Tired of being the nice girl 👧

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Actually, we don’t have Christ’s authority to flip tables. We do have Christ’s command to love our enemies and to do good to those who do evil to us.
 
I like this thread and I’ll chime in.

I’ve had problems myself being nice while not being a pushover. I think the trick is this: Just be good to others, even when they’re bad to you; while asserting yourself and keeping bad folks at a distance. You don’t have to be around those that hurt you. The Blessed Mother is a good female role model.

I hope this helps.
 
I think the trick is also to work on getting over the fear of getting hurt. A lot of times “nice” is really just a way of playing it safe, a form of self-protection.
 
I have stopped being nice because it ends up with folks dumping on me. I don’t recollect any commandment to be ‘nice’ or indeed any teaching from Jesus on the subject. I do recall that we should love our neighbour and that is not being a slave or doormat but love them even if it means saying “no” or telling them that they have upset me. I told a friend how disappointed I was that my birthday meal had to be cancelled because of what she said. It was painful, but it had to be said (with loving kindness). Had I been nice, she would not have made the effort to change her behaviour and would have eventually lost more than one friend. Years of being nice, just gave her the green light to think that her behaviour was acceptable which resulted in her bullying one friend, stopping anything that she didn’t like or want to do and spoiling the times we managed to meet. She probably sounds obnoxious, but she isn’t, she is basically very kind-hearted and generous, cares deeply for her family and is willing to help someone in need and a lot more that doesn’t spring immediately to mind.

Even at Church, I say ‘no’ more often. God hasn’t called me to do everything, if he did, then he would have enabled me to be in three places at the same time doing six different things. I know what I am called to do because I enjoy it and dedicate a great deal of time to it. It was hard to be firm at first, especially as the reaction I got was so negative, but it began to get easier and I am much happier.
 
There’s a difference between being charitable to our neighbour and letting them walk all over us.

Loving our neighbour means refraining from doing things to them that we wouldn’t want done to us.

You don’t have to do absolutely everything to make every little thing go well for your neighbour.

Next time someone tries to walk over you like a doormat, stand your ground.
 
Maybe you’re not as “nice” or as distinct from the “human race” as you imagine. Could it be you’re like the rest of us?
 
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You will have to forgive me…
Tshort said:
So, how do you be a follower of Jesus when you can’t stand the human race?
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But part of me would love to have this as a bumper sticker, because sometimes I feel the same way.

There are times when you are perfectly justified to stand your ground. I suppose it’s a matter of having the wisdom to know when make the stand, and when to dust off your feet and walk away. I think sometimes imagining myself in someone else’s shoes helps if I’m having difficulties with someone.
 
Seems that we sometimes lose the meaning of words. “Nice” has become a pejorative I see.

We are called, by Christ to be:

Loving
Kind
Merciful
Forgiving
Good
Humble
Gentle

One can be all of those things and still say “no” when asked to do something.
 
So, I could be wrong here, but I was listening to a radio station (EWTN? Protestant? Can’t remember). Anyway, it was on this very question. Are we supposed to be endlessly “nice”?

The person speaking on this topic made the following point, which I thought was interesting and a perspective I had never considered. She said (summarized): When we hear turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give your tunic also, etc, we tend to interpret it as “don’t be mean, be uber-nice always”. But this woman suggested that that wasn’t what Jesus was saying. He WAS saying “be nice”, hence the “go above and beyond” aspect, but she also said to note that there WAS a limit set. So:

give not just one cheek (don’t fight back after the first punch, which most people of the time would have done), give two. In this way, they will know that Christians love, Christians forgive. But He DIDN’T say “give your whole body unto death to the one who would strike you”. He limited the “niceness” to two cheeks instead of one. You give more than expected, more than you want, even, but not endlessly.

Walk not one mile carrying his things, walk two. Do more. Love more. Help even the “undeserving” more. But not for an eternity of mile-walking. For two miles.

Give not just your cloak but your tunic, as well. Give more. Cover the naked even more. But not “go naked yourself”.

The gist of her talk was that, yes, we ARE kind. Kinder than the world around us, in fact. But not doormats; there is a limit. You are called to forgive any who take advantage of you who ask for your forgiveness (and even if they don’t). Hard, hard saying. But you are not required to allow them to continue to take advantage of you.

As for “Jesus wasn’t nice”…maybe. Maybe not. We weren’t there and that is key. I am a speech/language specialist…I make my living based on my knowledge of communication. One thing I know about words is that they are, in and of themselves, not totally communicative. Context, tone, inflection, cultural considerations and knowledge, knowledge of myths/legends/tales, facial expression, body language----> accurate interpretation of these non-verbal communication mileposts is critical to full receipt of the intended message.

Bruce Marchiano does an EXCELLENT job of portraying this. His portrayal of Christ communicates his admonitions with extreme clearness. Grief, sorrow, joy, humor, directness, exasperation and, yes, anger. But not mean. He’s never mean. You can’t listen to HOW he says the words of Christ and feel the hurt that comes from intentional cruelness. You feel as you would if you were scolded by a loving Father. It changed the entire way I viewed the words of Christ. Highly recommend you view it.

Here’s a snippet:

 
My mother was a devout Catholic, also very assertive as most Irish ladies were, and she always told me that when God said “love one another” he didn’t mean you had to be a doormat. Nothing wrong with being assertive and setting boundaries. It’s actually a loving thing to do that.
 
As I like to put it, on the one hand you have to pick your battles, but on the other hand you’re not obliged to eat crap just because the King of Siam wants to feed it to you 😁

“Nice” does not mean “doormat” and “turn the other cheek” does not mean “let people walk all over you”. It’s not wrong to stand up for your rights.
 
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Sigh…humans. You know, I think the most difficult commandment that Jesus ever gave us is the “love your neighbour” one, especially since He meant love EVERYONE! And there are just some humans that just don’t inspire that emotion in me, on the contrary. 🙂 (Forgive me Lord.)

Anyway, what sort of works for me when somebody I am supposed to love pushes me around is to lift my hand up and say stop, enough. Please don’t talk to me that way because it makes me really nervous. It usually helps…kinda shocks them to silence since I was a definite pushover when I was younger. 😊
 
I could be entirely mistaken, but I heard from a priest that we misundertand the meaning of “turn the other cheek”. Apparently slave masters were only allowed to hit their slaves once on one cheek. So to “turn the other cheek” is an act of defiance. It’s a way of saying “I dare you to mistreat me again”. I haven’t looked up sources but I heard that in a homily once.
 
My patron saint is st. Olga of Kiev- she was anything but passive and a “nice girl”.
There’s a difference between being nice (not insulting others with bad language or being unnecessarily rude) and being clear and sometimes blunt with good intention.
 
And old Irish priest once told me, “Jesus did not command us to like our neighbour, but to love our neighbour.” There a lot of wisdom in that statement.
 
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