On the blog inward/outward, the Rev. Alan Jones has a very good post entitled “Being Nice, and Other Barriers to Love.”  I highly recommend you take some time to read the post in its entirety, though below you will find some of its beginning paragraphs.

One of the most damaging things about the popular view of love is that it requires being nice all the time. I don’t think that I am a particularly nice person. In fact, one of the reasons that I count myself among the believers is that I cannot rely on my being nice to pull me through.

Being nice is closely allied, of course, to being liked. The two go together. If I’m not nice you won’t like me, and if you don’t like me then there is no chance of love springing up between us. This kind of reasoning breeds dishonesty because it means that “love” becomes a code word for avoiding confrontation or disagreement.

True love requires a strict and accurate regard for truth. We lie in an age that would prefer the smooth lie to the hard truth. The result is that we are very poor at honoring genuine feelings and hard-won convictions. In the name of caring for each other we often do everything we can to diffuse one another’s passion. We are embarrassed by strong expressions of emotion.

Love, therefore, can easily become a device for avoiding unpleasantness and denying tragedy. In the name of love we tend to deny pity, joy, grief and passion and all for the sake of an egocentric “peace.” [There are] dire consequences in ordinary human life when these great Invisible Things are denied. Love is reduced to niceness and the passion and the grief are driven underground….

Please note that Jones does not go on to say that we need to become meaner people.  Rather, he feels that love requires honesty.  We need to be truthful to each other, and, as we know, though the truth can set us free, it can can also hurt at times.  Further, many of us, and I know that this is true of me, want to be liked.  We love being appreciated and loved, and we fear losing the love and respect of others if we are, at times, honest and truthful with those we care about.

Naturally our model in these situations ought to be Jesus, who spoke and acted truthfully at all times, and sometimes did so in ways that offended those on the receiving end of his actions and words. After all, who can forget his calling of some of the most religious people of his day “white-washed tombs,” and his driving out the money changers from the temple, using a whip of all things?  And then there is also his rebuke of Peter:  “Get behind me, Satan!”

The key, it seems to me, is that everything Jesus did was informed by his love of people and the world, as well as his desire that world and people be all that God desired both to be and become.  And again, the goal is not to be hurtful or hateful in our words and actions, but to make sure that both have their foundation in love.

For those of us who are pastors (and this really applies to all Christians), we need to learn to speak and act the truth in love.  This is a mark of a mature follower of Christ and of a maturing Christian community.  As Paul stated in Ephesians 4:15-16:  “Instead, by speaking the truth in love, we will grow up completely into the one who is the head, that is, into Christ, in whom the whole body is united and held together by every ligament with which it is supplied. As each individual part does its job, the body’s growth is promoted so that it builds itself up in love.”