What Is Kindness? 

When we try to define kindness we are forced to think of many things. In one sense it must include the idea of love, but it also involves a sense of commitment. 

From yet another aspect it involves knowing enough of another person’s predicament to be able to do something appropriate to the other person’s needs. Otherwise, with the best of intentions, it might do more harm than good.

 Perhaps the most important thing about an act of kindness is what it does to others who witness it, without their having taken any part in it.  I guess we can all recall acts of kindness by others that have influenced our lives.  Sadly we can remember also acts of unkindness we have witnessed.  Both can have a powerful influence on us. 

I will always remember an act of extraordinary kindness I witnessed just after the end of World War II. After the Japanese invaded Borneo they set up a number of internment camps where they held a variety of expatriate people.  There were British people from erstwhile plantations, Dutch public servants from what is now Indonesia, American engineers from oil companies and a few Australians.

 I found myself helping to prepare a place where they could recover from their ordeals.  It was on a beautiful beach area on Labuan – an island in the South China Sea just off the coast of Borneo.  All those people who had been in Borneo were taken there and when they were fit to travel they were offered free transport to their home countries.  As you could imagine, most did not take long to accept the offer. 

Included among the survivors was a group of about a dozen nuns from a Catholic mission on Borneo. They were so emaciated they could not even sit up on stretchers placed on the ground in the shade of the trees. This was the first time I had seen people suffering from starvation. In fact, one died as I tried to make them more comfortable. 

Time passed and as they gathered strength the time came for them to be offered free travel to their home countries. It took them only a few minutes to decide.  They did not accept the offer, but all said they wanted to be returned to their mission on Borneo where they said the village people needed all the help they could get. 

That to me demonstrated what Christian kindness is all about. 

Alban Gurnett-Smith 

&  &  &  &  &  &  &  &  &  &  &  &