Proverbs 27

A few months ago during a Bible study, a friend of mine said something that has been nagging at me ever since: We don’t often know what love is. He said that in the context of discussing how to be loving toward people, and he suggested that there might be many times when we wouldn’t immediately recognize what would be the “loving” course of action in a given situation.

I tend to agree with him. We know a lot about being nice, but is love always nice? It’s an important question, and one we might do well to think about more often. For example, Jesus was always loving, but was He always nice? Before you’re too quick to answer, remember that it was Jesus who turned tables over in the temple and drove out the thieves with a whip, called people lying snakes, and turned away people who were hungry and looking for food.

Before we’re quick to always equate niceness with love, we ought to ask whether giving money to a drug addict because it’s nice to help them not go through withdrawal is really the loving thing to do. We ought to ask whether allowing a child to get away with a crime because we want to be nice and not see them arrested is really the loving thing to do. I’m not saying that love is never nice, but I think we should always be a little cautious of nice for nice’s sake.

It seems Solomon would agree: “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” (vs 6) Doesn’t this just set you back on your heels a little bit? Wounds from a friend? What sort of friend would inflict pain on you? Wouldn’t we be more apt to say that a person who wounds you is your enemy? Not in this case. In this case, it is the enemy who supplies many kisses.

I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not saying that anytime someone hurts us in some way, we are to automatically consider them a friend to be trusted! We must, in wisdom, consider all the particulars of the situation. But what Solomon is saying here is, don’t be fooled by niceness. It is not always love.

When it comes to God, we must apply this same wisdom. I have many friends who look at some of the actions ascribed to God in the Old Testament and just can’t seem to square them with Jesus because they aren’t nice. And, in some cases, they may be correct. God may have been “blamed” for some things that He didn’t actually do. But I think it’s very dangerous to begin judging God’s actions based on whether they look nice or not. True love is not always nice. True love is not always easy. Often, true love is tough and harsh and difficult. That’s because true love always seeks the best good of the beloved, even when it’s costly.

Because of the testimony of Jesus, we know that God always practices true love. When He spoke forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery, that was true love. And when He cried out in anger and frustration at the Pharisees, warning them that they were headed for eternal destruction, that was true love.

It’s entirely possible that we need to re-think our definition of love. Just because it’s nice doesn’t mean it’s love. It might just be an enemy multiplying kisses.