Nice as an idol

We teach our kids to be nice, we try to be nice to people, we really with that people would be nice to us.  I’m not even sure why I requested a copy of this book, it sounded like it might just be a little too shmaltzy for my taste. But there was something about the subtitle that caught my attention, and so I signed up for Sharon Hodde Miller’s book Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and How God Calls Us to More (Baker Books, 2019).

So, the question we are invited to ask is a simple one: is nice really such a good thing? And according to Miller, maybe not. In fact, instead of the ‘fruits of the Spirit” which are a good thing, the ‘fruits of nice” can arguably be called idols.

Under the guise of nicety, we tend to be a lot of things that God never intended. In the first part of the book, we read about how we may come across as nice, but in reality, we are fake, rotten, bland, bitter, hard, and even processed (think mawkish sentimentality). But there is hope. The fault of bad fruit, is not the fruit, but the tree from which it comes. The solution is to cultivate a better tree. Pruning, and caring for the tree often help, and sometimes we just need to cut down the tree and start over.

After discussing the bad fruit, Miller moves on to the signs of a healthy tree: Embracing the design, rooting the soul, pruning the produce, and learning to flourish in the wilderness.

And suddenly we have fruit that lasts.

I enjoy reading about idols and idolatry, mainly because I, along with probably everyone I know suffers from this deadly disease.

As a member of the publisher’s bloggers’ program I received a copy of this book. I was not required to write a positive review.

4/5