Niceness

      Recently I had a conversation with one of my friends and we talked about nice people. During this conversation, I thought of a question that seems to have an obvious answer; why do people like nice people? It seems like that's a simple question to answer, but that's because it is so natural for us to like nice people. I never thought too much about why I personally like nice people or why others like nice people until I had this conversation. Hopefully I can shed some light on the answer to this question and make some comments on it.
      First, I think it's important that I define "nice people". To me personally, a nice person is someone who compliments other people and is overall a positive person. A person who is not nice is someone who tends to put others down and is overall a negative person. A nice person is generally creates a pleasant atmosphere and points out the good in other people. As I said before, most if not all people would rather be with a nice person than a disrespectful or mean person.
      So why do we like people that are nice to us? I believe that we like being around nice people because they point out our positive qualities rather than our bad. A very nice person may even exaggerate a quality to make us feel better. I think people try to be nice so that other people feel better about themselves. As humans, we all have things about us that we don't like because no one is perfect. We don't like it when someone exposes our weaknesses. We don't like being reminded of our shortcomings and failures. What we do want is to feel some sense of worth, or acceptance. When people point out what is good about us, we feel like we are accepted and we are worth something. I believe that we all are trying to find nice people to surround ourselves with to make us feel like we are something more than we are.
      While I have nothing against nice people (actually I think being nice is great), they can't make us worth something more than what we are. They certainly can make us feel that way, but they don't have the ability to make us better people. Also, no one can truly accept us, because even the nicest people judge other people. No one can accept all of who we are, because everyone has some quality that no one can accept. I'm not talking bad breath or bad hair, but something deeper that is in our hearts. What makes us incapable of being worth something great or completely accepted is that we all have sinned and fall short.
      My previous statements were not completely true. There is someone who can make us worth something and accept all of us. That person died on the cross so that we could be accepted and valuable. Jesus took our punishment for our sin and made us righteous and He accepted us into His family. The sad thing is that many people try to replace Jesus with "nice" people. Nice people can certainly make us feel better about ourselves and accepted, but they cannot make us better people and accept us. Only Jesus has the power to become that person we long for in our hearts, and Jesus is that person.
-Smart