A to Z with C.S. Lewis: N is for Niceness

If you ever watch a movie in which a non-Christian actor plays a Christian character, you will often notice that he will convey his character’s faith by means of a friendly, if oafish-looking grin.  Though it is possible that unbelieving actors do this to parody believers, I would suggest that the real reason is rooted in a characteristically American misunderstanding of the nature of that glorious new life that Christ promises his followers.

There exists in our country a widespread belief that Christians are—or at least should be—“nice” people who spend most of their day smiling.  Though it is, in most cases, a good thing to smile, to be thankful, and to takes things lightly, niceness is hardly the central virtue of the Christian faith.  Christ’s goal is to transform us into saints, not improve our personality.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that the reason God tells us not to judge is that we do not know the raw material that other people are struggling with.  The world expects all Christians to act equally happy and outgoing, but the fact is that it may be a greater victory for Christian A (who has been strapped with a weight of inner demons and psychological complexes) to smile than for Christian B (who has been blessed from birth with a loving family, a healthy body, and sound finances) to donate $5000 to charity.

As a patriotic American of conservative convictions, I am no fan of the young men who avoided the draft in the 1970’s by running off to Vietnam, but I consciously avoid casting judgment upon them.  The reason for this is simple.  Since I was born too late to have been eligible for the draft, I have no way of knowing how I would have reacted in their place.  To take a more difficult case, I cannot in good conscience judge the Germans who remained silent during the holocaust.  Of course I would like to believe that if I had been in their place, I would have risked imprisonment to shelter fugitive Jews in my attic. But how do I know if I would have had the courage to do so.

The point of this exercise is not to turn morality into something that is relative to the times: sin and cowardice are the same in any age or culture.  The point is that none of us can ever really know the struggles that go on within the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings.

And that takes us back to niceness.  The reason it is wrong for the world (and the church) to make a smiling face and a friendly demeanor the defining mark of the Christian is that the Body of Christ is made up of people whose personality types are as diverse and unique as the wavy lines of a fingerprint.   If every Christian in America were the smiling, friendly type, then that would mean that God only loves (and saves) smiling, friendly people.

In fact, God is no respecter of persons, and his church is therefore filled with people who are grumpy, cantankerous, depressed, irritable, and painfully shy.  Two of the greatest heroes of Narnia are the crotchety, suspicious Trumpkin and the perpetually gloomy, infuriatingly pessimistic Puddleglum.  Yet from their seemingly intractable raw material, Aslan molds two of the bravest and most loyal warriors in the realm.

The power of Christ lies not in his ability to make us nice, but in his capacity for transforming our hurt, our pain, and even our sin into tools and weapons for bringing his kingdoms to earth.