Kindness Is Not Permission to Stop

You are afraid that if you are kind to yourself you will let go of the rope.

That is the fear and it is worth saying out loud because it is usually never named. In your understanding, the only thing holding this together is a certain hardness. Kindness is what people do when they have stopped trying. It is the language of surrender.

And you have seen that happen. You have watched men decide to be gentle with themselves and then watched something go slack, and you decided a long time ago that you were not going to be one of them.

So you have run on hardness for decades, which has worked in the sense that you are still here, and has cost you every ordinary comfort available to a man.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. The hardness was a strategy and it was chosen for good reasons and you have held it for years, and you have got up every time. Somebody who did not care would have gone soft long ago.

So this page is not going to tell you to go easy on yourself. That phrase means exactly what you are afraid of.

I want to show you a verse about what God's kindness is doing, and what it leads to.

Two things called kindness

Consider that there are two completely different things going by that name, and the confusion between them is the whole trouble.

One is indulgence. Indulgence removes a requirement. It says the thing does not matter after all, and it is a way of quitting while appearing to be gentle. Refusing it is right, and it has been refused correctly here for years.

The other is provision. Provision supplies something. It does not remove a requirement, it strengthens the one who is carrying it, and it looks like water rather than like a pardon.

You have been refusing one thing under the name of another, and no provision has ever once been the same thing as indulgence. Romans 2:4 says the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about kindness land on a man who has understood it as slackness.

And notice why the two got confused. Nobody ever taught you the difference, and every example of kindness toward self that you have observed was somebody quitting. So the only data you had pointed one way, and you drew the correct conclusion from bad data.

You were drawing a correct conclusion from bad data, and no observation of other men quitting has ever once been evidence about provision. The written word says the goodness of God leadeth, which is a verb of direction rather than of release, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies a category a man has never seen.

The goodness of God leadeth

Paul writes it as a question and the verb in it is the whole point.

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4, King James Version)

The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. Goodness leads. It does not release, it does not excuse, it does not remove anything. It leads, which means it is going somewhere, and the place it is going is a turn.

That is the exact opposite of slackness. Paul has God's kindness as the mechanism by which people change, not the reward for having changed.

You have kindness as the mechanism rather than the reward, and no goodness of God's has ever once been what released anybody from anything. Romans 2 puts the leading in the goodness itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a mechanism like that believable to a man who has run on hardness.

And read the word despise in front of it. Paul suggests it is possible to look down on the riches of God's goodness, and he asks the question as a rebuke, which means treating kindness as cheap is the error being named.

You have been treating kindness as cheap, and no strategy of hardness has ever once been the safer of the two options. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a suspicion of kindness into a suspicion of the hardness instead, and the written word says despisest thou the riches of his goodness.

Do one kind thing that supplies something

Now the part I came to say, and the test is built into it.

Do one kind thing for yourself today, and choose one that supplies rather than releases.

Water. Sitting down to eat. Going to bed at a sensible hour. A coat that fits. The good chair instead of the hard one. Every one of those adds something. None of them removes a requirement from anybody.

You are able to choose a kindness that supplies, and no provision has ever once made a man slack. The written word says the goodness of God leadeth thee, which is provision with a direction in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the difference between the two kinds visible in an ordinary afternoon.

And here is the test for later, so you do not have to take my word for it. A kindness that supplies leaves you more able. An indulgence leaves you less. Do one, honestly, and look at which one it was, and you will have your own evidence rather than mine.

You have a way of telling them apart today, and no evidence of that kind has ever once had to come from somebody else. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man able to distinguish two things that have shared a name his whole life, and Romans 2:4 is the written word underneath it, where the goodness leads and the leading is toward a turn.