This is an important question. Lots of people use this observation (ex: my Buddhist aunt is a lot nicer than my Baptist nephew) to try to invalidate Christianity. The idea is that if they can show you that Christianity doesn’t do what it claims to do (change people for the better) while someone else accomplishes some of what Christianity promises apart from it, then Christianity is false.
This question was answered quite well by C.S. Lewis in Book 4, Chapter 10 of Mere Christianity. I haven’t read that book in a long time (actually, I never read it; I listened to it as an audiobook back in my early 20’s) but there was an explanation that Lewis gave that was very influential in my thinking. I can tell because I still very much believe the gist of what he said in that chapter even though when I went back and reviewed it recently, I didn’t remember most of his specific words.
Here is my summary of his argument: If you were trying to evaluate the effectiveness of a tooth-whitening toothpaste you could not simply draw your conclusions by comparing one person who uses the toothpaste to another person who doesn’t. The reason for that is that you don’t know what color those two people’s teeth were before one of them started using the product.
If Person #1 has beige teeth, and after six months of using the product their teeth are four shades lighter (ie: they are now very light tan), the product can be said to work, even if you compare Person #1 to Person #2, who happened to have gleaming white teeth without needing any brushing at all.
In other words, the way to figure out if the product works, is not by comparing two different people with two different starting points; rather you’d have to compare the teeth of the person using the toothpaste to the teeth of that same person back before they started using the toothpaste. Lewis likens this to the sanctification that people experience once they become a follower of Jesus Christ.
I’ve noticed that many of the people who turn to Jesus are particularly bad people. In fact, that might be part of why they turned to Jesus; they realized how morally hopeless they were without Him. (I consider myself in that category.) So, it wouldn’t surprise me if the average person who converts to Christianity is actually “below average” (especially in things like self-control or niceness) when compared to the rest of people.
So, what happens if, on a scale of 1 to 10, my aunt (the Buddhist) is a 7 when it comes to niceness, and my nephew (the Baptist) is a 5? Sure, on the surface, it makes my nephew’s Christianity look suspect, but what if my aunt is naturally a 7 in niceness? What if that’s just the level she was born at? And what if my nephew was a 2 apart from Christ, but as God has been sanctifying him, he is now a 5? In that case, even if it doesn’t look like it, it would be true that Jesus is making a positive difference in my nephew’s life.
I believe this happens all the time. Everyone is different. There are so many different variations of personalities. And some people lean more toward certain character traits than others. Have you noticed some people are just naturally braver than other people? Some people are naturally angrier than other people? Some people are naturally calmer than other people? Of course you have.
And there are some qualities (like niceness) that we tend to use as the ultimate indicator of whether someone is a good person or not. However, what do we do about the people who are naturally brave (or diligent or honest) but are not naturally nice? What happens when they become a Christian?
Well, for a lot of people that Christian’s lack of niceness invalidates Christianity in their mind, but it shouldn’t.
Just because you value niceness over other qualities, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t improving that person’s niceness (and their other qualities) over time.
However, the fact that you are so hard on them (as they are trying to follow Jesus and improve over time) might indicate that you (as nice as you are) are somewhat judgmental. And perhaps you will need to turn to Jesus and ask Him to save you from that. How’s that for irony?
This question was answered quite well by C.S. Lewis in Book 4, Chapter 10 of Mere Christianity. I haven’t read that book in a long time (actually, I never read it; I listened to it as an audiobook back in my early 20’s) but there was an explanation that Lewis gave that was very influential in my thinking. I can tell because I still very much believe the gist of what he said in that chapter even though when I went back and reviewed it recently, I didn’t remember most of his specific words.
Here is my summary of his argument: If you were trying to evaluate the effectiveness of a tooth-whitening toothpaste you could not simply draw your conclusions by comparing one person who uses the toothpaste to another person who doesn’t. The reason for that is that you don’t know what color those two people’s teeth were before one of them started using the product.
If Person #1 has beige teeth, and after six months of using the product their teeth are four shades lighter (ie: they are now very light tan), the product can be said to work, even if you compare Person #1 to Person #2, who happened to have gleaming white teeth without needing any brushing at all.
In other words, the way to figure out if the product works, is not by comparing two different people with two different starting points; rather you’d have to compare the teeth of the person using the toothpaste to the teeth of that same person back before they started using the toothpaste. Lewis likens this to the sanctification that people experience once they become a follower of Jesus Christ.
I’ve noticed that many of the people who turn to Jesus are particularly bad people. In fact, that might be part of why they turned to Jesus; they realized how morally hopeless they were without Him. (I consider myself in that category.) So, it wouldn’t surprise me if the average person who converts to Christianity is actually “below average” (especially in things like self-control or niceness) when compared to the rest of people.
So, what happens if, on a scale of 1 to 10, my aunt (the Buddhist) is a 7 when it comes to niceness, and my nephew (the Baptist) is a 5? Sure, on the surface, it makes my nephew’s Christianity look suspect, but what if my aunt is naturally a 7 in niceness? What if that’s just the level she was born at? And what if my nephew was a 2 apart from Christ, but as God has been sanctifying him, he is now a 5? In that case, even if it doesn’t look like it, it would be true that Jesus is making a positive difference in my nephew’s life.
I believe this happens all the time. Everyone is different. There are so many different variations of personalities. And some people lean more toward certain character traits than others. Have you noticed some people are just naturally braver than other people? Some people are naturally angrier than other people? Some people are naturally calmer than other people? Of course you have.
And there are some qualities (like niceness) that we tend to use as the ultimate indicator of whether someone is a good person or not. However, what do we do about the people who are naturally brave (or diligent or honest) but are not naturally nice? What happens when they become a Christian?
Well, for a lot of people that Christian’s lack of niceness invalidates Christianity in their mind, but it shouldn’t.
Just because you value niceness over other qualities, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t improving that person’s niceness (and their other qualities) over time.
However, the fact that you are so hard on them (as they are trying to follow Jesus and improve over time) might indicate that you (as nice as you are) are somewhat judgmental. And perhaps you will need to turn to Jesus and ask Him to save you from that. How’s that for irony?
