Is being nice a sin?

I think it is a matter of not backing ourselves into corners where ethics contradict the greatest commandment given by Jesus, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30) The second greatest commandment given was, "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:31)

An example of what I mean is also found in Mark, when it comes to Herod backing himself into such a corner. In Mark 6, Herod promises someone that they can ask for anything they want, and Herod will give it to them. At the same time, Herod may have been on his way to salvation otherwise, because Herod liked listening to John the Baptist and considered John to be a righteous man. But the person wound up asking Herod for John's severed head. So then Herod was in a situation where he could either do right by God (not executing John the Baptist), or Herod could do right by humans (upholding his integrity and keeping his promise, which would mean beheading John). This put in Herod's mind two different meanings of doing the "right thing" and ultimately Herod chose to do 'right' by human standards instead of God's standards. If Herod had not made such a promise, if Herod had no made his integrity a matter for humans to judge, then Herod would not have been in that position.

So likewise, with being "nice" - Being nice, compassionate, friendly, pleasant, etc is all fine and well on its own, but not if it contradicts the greatest commandment given by Jesus, in which case the "niceness" is only a surface problem, or like a symptom, where the deeper underlying problem is going against God.

TonyT316 said:

I think of being nice as being a sin and I don't think what Jesus did was nice but it was right and the Father's will. In tenth grade World History my teacher taught me that "nice" was a bad word to use when I was describing the cotton gin. She gave me the punishment of looking in a thesaurus for a better word to use so I did. She was a good Christian black woman and later on I wrote to her that she was my favorite teacher in a letter a couple years later. About Jesus, he wasn't nice because he whipped the money changers but that wasn't a sin, it is what He was supposed to do. I don't like it when people are nice to me or expect me to be nice and my earthly father is not very nice but is strict but he is a good father and he really isn't nice to a lot of people but I think that is a good thing.

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Be nice and respectful as much as you possibly can and in all that you can without sacrificing any of your commitment or dedication to righteousness...

God Bless!

We need to take time and read pray listen..get to KNOW the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To say He was not nice.. I would have to wonder if that person knows Him. One can believe and saved and still not KNOW Him.

Yet what was asked .. no being nice is not a sin. Being nice is not "missing the mark". Now though we have the mind of Christ and die to self yet.. we can not see the heart of anyone. So what Christ did and said was based on the HEART. SOME believers treat others based on how Christ did..yet it is nothing like Him. We only see the flesh and God sees the heart as it is written OT.

Yet.. its written let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Meaning.. we can get mad upset.. just dont let it go past a day. Nice..

If you pray to let the Holy Spirit be your guide, you will know when to act with love (which is almost always) and when to not be "nice."

TonyT316 said:

I think of being nice as being a sin.

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Well of course it is. Be totally rotten to everyone you meet for 1 full year and then call me and let me know how that's working out for you.

I think I've been way too nice to people my whole life. They eventually took advantage of me. When look back and think about it, this was not the case. It was their problem, not mine. What if I stop being nice and I become reserved? What if exactly then I find someone normal like myself? Don't ever feel sorry for being good spoken, schon, kind Sir!?

Greetings from Europe.

bettercallpaul said:

You just reminded me all the office politics of my previous job. There are so many "types". There are genuinely hard workers who don't politic, stay quiet and nice to be around. The there the hard workers who want some credit for all the hard work they do. They like to gossip about the lazy ones. Then there are the one who know how to look like they work hard. Know how to impress the bosses. In fact they are the laziest people in the office.
Then there the genuinely lazy ones who don't hide it. They don't care and these people I find nice to be around as long as you aren't sharing the same project.
So in concussion, i will say nice people who don't work hard at the workplace are not on the bottom of my list, at least.

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I have a theory about youngsters who seem to be lazy, Paul. I'm inclined to think that they are unconsciously prioritizing trying to understand what life is about ; whereas young people who are hard-workers, have either been given a wise Christian upbringing and work reasonably hard for the glory of God, or more commonly in our day and age, have been raised to be cut-throat 'go-getters', driven by a mania for worldly success, in terms of money, power and status. I certainly had a lot of great laughs with the rascally youngsters who were not paragons of diligence.