A terminally oil boy with an incurable disease and a big heart, began an enduring friendship with Oprah Winfrey through letters and emails up until the day he died. On his death bed, his last words, which his mother related to Oprah is “It’s all so simple! It’s so simple.”
I realized one of the reasons I harboured so much anger and bitterness towards people before God changed me was that I overcomplicated things. I would spend my intellectual and emotional energy trying to size people up in my mind and assess their virtues and merits and consider if any of their behaviours disqualified them as candidates for positive appraisal or affection from me. It was a nasty habit of criticism and control used to fuel social expansion, a faulty and destructive strategy I acquired from years of mistreatment from my parents.
What I know now, is that kindness is not built around abstract systems of reward and punishment, it is simply cultivating an appreciation for a fellow human being, knowing this human was created by God and retains a spark of God’s goodness and merit inside of. You do not love or delight in the person because they climbed Mount Everest or cooked you a steak dinner, you delight in them because they are creations of God and you love everything that God creates. That is the essence of kindness and it is far simpler than the millions of laws religions have created and taught.
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