The Difference Between Kindness and Love

    Of late, I've been thinking about the difference between kindness and love. As C.S. Lewis says, "there is a kindness in Love, but Love and kindness are not coterminous and when kindness is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it." Take for instance all of the projects of goodwill: NGOs, USAID grants, and so forth in Afghanistan. There are so many hands reaching out in kindness here, yet real transformation has not happened.


    It is not that these acts of kindness are not helpful, it's just that they will not promote and sustain real change on their own. Have they ever? When have we ever been a part of a world without suffering? This is why humanitarian work can be depressing. One witnesses an individual feeding a hungry mouth and then sees another one around the corner who is starving just the same. We don't have the capacity to be kind to all; and this is a disheartening matter once you are in the thick of a crowd of starving children pulling at your coat as you walk into the grocery store.


    I am in no way disregarding the importance of humanitarian work; we are created to give to the poor and help the needy. However, if we are not careful in our efforts to realize how little control we have in "saving the world", we will grow weary and give it all up, or at worst, grow bitter in our works of kindness. As Lewis says, "kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object--we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering."


    A lifetime of this kind of work, which one would inevitably face if working with the poor and needy, leads to a distancing of the self from the life within and therefore wishing only to remedy suffering. We see this kind of disposition with the life of Mother Theresa. Throughout her life, she was uneasy and rarely at peace with herself and her work. She was indeed a saint for doing what she did, but she realized how troubling her work was because her life's aim was to remedy suffering. She couldn't cure the real problem at hand. Unfortunately, suffering continues on and on, despite our efforts.


    This all sounds very dark and cynical, but I don't mean it as such. From where I sit, I see the reality of man's "getting in the middle of suffering" and attempting to relieve it. This by itself will never work. It will relieve pain for a while, but not forever, and we must realize this. I must realize this. Kindness is fleeting. The receiver quickly forgets who gave him the loaf of bread and the giver, in time, forgets the face of the needy one. With our efforts of helping, we often neglect to build relationship. We don't want to go that far because it gets messy and difficult. However, if we don't, we really forego the greatest gift we can give, which is Love.


    It's similar to a parent who gives her child everything she desires and never corrects or withholds for the good of the child. As we've witnessed so many times, the child is therefore never content. She has missed out on what it really means to be loved and the mother has missed what it means to love. The parent is not concerned with the shaping of the child's character or heart or mind, but with filling her unmet desires. This is an endless pit that we will never get to the bottom of.


    When we devote our lives to this kind of action without Love, we damage ourselves and I would go so far as to say, those around us. We then walk away in contempt from the very ones we tried to remove from suffering and we leave them dependent and injured. I see it in the undone projects here in Afghanistan. I hear it in the words of the cynic who believes that we can do nothing except for ourselves because life is meaningless and man does not change.


    It is here, for me, that God enters the picture; and it doesn't necessarily make us feel good or sleep better at night. "If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense", Lewis says. It is the reason why I trust my parents and I desire meaning outside of my daily needs. They have loved me the hard way. Not by giving me everything I want, but by being more concerned with the soul within and its growth into goodness and grace.


    In the same way, my husband's love is my most precious jewel here because he has chosen to Love me. He doesn't meet every need I have, but he fills the human void of loneliness and more importantly, he is bent on seeing me be the best woman I can be: a person of truth and Love. This is a much harder path than having someone by my side who makes me "feel good". That is a replaceable thing and it does not satisfy in the way that Love does. I am known and Loved - this is inescapable. I've come to realize that this is more sustainable than anything. It creates inter-dependency, not mere dependency.


    Love your neighbor, don't just be kind to her. When we step beyond the safety of our homes or even the comfort of our acts of kindness, we find that Love, which cuts to the heart of human need, opens a channel to an ever-flowing river of life, beyond our sickness and our need.