow shows unique determination and surrender to the cause.
We wonder what he plans to do with this that he makes, that he has such determination to see it accomplished. Does he wish to use the reinforced cord to bind his purchased packages together once he has gotten them from the market? Is that why he labors so much, focused upon its excellent crafting? Does he wish to sell it?

Suddenly, the man arises and steps outside of the inner court to the court of the nations, as they called them. The young men, his accomplices, seem relieved that the man has finally moved. A single accomplice, one with a rather jovial and youthful expression, motions from the others and walks to gain his companion’s attention now that he seems ready to join the rest of them.

And lo and behold.
The man with his new whip bursts into a fit of rage.
He stomps upon the legs of the first money-changer table that he encounters, overthrowing it and disrupting the day of a small family, the father gripping his wife in abject shock, the money-changer throwing up both hands in dismay, his earnings scattering out into the air before plummeting to the cobbled stone. Shrieks fill the air, with more yet to come. A Temple guard lifts up his chin to see about the matter– but the man with the whip is a whirlwind. He has already overthrown two more tables, causing children to cry and the many languages of the day to be either silenced or menacingly pointed to his direction.

And yet he does not care.

A fifth, a seventh, an eleventh, table after table, cage after cage of clean animal carefully selected being thrown open, and client after client, onlooker after onlooker, standing agape at the raging young man. We turn back to his beckoning companion, his face colorless with dread and shock and his young mouth stammering in silence– the rest of his companions none the better. Ah, he did not come along for this ride either. He merely wanted a talk to see if his friend is alright.

And his friend is not alright.

“My Father’s house…My Father’s house…” the Man rages. His voice becoming a booming sound as table after table is flipped, His whip now being employed against the backs and shins and occasionally raised arms of those who were too stubborn to get out of the way. He uses those work-laden muscles efficiently now, and the shock of the crowd rises to its greatest effect, His impulsive behavior moving even larger brutes away from His path– nay– even from His field of vision. The Temple guards come and screech to a halt, some of them approaching from behind pause from the whip cascading back and forth, not wanting to feel the sting of its finely taut ends.

“Get those out of here!” The Man’s voice booms. “Do not turn My Father’s house into a marketplace!”

The teachers and Temple officials close in now, and the lawyers as well. Even the respected preachers all come, with their well-dressed garbs and disciples in tow, and the more prominent among them speak to calm the Man down.
And yet we turn and behold the Man’s companions: all aghast and fearful, shocked and bewildered, embarrassed even. We look at the crowd, most all fearful and outraged, with children crying and young ones looking to and fro with the elderly outraged at the sight of all of this pandemonium and cultic disruption.

And there stands Jesus with His whip, defiant, even to the point that, without us really noticing, He had even gone into one or more of the inner courts and cleared those out also. And the first instances of words come to our minds:

…Wow, that was not nice.

Christianity in the West is enthralled, at the moment, with the every elusive aspect of being the “socially commendable” thing. Now, we often do not allow ourselves the luxury of wanting to become the “socially fashionable” thing. We, at least in the US, still rather like the notion of being “the outsiders” or “the outcasts” or “the special ones.” “We happy few” would be a Church worship song would some youth pastor or critically acclaimed songwriter with a penchant for the nouveau be able to create a three-chord progression with the adequate repeating refrains, and something metaphorical about water, in between sips of lattes and beet juice. But we do wish oh so much to become the one thing that others may say “Yeah, but at least that guy is cool. At least that guy is nice.”

But yes, what Jesus did was not nice, and yet there He stands: our Paragon of moral justice and justifiable outrage…whipping the greedy bankers and running out the usurers…rebuking the religious and humbling the oppressors…overturning tables and upsetting children…even turning aside the commerce deemed necessary for the traveling poor to have acceptable sacrifices done on their behalf. Oh, and He had such an eye to the sensitivity of the time and customs so as to do this spectacle during the seasonal time of the first (and arguably greatest) historical holiday of His people!

Recently, as I said at the beginning, Christian media has put out several op-eds and other forms of communication to address what we in the West currently face on the social levels (I do not post them here now for fear of distraction). But often times those posts come with this disposition to be socially fashionable, commendable even. And it should be no surprise. When victory is dependent upon us, as many of these authors functionally affirm, and not upon the God who wills, then we must become ever careful of our brand. And yet, as the world goes to pot around us, there is nary a hearty battle cry from those in the Kingdom of Light against the darkness. There have been a cornucopia of virtue signals, though, to be sure. Effective little things, those are.

I must give some particular contexts.
It is no secret that currently in the United States we are faced with a dysfunctional Congress that seems to only agree on their wages being increased by another annual vote and their wages not being threatened by another government shutdown. We have a president who lacks the self-control one should expect from a person his age and with his office, and numerous presidential candidates rushing to match him. (Side note: If you have wondered why I haven’t spoken much about his faults, it is because the rest of the world has that pretty much covered, both in the actual and the fabricated, and I find it too silly to follow Twitter trends and the like in order to lecture about morality. Plus, heck, I’ve been busy.) We have one political party (the Democrats) that seems poised to tear down any structure that can be perceived to be traditional and hearth-warming, while the other party (the Republicans) per usual stands too cowered to do anything about it…or stands too cowered to vocally agree with their colleagues.

Yet, we must be nice.

We have one party championing abortion as the sacral rite of longevity and self-actualization, and yet we still blow Molech’s horns in applause and hash-tags, though we needn’t do so. Most wombs are perfectly sound-proof for the baby inside. The infant’s cries at being dismembered or chemically disintegrated do not reach our ears or voting booths.

We have one party not offering the world a glimpse at the humanity of championing the provision/exchange of services at market prices induced by mutual agreement and communal interaction between neighbors. Instead we have one party simply glancing at the national fiscal gains under the current administration (true as they are) in tumultuous joys. The party even excuses the ways in which Old Man Dollar has stolen the stage from things such as ” inter-generational communal benefit” and “long-term communal sustainability,” concepts that first gave Old Man Dollar his social power to begin with.

Yet, we must be nice.

We have one party trampling upon religious rights (particularly those of the Church) with some strange new orthodoxy that demands its own allegiance and has its own priesthood and confession. We now have this new orthodoxy that has entered into the civic cult with loud shouts of freedom and tolerance while, ironically, denying the same “freedom” and that same “tolerance” to those now labeled “oppressors”…oppressors whose maturing confession enabled us to have these current liberties that they claimed were granted by their God, and thus could not be given nor taken by any government nor any human.

We have an entire body of foreign ideology, whose roots are contrary and hostile to the universally-convicting, particularly-salvific, and holistically sanctifying Gospel of Christ, that has entered into the Church. We have allowed this infestation to turn brother against sister, and because they are of different genders and/or have different shades of melanin and cultural baggage, they do not fellowship rightly (if at all) at the same table where once tyrannical Romans and nationalistic Jews met as one and in peace through the conquering power of the Spirit of God.
Yes, we must not run from our history and the truth of the wrongs we have done to one another and suffered from one another. For to do so would be running from the truth and the power of Sovereign God to overcome our history and our sins. But do we then run from the overcoming power of Almighty God? And for what? To establish “His” righteousness, “His” justice? Let’s not become fools.

Yet, we must be nice.

I could go on. Right now I won’t.

These are sharp words that I write, and they are meant for disagreement. Indeed, they are barbed with enough force to merit disagreeable responses. One would accurately say that they are not nice.

And there is no Biblical commandment mandating for such a thing.

Do not mishear me. I do not say that we begin now clanging our cymbals without love, or shouting from the rooftops our highest battle cry before turning our armaments upon our brothers and sisters. I do not reason that we are to go about breaking bruised reeds in the Church or in the world. I do not mean that we go about actually making whips and taking names. I do not even mean that we begin kicking pigeons on the sidewalk.

Look to the example and learn.
What I do mean is that, increasingly, when the waters get rough, and the winds rage, and the standard means of relying upon the sail winds to reach our destination become exercises in futility, that we grab the rudder and the oars. I mean that we, Christians, do some work, some hard meditation upon the oracles of God, some meaningful introspection into our character’s witness, and some divinely harmonizing and agonizing prayers in the soul with God the Spirit to get to that place where we may know when to furrow our brows and have grit in our teeth. As we grow to learn when to turn wrath away with a gentle response, we need to truly know when we may sit a while and twist the chords and flex those muscles that ought to be accustomed to the labor of our Lord.
We must put forth godly and Christ-like responses to the problems of our age akin to what our Lord, Jesus, God the Son incarnate, provided while physically among us.

Yet, let us remember that oft forgotten commandment of our Paragon and be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. For a servant is no wiser nor greater than her Master, nor a disciple above his Teacher. When we respond love should be the motivator, as it surely was/is for Jesus. The goal should be a fruitful product at the end, whether a conversation starter for later or a fateful encounter with meaningful Gospel implications for our hearers…in forms ranging from gentle encouragement to stern, uncompromising rebuke. Jesus even used sarcasm, for what that is worth.

Let us not forget that we are called to love, and to love is not always to be nice. Let us stop being immobilized by the false “gospel of nice.”
Let us also stop being improper jackanapes to the point that we cannot take a bit of not-niceness ourselves when we deserve it. The Gospel truth, I humbly submit, has many intrinsic and immutable characteristics to it, and niceness is not one of them. Just ask Jesus.
Let us discard this idolatry of nice while replacing it with the full interaction of God’s love. In fact, stop asking “What would Jesus do?” Stop asking the hypothetical in this struggle of ours.

Let us start asking and learning about what Jesus did.