I’ve been a Cory Asbury fan since his IHOP days. “So Good to Me” and “Where I Belong” were impactful songs for me during my high school days, “Reckless Love” is a classic, and “The Father’s House” is one of my recent worship faves (I should really write blogs about both of those. Everybody loves to argue about whether God’s love is reckless or not! 🤓). But “Kind” isn’t just a Cory song; it also benefits from the writing talents of Jesse Reeves, Paul Mabury, and Steve Fee.

I stumbled upon “Kind” when my wife sent it to me on TikTok in February this year. Since then, it’s been published on his most recent album Pioneer. A far cry from the goofball antics that often populate Cory’s social media, “Kind” is a heartbreaking testimony of trying to find God’s goodness in the midst of sin and pain. In this blog, I’m not just trying to discern whether a song is true or good but whether it will be beneficial in most corporate worship services. So, is “Kind” biblical? And is it appropriate for Sunday worship? Let’s find out!

Focus

This song is about our doubt, sin, and pain, and God’s response of kindness toward us, specifically in the cross of Christ.

“Kind” spends a lot of words talking about “me.” It takes a first-person perspective to intimately reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But I don’t think that makes it a self-centered song. The simple phrase “all He’s ever been is kind” stands in sharp contrast to the many words of our striving, failing, and questioning. God’s kindness is magnified by our desperate need for it.

This song mostly refers to God as “He,” assuming that we will know who it’s referring to. In case we don’t, Jesus is identified by name in the chorus.

Lyric Analysis

VERSE 1
The first verse addresses some of the most painful circumstances we experience in this life: divorce, loss of a child, addiction, and praying for healing without receiving it. Rather than making truth claims, this verse expresses personal experience. The singer admits to having doubts about God’s existence and his character, wondering how he decides who should receive healing.

I have mixed feelings about expressing this kind of doubt in worship. On the one hand, everyone experiences doubts on their faith journey. Many people in the Bible also express pain and doubt, including Lazarus’ sisters, David, the psalmists, the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, and Job. While each worshiper may not have suffered the same experiences as the songwriters of “Kind,” this verse casts a wide net for the kinds of things in life that lead us to doubt God. Acknowledging these doubts together in worship reminds us that we’re not alone, and that our doubts don’t make us “bad” Christians or condemn us to hell.

A friend and colleague asked me recently about worship songs for people struggling with their mental health. I found that almost all the songs we sing are positive and celebratory. Even those that acknowledge our pain and sin end on a note of victory. In a sense, that is appropriate, since we believe that the victory of Jesus is the ultimate destiny of creation. But in the here and now, ending every song on a happy note sometimes negates the pain and doubt people are still experiencing.

On the other hand, these kind of doubts certainly don’t praise God, so it just feels weird to sing them in church. Is that a real problem or just my discomfort with difficult emotions? I’m not sure. I do know that praise isn’t the only kind of worship. Trusting God with our doubts, fears, and pain honors him too.

VERSE 2
Where the first verse was focused on suffering and bad circumstances, this verse stressed regret for the wrong things we have done. The singer admits to burning bridges with people, abandoning relationships and situations after making a mess of them. This verse acknowledges that God forgives us for these things, but that we often find it difficult to forgive ourselves for our sins. We sometimes feel that we are somehow worse than everyone else, too broken for God to love. Again, these particular experiences and feelings might not be universal, but they are representative.

CHORUS
The chorus describes more personal experiences, mostly paired as opposites. Sometimes the author has fled from God, and sometimes he has hurt people in his zealotry. He’s been patient and insistent in turns. He’s even gone so far as to “curse His name in anger,” the most provocative line in the song.

Cursing God is mentioned a few times in Scripture, most notably in Job. The title character of this book experiences the loss of his livestock, his health, and even his children. Far from encouraging him, his wife tells him to quiet being so righteous and just “curse God and die.” Job refuses, and the text tells us that to do so would have been sin, but the rest of the book shows us his struggle with his faith (Job 2:9-10). The reward for sin is death, but forgiveness and eternal life can be found in Jesus (Rom. 3:23), and he tells us that even blasphemy will be forgiven (Matt. 12:32). So cursing God is not recommended by this song, and it is not something that all Christians have done per se, but we have all sinned, and we have all dishonored God sometimes in response to our pain and circumstances.

The chorus also contains the primary truth claim of this song: “all He’s ever been is kind.” But is God only ever kind? Paul seems to push back on this in Romans 11:11-24. In verse 22, he says, “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.” So those who cut themselves off from God experience his severity, and those who remain in him experience his kindness. But in the very next verse, we learn that even God’s punishment is intended to bring people back into his family: “even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.” There is kindness even in the severity of God.

So the chorus gives us opportunity to acknowledge the ways we have sinned against God, and it tells us that he responds to all of our failings with kindness. At the end of the song we replace the line about cursing God with the admission, “He knows I don’t deserve it, but He’s never changed His mind.” This echoes Paul’s words in Romans 5:8, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Even in the midst of our rebellion and failures, God maintains faithful lovingkindness towards us.

BRIDGE
God’s kindness is not squishy or passive. He does not ignore our sin, but instead bears it himself on the cross. God’s kindness is at the expense of his own Son, also God himself, dying a criminal’s torturous death. This stark image shows us that God’s kindness is not cheap, not will it be mocked or taken advantage of. It is a serious kindness, bent on our redemption at any cost.

Accessibility

The meaning of this song is clear to anyone: God is kind even when we doubt and even in the midst of our pain. There is some risk of misapprehending the line “all He’s ever been is kind,” as an endorsement of cheap grace or a vision of God lacking justice, wrath, or discipline. The bridge does much to counteract this concern. I think a lot of people will be uncomfortable singing, “I’ve cursed His name in anger.”

The range of this song is an octave and a second, which is actually pretty small for contemporary worship. I don’t find the verses especially easy for a congregation to pick up immediately, but the chorus is catchy and 3 times is likely enough to pick it up.

Music

Like the rest of the Pioneer, “Kind” has a country flavor. It relies on acoustic finger-picking, some light snare work (probably with brushes), and simple piano chords for the rhythmic backbone. Steel guitar, bass, and “ooh” vocals fill out the soundscape. The simple, subdued instrumentation is this song’s strength, and church bands who play it should exercise lots of restraint. This is definitely one of those “fragile egg” songs that will break if you aren’t gentle with it.

The chords themselves are simple, but there are a lot of them, so it’s probably worth a couple minutes to make sure everybody in the band is playing them at the same times. Other than that, the song isn’t rhythmically challenging. The lead vocal has some tricky timing.

Conclusions

“Kind” is a powerful song that reflects seriously on the pain and doubt that are part of the human experience. Rather than explaining or minimizing them, it simply places God’s kindness in their midst and reminds us that Jesus suffered too.

I thought this song was going to be a “no.” I thought the blunt and sometimes harsh descriptions of our doubts and pains were too uncomfortable and personal for a worship service. But if the author of Psalm 88 can say express his feelings of loss and abandonment and doubt before God, then maybe we should too. This song honors the suffering and doubt that all Christians experience in a way that few other songs do, and it presents God’s kindness in a clear and unique way. So then I wanted to say “yes!”

But I can’t get past the feeling that this song isn’t very congregational. I also still feel weird that roughly 1/3 of this song’s 26 lines are about God and his character while 2/3 are about our problems. This song could function very meaningfully in a worship service, but (like many testimony songs) it might be better suited to special music than congregational singing. Not everyone can fully identify with all the problems listed in this song, and many people will have a problem confessing to cursing God’s name in anger when that’s something they don’t believe they’ve done.

So after all that, I think we land in “maybe” territory with this one. “Kind” is a beautiful, valuable, insightful song that will continue to minister to many people in the depths of fear, doubt, and pain. It respects those trials by refusing to give them a trite answer, and it glorifies Jesus by declaring his kindness into the midst of them. But I don’t think Sunday-morning congregational singing is the best vehicle for this song to do its work.

Image by Francisco Gonzalez from Unsplash

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.