I ran across an article today that struck a chord. Bryan Lorrits writes about how a shallow, undynamic community is a nice community, one in which no one is “mean” enough to speak the truth to each other, in which selfishness manifests in the need to be liked.

And here’s the real problem with niceness- it’s narcissism at it’s finest. Niceness says, “I don’t want to come across as rude. I want to look good. I want this person to like me.” Niceness emphasizes self over the relationship. And whenever we do that we throw community out the door. It’s tragic that our obsession with acceptance and being liked, is the very thing that kills community. And so what I encounter from time to time are people who sit across the table and sing the woes of not having any real meaningful friendships. And for the longest time this would be so perplexing to me because I would look at them and think, “How is this person not enjoying community in the truest sense of the term, they’re so nice”.

And then I realize that’s exactly the problem.

H and I have risked friendships to be honest in the past, and have sometimes made people we love angry. Word gets around about how awful we are, and that hurts. But we still love who we love, and aren’t going to try and undo anything. No point in being defensive either. We just pray that time and other input will turn our words into the gifts they were meant to be, and not the arrows they were received as.

When I think about my closest friends and family, I think of the people who got to know me and then took enough interest in my well-being and soul to challenge me. One who exposed my habit of deflating others joy. Someone who told me that the reason I can’t write any poetry is because I’m too numb to my feelings. Another who warned me against being indignant about my love not being reciprocated. One who showed me what a lousy listener I am. I didn’t always know what to do with the new truth, but it was “good intel” for future living in community, and it marked those people as particularly valuable to me. Be valuable to your friends.