35: Sharon Hodde Miller | Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and Why God Calls Us to More

Sharon and I chat about the difference between niceness and kindness, the dangers of making words like authenticity and courage trendy, how God cultivates the fruit of the Spirit in us, and how knowing the depth of God's Word is vital as a believer. Our conversation surrounds her newest book Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and Why God Calls Us to More.

5:58 Sharon shares how her faith journey with Jesus began 

Sharon worked for Proverbs 31 ministrywhen she graduated from college.  It was a small ministry at that time with about 5 people on staff.

“I went back to seminary, because I realized I really wanted to equip myself for ministry.”

8:50 Sharon expounds on the first line in her new book Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and Why God Calls Us to More,  “God didn’t call us to be nice.”

The book came from a paragraph she wrote in her first book, Free of Me.

“I was a really good kid. I was a nice Christian girl. I was a rule follower. I was an achiever. I was a people pleaser.  That was a big part of my identity.   As I looked back, I think all along I felt like I was a good kid, because I loved God and I wanted to honor God. To some extent that was true, but I could also see that it was really rewarding to be a good kid. It earned me a lot of affirmation from all of the adults in my life. I could look back and see these mixed motives in my heart and how that was blurring my identity as a Christian.”

“The more I noticed this [nice Christian mentality] the more I thought this is a false virtue in our culture, but it is also a false idol in the church. We don’t see anywhere in the Bible that tells us to be nice.  We are told to bear fruits of kindness and patience and gentleness and love, but nowhere are we told to be nice.”

“We will often excuse sin or dysfunction if a person is simply nice to us. “

“He doesn’t call us to be mean. He doesn’t call us to be aggressive. He doesn’t call us to be divisive, but He doesn’t call us to simply be pleasant.”

15:15 “Nice Christianity looks a lot like the real thing. Jesus says the way you can know it’s not the real thing is look at the fruit it is producing.”

“Some of the fruits [of niceness] are unexpected like self-righteousness.  This doesn’t look like niceness on its face, but it is a fruit of it. That was 100% my story, because I was such a good girl, I would think, ‘’Being good is so easy. What’s wrong with these other people who aren’t nice like me?’  Instead of owning the fact that part of the reason I was good was I was a slave to people’s affirmation and approval.”

 SHOW NOTES continued.

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Sharon Hodde Miller at SheWorships.com and IG

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