"Doing Good to Bad People" (Luke 6:27-36)

Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This semester, we are looking at how the Spirit of God transforms our relationships. C.S. Lewis said “courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality." Similarly, if you want to know if you’re a loving person— don’t look at how you treat your friends— look at how you treat your enemies. Today we look at Kindness, the aspect of God’s character that enables him to do good to even his worst enemies. “Kindness isn't mere niceness … “kind” means something radically different from mere agreeableness. Indeed, kind, rightly understood, can include all sorts of disagreeableness. Kind comes from the same root from which we get the word kin. To be kind, then, is to treat someone like they are family. To possess the virtue of kindness is to be in the habit of treating all people as if they were family.”— Dr. Karen Swallow Prior “Cultural kindness is more about tolerance, being nice, and enduring differences without complaining than it is about love. It asks us only to be pleasant to those who are different from us—it doesn’t call us to love them. When kindness exists without love, it quickly becomes insincere, something we do because we’re supposed to. But kindness without love isn’t kindness at all. It’s an imitation. … In contrast, biblical kindness—true kindness—is always rooted in the steadfast and self-sacrificing love of God. … Godly kindness confronts us in love so we might be conformed to his image. Because he loves us and wants us to flourish, God’s steadfast loving-kindness will challenge us, tell us when we’re wrong, and change us.” — Anne Kerholas (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cultural-kindness/) "What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder. " — George Saunders (https://artsandsciences.syracuse.edu/news-all/news-2013/2013-george_saunders_convocation/)