PREMEDITATED RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS Matt 6:4 - that thy kindness may be in secret, and thy Father who is seeing in secret Himself shall reward thee manifestly. Kindness is one of the elements of Christianity that makes our faith the greatest goodness in the history of the earth. In past blogs I have attempted to prove this, and in my opinion successfully, and it disturbs me whenever I see a threat to Christian paradigms that support the greatest good theory. Well, in the past year or so, the “Random Acts Of Kindness” craze in our culture, in a way, does jeopardize the strength and validity of the greatest goodness concept. I struggle with making that claim since these folks who commit the so called random acts of kindness are in fact doing some very good things – I just question the authenticity of their actions and their adherence to scripture and to the words of Christ who made it clear that acts of kindness should be anonymous gestures as much as possible. So, I am perplexed to make any negative comments about this phenomenon but at the same time I am compelled to point out a few details that expose a possible change to our Christian paradigms. Acts of kindness, or giving, are in their most pure form when no one is aware of your actions but those receiving your gift and even better if they don’t know, either. The belief is that God is watching and that should be good enough. Matt 6:3 'But thou, doing kindness, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth; 4: that thy kindness may be in secret, and thy Father who is seeing in secret Himself shall reward thee manifestly. If a random act of kindness has any element of planning then is it really a random, selfless act? Frequently, such acts appear on the tv news where cameras, or cell phone journalists, capture some heartwarming good deed being performed by some heart warming good deed doing Christians. We see everything from sneaking an army dad returned from the war into his young child's kindergarten classroom to be reunited or we can watch as a cancer fighter sits for a false television interview in a cafe until two hundred do gooders walk in, single file, in silence and drop one hundred dollar bills in a pile in front of her to help pay for treatment she could not afford. It was a beautiful thing. One of those times where tears are launched without time or power to suppress emotions. Here is the YouTube link to watch this wonderful video: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/health/iyw-flash-mob-cancer-mom-trnd/
But was it a random act on their part? Did they carry out the plan in secrecy? Did they try to maintain anonymity, or, did they set it up as a spectacle of goodness? Was this a random act of kindness or a planned and public act of goodness? Either way, no doubt, goodness was performed. The cancer Mom received thirteen thousand dollars from a bunch of strangers to help pay for her medical costs – hallelujah! But the so called random actors also received their name in the papers, their images in photographs and videos on the TV news, they even uploaded their performance onto YouTube where it went viral and drew millions of visitors who have watched their premeditated random act of kindness. They belong to a group of Christians, good hearted and good minded for sure, called praynksters.com, an online community of people gathering together to organize what they call random acts of kindness. The site is promoted through Facebook, twitter and YouTube and in other areas on the internet. There is nothing secret or anonymous about them. They seem to make sure that they get full credit for their actions. And that is what is hard for me to swallow. That kind of gratuitous attention, and not unwanted, random attention, very specifically targeted attention goes against the grain of Christian teachings and as this phenomenon of Random Acts Of Kindness grows the great paradigms that have defined goodness in Christianity are jeopardized. Matt 6:1 Take heed your kindness not to do before men, to be seen by them, and if not -- reward ye have not from your Father who is in the heavens; 2: whenever, therefore, thou mayest do kindness, thou mayest not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do, in the synagogues, and in the streets, that they may have glory from men; There are many of these sites going up and the movement for random kindness seems to be growing exponentially. Just take a quick web search for Crowdfunding, Christian acts of kindness organizations, or take a look at the site: randomactsofkindness.org, by far the most visible misguidance of what Christian kindness is because that site has all sorts of ways to gather people together and encourage them to commit acts of kindness. It offers information on things to do, an entire section on ideas you can use to perform acts of kindness, samples of former acts of kindness they are responsible for and it is a professionally designed and well put together advertisement for, well, how you, too, can get involved and plan random acts of kindness in your part of the world. Think about that: How you can PLAN random acts of kindness. Be careful what you ask for, it just may happen. That saying comes to mind because this new thing in society for doing good things for the less fortunate is a fantastic aspect of being Christian and one of the reasons we belong to the greatest force of goodness on the planet. But, if we become known as a faith that visibly promotes good deeds, take credit for the good deeds we do, have places online and elsewhere that advertises information on how to do good things, well...?? At what point will the good doers be the greatest recipients of goodness from good deeds being done? My long winded point is: Random Acts Of Kindness are random to both parties: the recipient and the giver. When a giver starts giving to get something out of it, or promotes their giving or makes sure their giving is noted, publicly, well, according to our faith that negates the Christian beauty of giving. It is hard to criticize any act of giving for I am sure most of it comes straight from their Christian hearts. But if the planning and coordinating and the teaching and the marketing of random acts of kindness continues sooner or later giving will lose a piece of its reality, of its power within the human heart and, humanity and the greatest goodness known to humankind will be to some extent diluted forever. Comments are closed.
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