Say Something Nice

By Donald Hank

On May 29, 2007, Christian Newswire ran a release entitled Return Civility to Christian Discourse,

about a religious group in South Carolina that had this wonderful novel idea to stop saying bad things about people and religious groups.

The release cited, for example, the Anglican Communion as being “on the verge of rupture,” but in keeping with the idea of not offending, they did not mention that the rupture is over the acceptance of gay marriage and gay religious leaders who had outed themselves in that denomination. What a kind way to deal with this controversial issue!

Here is an excerpt:

In Charleston, South Carolina a slow but potentially powerful movement is beginning to emerge. Historic First Baptist Church now in its 325th year and the Charleston Baptist Association, the oldest Baptist association in the South, have declared the first Sunday in June as Say Something Nice Sunday. On this Sunday Christians of all denominations are urged to step back from strident discourse and to utter no word of criticism about another person or another religious group. In fact they are urged to go further and to say nice things about others and other religious groups.

…..
The movement started with the publication of a small booklet by Dr. Mitch Carnell, Say Something Nice; Be a Lifter…. First Baptist Church where Carnell is a member took the lead quickly endorsed by the Charleston Baptist Association, the Charleston Atlantic Presbytery and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina.

Now, some would say that if religious groups were just pretending to be Christian, then it might be dangerous not to be able to criticize them.

But who would pretend to be a Christian? Especially if they could quote scripture? Aren’t we supposed to trust each other and teach our kids to trust everyone?

Like Eve, the matriarch of the Old Testament. She trusted even the creepy-crawlies in the garden.

How could trusting people be wrong?  Eve trusted the words, ye shall surely not die, as the Good Book says.

So with this solid Biblical reasoning in mind, I tried this niceness idea with my family. I had to bite my tongue a few times, but I managed to get through 12 hours without saying anything bad about anyone. Even when those 2 neighbor kids keyed my car. I just smiled.

I felt strangely calm and serene. Right after I had punched the wall about 6 times.

As they were setting my wrist at the e-ward, my son came up to me and started talking about 20^th Century world leaders he was learning about in school.

That was a real challenge but I think I managed, again, to ignore some of the unnecessarily negative details I had once learned about some of the more controversial figures like Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao and others. The wisdom of ignoring the untoward details about historic figures struck me: if today’s generation knew about these less positive aspects of history, there was a real danger that history would not be repeated and the next generation would be deprived of the opportunity to learn an object lesson, as mine had.

By the end of the day, I was really exhausted from this exercise and was fighting off the desire to scream unkind things, but I was grateful to those nice people at the Charleston First Baptist Church for suggesting that I say nothing.

I felt all tingly thinking about it.

So I wrote the following thank you note to Mitch Carnell at mitch@mitchcarnell.net:

Dear Mitch,

I read an article in Christian Newswire about you and your idea to launch a Say Something Nice campaign.

I thought “how original!” and decided it was time to try this wonderful idea.

Today, my son asked me who Adolf Hitler was.

Now, I knew that Hitler had deep reverence for the ancient Teutonic religion and would qualify as a religious person.

It also occurred to me that mentioning the holocaust would be offensive to Muslims who reject the factuality of the holocaust, and I didn’t want my son to grow up offending people of faith.

Partly because I was in pain at the time (due to an unfortunate accident), I really had a hard time thinking of something nice to say about this controversial gentleman. But then I remembered that Adolf really liked animals and was very fond of his dog.

So I said, "Well, son, Hitler was a leader who was very popular with his people, the Germans, really liked animals and had a very kind heart toward them."

He said: "He sounds like a really nice guy. I want to be just like him when I grow up."

So you see, Mitch, your idea of saying only nice things about people has been put into practice here in our household and has helped my son be tolerant of a person whom perhaps an advocate of the “straight and narrow” approach might tend to view with a jaundiced eye. My son has already started practicing his goose-stepping and has asked me about buying him a brown shirt for his birthday!

I was certain you would be pleased to learn of the positive impact you have had.

Best Wishes,

Donald Hank

I hope you, Dear Reader, will take a lesson from this.

For example, next time you think the Christian Left is hijacking your faith and acting contrary to the teachings of the Bible, just ignore it and say something nice about that group.

That way, your children will learn that the scripture can be bent anyway anyone wants to bend it, just like the Constitution. They’ll stop taking the Bible so seriously and be more well-balanced and popular with ordinary kids who wear multiple nose rings and Wiccan tattoos, drink, take drugs and have extramarital sex with anyone and anything. Soon they’ll be no different from those non-judgmental, up-to-date friends of theirs and won’t look down their noses at them.

What? A gay pastor in your denomination outs herself and announces her engagement to her sister?

Another pastor weds his collie?

A denominational convention actively promotes abortion, prostitution and sex slavery?

Surely you can think of something nice to say about all of this.

When these leftists see what a nice sweet Christian you are, you’ll immediately win them over and they’ll stop trashing our culture and leading our young people astray.

You know, the way Iranian President Ahmadinejad stopped threatening Israel when we won him over by building him that nice nuclear power plant…

Ok, so maybe it doesn’t always work out right away, but be that as it may, it is a really nice idea, and if you are as enthused as I am about this whole civility idea, why not write Mitch yourself at mitch@mitchcarnell.net and express your appreciation?

Donald Hank is a technical translator and staff writer with Laigle’s Forum.

Contact the author: don@zoilandonsplace.com