Being Kind

On Sunday, Pastor Robin Maxson gave a very interesting sermon based on some of the research that he's doing for his new book on singleness and marriage. He said that a worldwide survey of men and women found that both sexes rated "kindness" as the second most important attribute in a mate. (Men rated "vitality" as #1 while women listed "security" at the top.)

He also told about a study on divorce rates that found that there was only one group that had significantly lower divorce rates than all the rest: Orthodox Jews. The study's author interviewed a number of Orthodox leaders about relationships and discovered one common thread as they described what makes for a good marriage: Kindness. He said that they have a saying along the lines of "when two kind people marry, nothing can separate them."

And, of course, one of the Fruit of the Spirit is kindness.

It was Pastor Robin's advice that you should look first and foremost for a kind person to marry and that you can often tell if he is kind by how he treats children and old people, those who may not be able to repay kindness in the same measure.

Thinking on my own kids, it seemed to me that this was good advice. And, on reflection, I realized that if Jeannette had followed this advice, she never would have married me. I'm not a particularly kind person generally. I even thought about how I teased Jeannette leading up to the evening when I popped the question back in 1983. It was funny, and has made for good stories, but probably wasn't especially kind.

On the flip side, I've been fortunate that I married a kind person. Jeannette is very compassionate and caring as a rule, putting others before herself (sometimes to a fault). Guess I got lucky. Hope my kids get lucky, too . . . and I hope their spouses get lucky, as well.