and the word became flesh . . . . .

Recently on a flight back from Raleigh, North Carolina one of my students asked me, "Why are you and Ronda so nice to us?" He completed his comments by saying, "please don't give me a Sunday school answer." That is, "please don't tell me-- Jesus told me to be nice." To his surprise I told him that my answer was going to be some what complex and difficult to understand because he had taken away the Sunday School option.
I started to answer his question by asking him if he knew what it meant that God had been incarnate in the person of Christ. He looked at me with the puzzlement that often follows peoples first introduction to Christian theology. Therefore, I began to explain that in the person of Christ God had become invested in humanity. Literally in Christ-- God is eternally bound to the human race. Humanity and God are wrapped up in each other in a way that is not the same before the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary.
Some years ago when Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota he was asked about his religious beliefs. He told the media that he was spiritual but that he had no use for any form of organized religion. Then he continued, "Christianity is for weaklings and weak people." Many Christians in United States were angry at Governor Ventura. They felt he had insulted Jesus, the Church and their faith. However, I have to be honest I think Jesse was right. Jesse was right for all the wrong reasons, however, he was right that at the root of the Christian faith is the reversal of the superhero stories. Batman, Spiderman and all heroes be they firemen, policemen or military soldiers move from human-ness to super-human-ness (deity), however, God in Christ moves from deity (super-human-ness) to human-ness.
Being human is precisely the good news of the gospel. Being human is what we are called to be. You see it is not possible to say, "We are only human!" We might not be human enough but we cannot be too human for that is the sacredness of being created and invested in by a God that became human. Violence (be it direct or indirect involvement) which takes the life, the dignity, the sacredness of other humans is anti-human/ anti-christ.
One might want to ask, "Can any of us escape the anti-christ that looms within our direct and indirect involvement in systems of violence." No! That is precisely the good news. Jesus' humanity, his death made it possible for those systems of death and violence to be clearly limited in scope and authority. God's definitive act of resurrection brings to an end the possibility that the systems of death have any final authority. God's entrance into humanity in Christ calls to an end the anti-human domination of our destiny and recreates the radicalness of God's purpose in Adam and Eve. Truly in Christ the garden has been revisited and made possible.
What does this mean about why I am nice! First it means that niceness is first and foremost not my interest. In fact, I know many people in the world that would say I am not nice. For example, I think it is important to talk about sin, confession and repentance. Revisiting the garden without talking about sin is simply impossible. I think it is important to recover the language of the church toward sin, confession and repentance. We cannot know the resurrected one unless we know the crucified one. Christianity without a robust understanding of suffering is not related to the radical humanity of God in Jesus. I think it is important to understand anti-Christ behavior has its most profound effect on those who do not have the ability to be anything but victims of life's circumstances. This is most profoundly the case when it comes to the lives of children. Please understand, I am not calling for liberal paternalistic rescuing of the poor, the lost, the broken etc. . . .. Such liberalism misses the point of God's investment in humanity.
Niceness is not the option! Being nice may be the result of this students life condition but it is not the point. The point is God's radical act of being uniquely invested in the human.